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Breadcrumbs in Dark Times: Any minute now, everything will change.

{Dream Weaver by Christian Schloe via Artflakes.com}

{Dream Weaver by Christian Schloe via Artflakes.com}

“Allow dark times to season you.” ~ Hafiz

When the Going Gets Tough…

These days, the rough patch we’re navigating has turned into a very long haul. I believe we’ll weather the changes. I believe we’re strong enough to do so. Still, it’s easy to fall into despair and wish that our journey wasn’t so rife with trouble.

Right now, we’re in a thick soup of changes that rival any changes we’ve weathered in human history. The shit’s hitting the fan — environmentally, economically, emotionally — and everywhere we look, people are losing it. Shooting up the joint. Setting themselves on fire. Totaling their cars. Blowing up their personal lives.

Now Entering Transformation Station.

Transformation is not optional right now. It is required. We cannot continue to fumble blindly in the darkness, unaware of the light we possess. We must solve the problems we’ve created.

And although this awakening is painful — like road rash, or a broken bone that hasn’t been set yet — we can’t wait for rescue. Not this time. We are the people we are waiting for. We must step up and take the reins. There is no one else. Just us.

What has always worked, no longer works.

It’s been heartening to hear that Marianne Williamson is running for congress. She told Larry King that we cannot make decisions for humanity based upon economics alone.

I agree. Capitalists are pragmatic by nature. They will never look at the long term consequences of their policies. They look at the bottom line, the current returns, the profit margins — without ever considering whether their approach is actually sustainable. In a world of limited resources, it is not.

As a result, we’re now tasked with learning to live more softly, reverently, and carefully.

Be here now, even if the thought absolutely terrifies you.

Don’t check out. Don’t go back to sleep. The world desperately needs you — it needs your talents, your passion, your ideas, your voice.

Yes, these are hard times, dark times, strange times. Yet, something wonderful and raw is rumbling and singing and coming back to life. I can feel it brushing my face just moments before I wake up in the morning. I can feel it when I focus on stories that nurture and enrich my life, instead of on those that deplete me.

I encounter kindred spirits and soul friends every day through the power of social media and my writing (blogs, magazines, LinkedIn, Facebook). It is as though we’ve inadvertently created the perfect way for those of us experiencing this rebirth, to connect or reconnect.

Not Just Changing Lanes. Taking the Road Less Traveled.

This unknown darkness where we sit — as individuals and as a global community — is slowly revealing itself. It inherently knows what the next step is. We must trust the process and allow the darkness to ‘season us’ as Hafiz wrote.

Hour by hour, and day by day, breadcrumbs are left along the road.

We’ve escaped the dangerous, deliciously inviting cottage that inhabited our nightmares. We’ve managed to counter-act the spell we’ve been under, avoiding certain death. We’ve foiled our nemesis and broken the snare that has entrapped us for far too long.

We’re running free.

Can you feel it?

Any minute now, everything will change.

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Shavawn Berry

Shavawn Berry

Big Mammu, Mischief Maker, and Chief Creative Contessa at Shavawn M. Berry, LLC
Shavawn M. Berry’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Huffington Post, The Good Men Project, elephant journal, Olentangy Review, Black Fox Literary Magazine, Be You Media Group, Vagina – The Zine, Rebelle Society, The Cancer Poetry Project 2, Kinema Poetics, Kalliope, Poet Lore, Westview - A Journal of Western Oklahoma, Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Concho River Review, North Atlantic Review, Synapse, Living Buddhism, Blue Mountain Arts/SPS, and Poetry Seattle to name a few. Her technique essay on the dramatic monologue/persona poem is featured in a poetry database published in 2013 by Ebsco Publishing. In 1998, she received her MPW in Professional Writing from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles where she specialized in Creative Nonfiction and Memoir. Ms. Berry teaches writing online for Arizona State University where she has won numerous teaching awards including a 2013 Lincoln Ethics Teaching Fellowship. Since 2014 she has been mentoring student interns through the Pen Project, a writing and editing internship offered by Arizona State that allows students to critique and offer feedback to incarcerated writers in Arizona and New Mexico. You can read more of her work on her blog, The Wonderland Files, via her website. A portfolio featuring a selection of her essays, blog postings, and prose is available at Contently.com under her name. You can reach her via her Facebook page where she chats with like-minded, open-hearted people. She loves animals of all kinds, nature, the ocean, the desert, travel, the southwest, and most particularly her new home, in Santa Fe, NM. She offers creative coaching, writing webinars and workshops, and retreats through her website.
Shavawn Berry
Shavawn Berry
Shavawn Berry