Something Light

Today I want to include a poem I wrote when I was in fifth grade. I personally believe that a great part of each of us is formed in our childhood. Around this age, age ten I believe, I stopped believing I could be artistic. I quit writing poems and music, and I quit drawing. Part of what I am learning on my journey through divorce is that I need to let go of faulty beliefs. Like "can't".

Henry Ford said, "Whether you believe you can, or you can't, you are right." Poignant.

Today I believe I can. At least, I believe in this moment. I hope to build more on that belief. 

"Doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith."

I believed when I was ten. Then, one day, for whatever reason- whether someone told me I couldn't, or I thought so, it doesn't really change the outcome- I chose to quit believing. And I chose that direction a little more each day. Until I didn't question that assumption anymore.

Maybe I produced something "bad" at that age. Rather than quitting, what if I had kept attempting? To have taken "bad" as the lesson that it is, and as a necessary piece of growth?

My voice teacher recently told me an incredible story about a man who learned to take the bad pieces of fruit at the grocery store along with the good. The compelling intention of the story is to teach that not all that we do and produce in life can and will be good. The more good we produce, the more likely we are to produce something bad, too. The key to success in life is to take them both as lessons and believe both are part of the process of understanding my talents. And part of building and adding upon them. Bad is not an indication of my talent; or, returning to the story, those fruits are not representative of all fruit, or even the tree.

Life is not static, but ever changing. Life is full of lessons and new beginnings, if only we choose to accept that vision.

Returning to my purpose: Here's my ten year old self's poem:


Winter by Haley Ricker

Winter whispers through the willows,
The snowflakes start to fall.
My mom has told me more than once,
"This is the best Christmas of all."

I went outside to play for a while;
I piled snow into a great pile.
I built up Snowman, fat and round.
I gave him arms; the sticks I found.

At my grandmothers, through the night,
The forest grows thick, white.
In the morning the snow is lost.
I say goodbye to the frost.

Flowers spring up through the ground.
Winter is lost. Spring is found.


Haley