ONE HEARTFUL THING #8

“Letter to the Parts of Me I Have Tried to Exile” by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Photo by Shyam on Unsplash

Dear Friends,

This poem names something so many of us carry—the belief that if we could just cut out the messy, scared, angry, or aching parts of ourselves, we’d finally be okay. But what if wholeness isn’t about exile at all? What if healing is a return? In Letter to the Parts of Me I Have Tried to Exile, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer gives voice to the grace that finds us when we embrace our exiled parts. It’s tender, wise, and deeply human. Let it speak to the parts of you still waiting to be welcomed home.

xo Mary

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Letter to the Parts of Me I Have Tried to Exile

I’m sorry. I thought banishing you
was the way to become better,
more perfect, more good, more free.
The irony: I thought if I cut you off
and cast you out, if I built the walls
high enough, then the parts left would be
more whole. As if the sweet orange
doesn’t need the toughened rind,
the bitter seed. As if the forest
doesn’t need the blue fury of fire.
It didn’t work, did it, the exile?
You were always here, jangling
the hinges, banging at the door,
whispering through the cracks.
Left to myself, I wouldn’t have known
to take down the walls,
nor would I have had the strength to do so.
That act was grace disguised as disaster.
But now that the walls are rubble,
it is also grace that teaches me to want
to embrace you, grace that guides me
to be gentle, even with the part of me
that would still try to exile any other part.
It is grace that invites me
to name all parts beloved.
How honest it all is. How human.
I promise to keep learning how
to know you as my own, to practice
opening to what at first feels unwanted,
meet it with understanding,
trust all belongs, welcome you home.

- Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer