Writing Through The Coronavirus Pandemic

March yawned with winter's breath still living through the regularities of living life with normalcy. To take it back a step, the last week of February, I was invited to attend a Yoga Retreat that brought my body healing, and an inner calm and certainty of where I felt I was being called to do. During this retreat I met amazing individuals ignited by their journey's path, as I was too, as a sacred writing workshop facilitator. As I conversed with some individuals, I can see my wings expand towards my vision of using writing as a inner healing, an inner empowerment, especially for women. Even though I have been conducting writing workshops and circles for 8 years, I felt like it was going to rise to another level.
I came back home with exhilarating determination with my light work. March clothed me with winters last embrace but I was looking forward to  spring bursting with vibrancy. Little did I know that it would bring us to a completely different metamorphosis, a deep cocooning, a surrendering pause. The Coronavirus was sweeping across the world with a vengeance and now coming to America.  I had one last moment of normalcy,(or what I thought was normalcy) attending a work dinner at Uncle Julio's restaurant. Margaritas, fajitas and delightful conversation with co-workers. That evening I was already feeling one of the 3 first symptoms they were warning about with the Coronavirus, a persistent dry cough. I soon fell into a fever but also felt my body ache with exhaustion, I felt like I had mono. I contacted my general practitioner , told her my symptoms, but since I did not have the primary one, shortness of breath, I could not get tested especially because of the shortage of tests. I also exhibited symptoms lack of taste and smelling, reminded me when I went through chemo for breast cancer and had lost of taste. I soon found out these became symptoms of the virus as well. I would heave myself out of bed to walk my beloved Tsuki, my Shiba Inu, which was very difficult for me to do. Eyes that met mine, showed a deep unknowing of what we were going through, keeping distant with our encounters with uncertain smiles. I quarantined for 14 days. My dear son Dylan did my grocery shopping for me, leaving my groceries at my door. Then, in the state of Illinois, we moved into sheltering. 
During this unprecedented time of fear and uncertainty, I wrote. I wrote between the tears of my heart speak, reaching into a place of stillness. I wrote not only words for a healing balm for me but for all of us, for the world. One poem that I wrote in March, speaking of the sorrowing ache in our bones, in our hearts I share now with you. As we still move through this uncertainty, let us hold onto love as our anchor, as our guiding truth.

Let these words come to you, know that you are not alone, love comes like a beautiful light to flood into your darkness, to hold you in comfort, in truth, with loving grace. 

if I could transcend
above the thoughts
that carry me to melancholy
sorrow deep in the
bones of me
weary rest
breath
comes to recover me
it isn't always easy
to wish it all away
even pray it all away
oh beautiful one
what cracks the edges
of who you are
transcend above
the crying voice
tears that lay upon your soul
come to the whisper
of your light
slip through the cracks
into the heaven of you
where there is
love
grace
strength
oh yearning one
find in the waking
of you
in gentle rising
moving through it all
it may feel as if
all is collapsing
when in truth
it is all
coming together
step to journey
eyes to path
pause to moment
no one said
it all had to be okay
words that spill
like dried tears upon you
in a moment it will happen
you will come to your rise
in love
transcending into
the belonging of you.
Author Maureen Kwiat Meshenberg ©
​Artist Dorina Costras

Let these words soothe you and hold a place in your heart, come and rise in love.
Maureen