A knock at the door…
3 November 2025. London, UK
This piece of writing, with minor edits for clarity, is from a recent 15-minute timed-write with my Tuesday Wild Writing Circle.
***
“A knock at the door, and then you open your arms, accept the package that’s handed to you – not knowing what it contains, or even who it’s from, only that is has your name written across the top.” - excerpt from the poem Willingness, by James Crews
***
Accept the package that’s handed to you.
How I’ve struggled and resented this, trusting that I know what’s best for me and my people. Definitely not trusting my seen and unseen guides.
No, I’m not a puppet, but there are times in my life when I have felt that something was handed directly to me. I wanted it to be for someone else. No, I don’t fall in love with someone outside my marriage. No, I would never divorce. No, I would never hurt my children that way. No. No. No.
But the package that came had my damn name on it.
I tried Return to Sender, but when the sender is life, you’re kind of stuck.
I was stuck. And then I was in the quicksand. I was in a quagmire, and I couldn’t get out…afraid there was no way out. My now ex-husband often said, “The only way out is through, Jill. The only way out is through.” I knew it was true, and I resented that fact of life – you can’t just jump over things, or under things or around them. Life is more slippery than that, trickier, or perhaps I should say - yes, I need to say - more mysterious. I have wanted to control my life. This illusion of control was stripped away, and nakedness was all I had. And then, finally, came a knowing that I actually had to forgive myself for not being perfect, for not living up to my standards, for being human.
I actually had to forgive myself for being human.
It sounds odd to say it aloud, but there it is. I have been hell-bent on not accepting that being human entails making messy, painful choices. Choices that hurt people. How can this be the way through? But it’s been the only way to my own growth and increasing freedom. I have to choose myself. As Mary Oliver says, I have to save the only life I can save.
I’ve tried to make this equation add up to something else. Isn’t there another answer? Please? But that’s not the human way, and I am on the path of being human, of becoming more human. This is the path we’re all on if we let ourselves be.
Dear God, dearest Great Good Thing, help me accept this humbling human path. Thank you for those who journey on it with me. May our witnessing and holding of each other make the path brighter and maybe even a little lighter, too. Blessed be.