Jeanette LeBlanc spent most of her life working very hard to be a good girl. One day she woke up and decided to write her way out of her own life, things haven't been the same since. Single mama to two ridiculously unruly daughters, Jeanette believes in the smooth honey burn of whiskey, the crashing of mama ocean, pencil skirts, vintage band tees and fringed boots, the kinship of the wild wolf, walking for miles in unfamiliar cities, the power of dark red lipstick and the necessity of putting out for the muse on the regular. Oh yea, and that sometimes our stories are the only things that can save us.
You can ink it on the surface of your skin or x-ray vision the story onto the blank canvas of your bones. You can write a novel and then let the whole thing dissolve in the waves.
Get out into the world before you, deep into your wonderful human body and allow it the gift of existing in this world. Give yourself a chance to be lost and found and enough silence to hear the whisper when it comes. And it will come.
And then, when you’re ready, you can stretch your shaky legs, stand up, dust yourself off, raise your hands open, toss your head back to the heavens and say ‘Here I am. All that I am, and all that I will be.”
I’ve lost my wild heart once. Twice. Too many times to count. Lost her to heartbreak – thinking that another could hold her for me forever and being devastated that this was not so.
We’ve got tear gas riot squads aiming straight for the protest lines of our weary souls. Landmines in our chests that we trip over every time we try to hide from the terrifying tremble of our own war torn hearts.
How we take all the moments and shape them into our lives. How there is nothing to do, in the end, but bless all that brings us here, to this right now.
In the spaces inside the silence, in the depth and breadth and weight of these spaces, it is sometimes true that entire lives are lived. Inside of the silence we love and we lose.
Un-learn lessons that have kept your heart on lockdown. Embrace what you need. Discard what does not serve. Bless your tender kneecaps. Bless your holy longing. Bless your wild soul.