Musing: Songbird Come Alive
A summons for everyone who has had to hide and ultimately heal who they are
To the Nonconformists. The outcasts. The sometimes picked last.
My Dear Queer Peculiar People,
I see you and I love you so much.
I love your style, I love your nails, I love how you love, how you build community, how you show up for your friends, your family (even those who hurt and still hurt you), how you have licked your wounds and learned to love again, how you love who you love no matter what anyone has to say about it.
I love how you are willing to stand on the frontlines of the resistance fighting for a world and people who have treated you with such hate. I love how you are intent on living your life the way you see fit.
Your light illuminates the lives of so many people. Even though it was forged in great darkness and pain.
I need you to hear and know this:
You are loved. You are beautiful. You are immaculately designed and enduringly necessary. That doesn’t mean you are obligated to people who have hurt you. Your forgiveness of and engagement with those who have handled you contemptuously is entirely up to you. No matter what some bigger person would do.
Nay, you are necessary and so ingeniously designed for YOUR mission. For YOUR life. For YOUR people. No matter how long it may take to find them.
I know you have had to hide and silence and kill off parts of yourself to survive and you’ve learned that what survives isn’t actually alive. I know how deep that hurt goes. But take heart.
The phoenix, a majestic bird that bears no offspring, beautifully teaches us that the lives we live after we’re reborn are more vigorous and longer than our previous ones.
So all those aspects of yourself you had to fracture yourself from and abandon, would be thrilled to meet and rejoin you. And I can guarantee it’s an exhilarating reunion. Your life has barely begun and your greatest days are innumerably before you.
You’re still there. You’ve just gotta love on those parts you were taught to hate to get ‘em breathing again. To get you breathing again.
Come alive, songbird.
The world is waiting to hear your song.
Your brother.
Melvyn 🌈
