On December 20, 2023, I offered up an invitation on Facebook. I was thinking about what we carry inside of us that doesn't get said. Thinking about the weight of that carrying, the heft, the labor, the muscle required. I was also thinking about a line from a poem I’d written two years before: "How to open our mouths for the sake of the wildflowers that live there." I wondered, What are the wildflowers living inside of us? How do we open our mouths to that aliveness?

And so, in service to the liberation of the unsaid and in service to the blossoming of wildflowers, and in service to the deeply healing potential of witnessing and being witnessed, I created a living document I called "One last thing," and I invited others to add to it, submitting their responses anonymously. My prompts were the following:

What do you need to say that hasn't (yet) been said? What do you need to let go of that hasn't (yet) been released? What words would you like to express in service to unburdening the (cumulative) weight of what you've been carrying?

Below are the responses I received. If you would like to submit your own responses (again, anonymously), here is the link to do so.

I used to resent how hard I'd become. How the trauma you inflicted forged a chainmail of scar tissue like lacework over my soul. But I realized that this chainmail is what I'd needed. I became the person who would have protected me from you.

I’ve fucked up my life. No money, no security, no people. I don’t know how I will survive the next year, let alone the possible 30 after that if I live to the age of my father.

I have made some mistakes in my life. Some BIG ONES. Things that weigh heavy on my heart. A person I did not want to be. I have never believed that I was enough. I looked for my worth, in things, in perceptions, in ways of being that exists only in my mind. I made some terrible choices in the pursuit of acceptance and self worth. I am sorry. Mom I hurt you. I am sorry for that. I betrayed your trust. That weighs on my heart. I did my best. My dear child. I did the best I could at the time. I fell short. I loved you in the only way I could. Not in the way I should. Not how you deserved to be loved. There is time to change that. I will do all I can to love myself, so that I can love you. We both deserved to be unconditionally loved. I release my mistakes. They are not who I am. I release who I was and go fully into who I am. Who I aspire to be. Loving and Loved.

I deserved more

I want a different life. I'm realizing mid life that where I'm at is not where I want to be.

The hardest thing for me this year has been the loneliness. It's coming up on ten years since I have been ill but this seems to be the year that I have had to cancel so many times. I feel guilty and sad and alone. But I am going to get help - I'm talking to a counselor soon ❤️

We need new fairy tales to believe in, to dance our lives around... especially ones that show us how to weed out hate and garden love.

It would be so much easier to smash your car windows than it is not to. That thought is pathological, you implied. It would be so much easier to forward that email and the rest to every person we know. Love is the pathological kindness keeping vengeance at bay all around the world tonight. A million invisible acts of terrorism, unrequited. No one talks about that ongoing miracle.

I am important pay attention to me

when i forget to act deliberately i feel like the person who still litters even though they were told it is bad so I bend down And pick up their discarded bits (no one needs to thank me) how easy it is to clean someone else’s mess and stare at my own I’m not waiting for a pick-me when the time is ripe I can still choose myself In any season So what is left to say; This new year I’ll let myself be an I And not an i Because a spot is a heavy burden that I am not equipped to carry when my hands are full of trash

This is the year the electrical wiring in my heart was found to be faulty. My flame trickled to a flicker. 64 years of stunning, vibrant health left me unprepared for the ocean of grace required to surrender to the dazzling scalpel of cardiology. So, what did I learn? Not surprisingly, my style of bridge building is relational. Knowing deep down in my cells that trust builds at the speed of relationship, I allowed myself the privilege of sending 3 poems to the human who was going to install my second chance at wild living, mountain climbing, peace making. I kept them short, acknowledging that I understood I was asking for a few minutes of time spent in a rather unusual fashion. The day of my pacemaker surgery, a brilliant Todd Silberstein came to gather me for the frozen, sterile tundra of the operating room. I was willing and vulnerable, wrapped in an oversize hospital gown with a flattering blue cap pinning down my locks. He placed his warm right hand on my thinly veiled, cold toes. He smiled at me with a kindness that took my breath away and lit all the candles in my Chanukah heart. It was December 15th, 2023. I held hands with uncertainty and went under the spell. What I try always to say, but can never say completely is "thank you." You cause my heart to beat. You help me in ways I cannot help myself. You give me hope, courage, ecstasy. Without you, I would be a shadow of myself. An adorable, complicated lost sheep. Rib cage without holy flesh. And I mean YOU. All of YOU. Every single one of You.

Every morning when I say thanks for my food, for our home, for our safety, for our family, here is also what I ask for help with: I need help in finding my way back to the world after covid. I don't know how to simply jump right back in. Actually, it's not so simple. I am still terrified of getting sick, of dying like my mother did, even though our health situations are vastly different. I still see her gasping for breath, desperate for life, on that last facetime just hours before she passed away. And I can't shake it. Our health situations are vastly different. I rationally know this. And yet we are suffering because of my fear. I need to release this fear. And move forward and toward the world. This is killing me and us more than covid likely would.

These are new words for next year, but I will say them now in reverence to the Winter Solstice. She brings light to span over the darkness of question and uncertainty. Slowly, in increments only measured on a clock’s face. I listen to these words - I have never said them. I can’t go home to a home that isn’t mine. My body responds with exhaustion, fatigue, and illness. Too much for a woman living the last quarter of her life. Facing the light and hope of Solstice, I want to release what’s weighing me down. I will release the quest I’ve been traveling. Sitting in my blue chair in my present home, I realize this quest is not serving me. I will release the anger that I carry, and infests my body. A saint once told me my anger doesn’t mix well with God’s promises for me. I will change the direction of my queries for the quest is waiting right in front of me and with each morsel of light, calls to me, “Let’s go!”

I need to let self-doubt go. Self-sabotaging. I need to take my writing life more seriously (in the sense of not thinking it’s a waste of time when I should be earning money with actual paid activities). I wish I could live out of my writing. Gosh, how I wish that…

How much I hurt someone when I was younger because I was so lost then and how hard it is to make amends.

There's so much that I don't know, or pretend to know but don't. I want for my life to have some meaning that will outlast me, some kind of good. I want whoever/whatever invested in my chance at being here in this lifetime to be satisfied that it was worth it, that I didn't waste it, that I didn't let it harden and crumble into selfish or lazy little pieces.

How can I hold in my heart the grief and terror of the world while going about the ordinary business of my life? I know, intrinsically, how invaluable it is to offer up and soak in any joys I can. But the weight of so much sorrow intercepts this with more intensity than I can sometimes bear. The brutal violence on one end of the map, the replenishment of eggs and bread on the other. The utter senselessness and trauma over "there" and the plebian demands of laundry and earning a living "here." How can any of us continue on the course we're on, seeing the displacement and destruction? What will happen next if it keeps going on as is? I am afraid and I am sad and I am furious and I am full of grief of what is and what will be.

You’re a cheating asshole, and I would never tell the kids that your new wife is the person you left me for, but some days, I really, really want to.

I need to say, to anyone listening, Enough. Enough of the hate already. We're 99.9% the same. Can't you see that? Can't I see that? How is it that the .1% that is different can so painfully, terribly, thoughtlessly screw up our world?

Is who I am (or was) in my career actually real, and am I still relevant? Because it feels like it isn't, it feels fraudulent. Are my experiences and achievements just carefully arranged words on a piece of paper that meet an acceptable percentage of key words in a scan? I do not have accolades, new achievements, or stand-out accomplishments. No awards. No titles, or letters to accompany my title. No promotions in 8 years. I feel I am serving a penance of some sort by experiencing rejection after rejection with not one word of constructive feedback on why "this time" they made a choice to let me go. It’s an irreconcilable existence in a fucked up ether of toxic positivity. "It’s not the right opportunity," "it’s nothing you did /didn’t do," "it’s a budgeting thing," "we are moving forward with other candidates." That is all bullshit. Pretty soon i will be viewed as "a token hire." Between my age and experience feeling no longer relevant or desired or valued, with no progress or "achievements to date," there is a deep desperation I have, craving an opportunity for someone to see my value, to be picked, to be noticed. To feel like the time and energy I invest are valued or even appreciated. Because of this, I feel empty. I have settled for jobs that I knew would be unhealthy because a crappy job is better than no job, right? Out of desperation to feel I was valued, I settled and suffered significantly all six times in the last four years. It has been damaging to every aspect of my life. It fills me with shame and guilt and things I can’t even vocalize. Hopeless, broken, rejected. Each time it's another onslaught of emotional instability, hurt, depression, irreconcilable failure. I envy the people who posted about their company's holiday parties or those "thankful, blessed to be with xyz corp." They seem like the lucky ones, and maybe they are lying to themselves too. But I just want to feel that again so I can feel proud of what I do and who I am. Can someone just tell me what I am doing wrong and how I can be better?