Poem & Prayer: "There are lots of ways to stay alive" by Rev. Theresa Soto

There are lots of ways to stay alive.
You can wear soft clothes and focus on brushing your teeth and hydrating.
You can ask yourself what you need and not be mad when you don’t have an answer, only a shrug. You can breathe in.
And then, with care, you can also breathe out.
Taking the thing one single breath at a time.

You can give yourself a chance. Remember not only your mistakes, but also all the ways that you matter. From eyelash to shoelace, you matter. You matter when you are sad, when the world is heavy like wet laundry, dragging from your arms. You matter when you are angry and you use your teeth like welded prison bars to keep the words that might cause harm from escaping past your lips.

There are many ways to stay alive.

You can come, heart wrapped in several layers of foil, mashed into a plastic box with an ill-fitting lid, to a place where people say your name like it is good news.

You can fight your way toward freedom.

I recommend that you decline the option of struggling by yourself. The point is to get your life. There was this wise ruler who said once that by ourselves we are unprotected, but two people together can face the worst: [the failure, the heartbreak, the upending of worlds we hold in our hearts, and the secret shame that we will shed like the skin of a smooth snake, though it will take some time.] And with three people, you being one of them, you may find that eventually, all will be well.