So... what now

Im home... a week ago I was getting on a plane leaving the country that stole my heart with tears in my eyes.. full of so much love and life and equally exhausted.

Now Im sitting on my couch with the flu watching every video I can possibly find that is Casa related with tears in my eyes. Oh how I miss it.

So what do I do with these past 4 months now? When the few people who are brave enough to ask, I dont even know where to start. Do I talk about the women of Cedro that rocked my world, the kiddos and their beautiful little brown eyes, the pain, struggle, poverty that is so livable because of their faith and optimism. Or the war, the martyrs, the horrible ways that the U.S. was involved.. and the horrible ways we continue to oppress the people of El Salvador and so many other countries around the world? Or do I talk about Casa Romero and the love, support, healing, learning and growth that happened within that sweet little house. There is just so much that Im not even sure Ive processed myself yet, let alone am able to regurgitate in a somewhat nicely wrapped package. I want so badly to share.. but right now I havent figured out the trick yet.

Being home is interesting.  Partly cause Ive been sick, partly cause its Leadville and there arent many other options without a car and partly because Im feeling extremely apathetic I have barely left this house. I finally got to see the Leadville crew and it was so great to see them.. but I would be lying if I said I was completely present and not thinking about Salvador so much. I dont know how to bring this home yet, how to live it in this context. It was really easy to live it there.. to love so hard, to recieve love, to be aware of the reality and to never loose perspective. And I know the point of it all is the challenge of bringing it home, but I havent figured out how to live it without Casa Romero, without 25 other students around me to help me be better. Without Cedro twice a week to fill me with love and remind me whats important in this world. And I know it...like everyone says.. you cant not know what you now know. So what is it that I know.. I know that the commercials drive me crazy, I cant understand why anyone would ever need the ridiculously expensive things that they are trying to convince us we need, I know that when I go searching for more blankets cause Im sick, I think of the families during the rain having no way to get more blankets, I know that I have no desire to go shopping, that I am trying to figure out where I will ever buy clothes again knowing how unjust the factories are. I know all the stuff in my room and this house seems absolutely rediculous.

I also know something new about love and being human and having hope... but Im not sure where those feelings are right now.

So I decided I would find them in all things El Salvador. So I watched Father Mark talk about the Martyrs, and Quentins video about Dean and Claire's video shes been showing people at home.
And I felt those things again.. I cried seeing faces that I love so much, and already miss more than I knew was possible. I cried at the reminder of the life that they gave me.
And to see Father Mark talk about El Salvador with so much poise and grace outside of the Casa context.. he showed me its possible, and its ok to use these words. He talked about how the Salvadorans humanize the martyrs.. and oh how they humanize everyone. They so taught me what it means to be human.. without any possessions and pride and all the messy stuff that gets in the way. Just in life.. of pain and struggle but also of joy and so much hope. They taught me to keep going, to keep loving, and to share in this life.  He showed Lupita talking, one of our cooks, and filled me with her love and wisdom just through that one little video clip. And talked about the vigil... and took me back to that whole body peace I felt that night.. that somehow this all makes sense.. and all we can do is keep loving, thats really what they taught me. Then he showed a students praxis project from a few years back... the project is to the song Hallelujah and shows through the eyes of her site, the Salvadorans, the Casa students that it really is "It's a cold, it's a broken hallelujah"And that is so what they taught us.. this life is so many things.. it hurts and it throws you around and it doesnt make sense.. but in so many ways in makes a lot of sense and is so full of grace and life.

And I needed that reminder. I needed to feel that. And I need to know that is true here too.. and that this life even though it seems a little slower, a little less inspiring than the Salvadorans.. is so full of grace, beauty, love and life. And I need to embrace it. I need to stop being so apathetic and bored and find the things that make me feel.. starting with those videos.. but really the things that are right here. The friends and the beauty and life that is so here.. and that I have to stop minimizing. So I need to find the balance.. of being in touch with El Salvador.. and letting it stay alive in me, and using the reminders I need, but also embracing that I am here now, and just as we were taught to be present there, I have to be present here because life cannot stop after El Salvador. I will continue missing it, cause these last 4 months were the best of my entire life, but I have to hold it in me, for Santos and little Christopher, for Kenya and Lidia and Tomas and so many names I could list that gave me life, so I have to keep finding life.

Heres to the challenges of reverse culture shock, of reentry, of trying to figure it out. To knowing new things, and to holding onto those, no matter the context.

<3

P.S. Here is the link to the video on the martryrs.. SO worth watching to get another glimpse into El Salvador
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8miciR0MrI&feature=youtu.be

Whats the end gonna look like?

Im not sure if these words will come how I want them to... I just know that I never want to forget these moments, this feeling, this love.

I started packing today. Checking final project and papers off the list one by one. And our despidida (goodbye party)  is tomorrow. Ouch

We have been closing up everything so beautifully. Sharing parts of our autobiographies to the flickering light of candles til 2 in the morning, affirming each other and yesterday a beautiful morning with our final projects for liberation theology.  The feeling inside me is affirming all that has come from this experience..I feel strong, I feel whole, full of love but still raw and vulnerable.. with some walls pulled down, something I hope I can hold onto. There are parts of me that are excited to go home, to see all of you wonderful people, to lay in my bed for as long as I want and to just be in the comfort of home. But leaving has already started to hurt and I really dont know how to say goodbye to these people and this experience. I know it will forever be in my heart but I have been the most alive, so very loved and grown so much in the last four months its hard to think of life outside of here. But we are soaking it up and trying to take every minute for what it is...

Here is the ending of my autobiography just for a little glimpse into my heart :) See you soon!

“Whats the ending gonna look like?” This is the ending. Candles flickering, minutes on the clock tick by, but what is time anymore? What is sleep? Its two am on Saturday, I’ve been awake but one hour since six am Thursday. But I am running on something. Energy runs through my blood… part peaceful and full, part anxious and scared to be empty.

            Finding myself in these sacred spaces again and again. Romero community night record, we sat in a circle with our hands touching the person being affirmed until 3:25am. One by one we made our way into the middle of the circle. Affirmations came free and genuinely, from a place deep inside, a love that has built over 4 months that sometimes feels like a life time. We were full and connected when the night came to its long end, this community has learned to love, to be vulnerable and to give so hard. I never want to let go.

            I woke up after an hour of sleep. Put on my favorite skirt. Casi floor length, quilted with different patterns, colors, lines, life’s, together into something beautiful. Today I want to feel good. I am sleep deprived and I haven’t kept food down for four days, El Salvador does that to you. But I am alive and time is running out and I want to soak it all in. We hurry down to the UCA, that jittery groggy feeling when you don’t sleep enough leaves the busses and cars burling down the road more dangerous.

            Peggy has talked about this project from the beginning. “Show us how you have been liberated” do something creative. “Michelle, you’re up” I felt the nerves, shakily introducing this poem, the way this experience has liberated me. I stood up there and listened to Peggy’s advice “Just breathe and speak loud” I stood in front of the class and spoke my soul, the pain, the confusion, the beauty. Becoming a woman through the models of my mother and now the mothers of Cedro. Becoming a woman through me. I felt strong, confident and whole in my being. Like I needed to say those words to empower myself.

            Project after project blew me away, the incredible individuality of these amazing humans, the myriad of ways this experience has changed us, liberated us, given us a sense of life we have never felt before.  Songs, mosaics, paintings, poems, raps and decorated mirrors, all these ways to express what we have found in El Salvador.  

            Margot made her way to the front of the room, sick and miserable but ready to speak her truth. “I wrote my first poem so bear with me” It seemed like a poem that had come from years and years of practice, beautiful, painful and full of truth. My eyes were full of water all morning, but her words gave the tears permission to fall. I came to El Salvador with a best friend I had only known for a year, someone who knew me better than anyone in the world and as she talked about her pain my heart broke and soared in the same moment. She talked about the pain with her dad, trying to figure out what suffering is and knowing only that we cant hold it in, we have to let it fly. I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. I had no control over the tears that were falling from my eyes. Seeing her liberation made me see mine, I looked around the room at these people who have become family and felt a pain for their pain. It seemed to all hit me in that moment and more tears fall than I have allowed to fall this whole experience. They fall for my pain, for her pain and for all of your pain. They fall for this country, the fear we cannot ignore as we leave it behind, broken, violent, poor. They fall in joy and gratitude to come here and touch pain, to share pain, to love, to find life and to come to this moment. They fall in a fear to let go of this love and life that I have found here yet in an amazement of the liberation, strength and empowerment I have found in this place. They fall from a woman, not a little girl, who has touched your pain and can touch hers

mujeres con fuerza y familia de amor

I wish I had the time, the energy, the emotional stability to write a blog post everyday. I wish I would have and I wish I could in the next 10 days.. but I guess if I had enough time for that I wouldn’t be being fulled to the brim with love and life and learning. So.. I have a few things.

First… women. Last Wednesday at Cedro I had a game changing day. I had three really special moments with three really beautiful, strong, incredible women that have taught me something I have been searching for. I cant quite say they gave me an answer but they sparked some sort of movement inside me. These women are the strongest I have ever known, not because they are outspoken or because they are the most “successful” or have the most knowledge.. but maybe that is why. Really its because they live through conditions that we could never imagine day after day after day and they don’t see a way out but they never let that stop them from trying to make their lives and their kids lives better. They are the most faithful human beings I know, never letting suffering have the last say in their lives. Still there is more, suffering does not paralyze them but it also is not pushed under the rug as something meaningless, weak or to be forgotten. They feel it, they share it and they grow from it. They take the shitty conditions they are born into and they keep on walking forward, keep on showing up, keep on loving unconditionally and keep on believing that they will survive. And for that reason they survive. Their tears have taught me so much, that tears and pain and suffering and sharing and being vulnerable… are so ok and so vital to this life and so parallel and one with joy. They have taught me that joy and love are also vital but that they come more naturally than I knew before, and that they are unending and important and so important to be shared. These women have empowered me to continue searching for the line between never letting my suffering stop me from wanting more and never forgetting or diminishing the importance of it. They have showed me how to feel, love, heal, sigue adelante, celebrate and live in this life that is so many things that we will never understand. And for them I am enternally grateful.

Next… I don’t think I have written much about the amazing family that has nurtured me for the past four months right here in my own home. I am surrounded my 12 people that listen, laugh, hurt and smile together through all the ups of downs of the world and each individual. We have watermelon rind food fights at the dinner table, do pranks at two in the morning, open our souls to each other, let each other cry, laugh harder than I ever have, carol, cuddle, listen and just live in the most wonderful way together. Tuesday night we went caroling to the other houses, Thursday for community night we shared about the joyful and painful moments, the people that this experience has enshrined in our hearts and the ways in which this experience has liberated us. We sat in pairs with candles, in hammocks staring at the stars and scattered around the house listening and reminiscing together about how absolutely vital this experience has been to our lives being fuller. We talked about being scared to go home, to leave this comfort and to let go of these people who have become the most amazing family. This experience is so much about them and I really do not have a clue what it will be like to live without them in ten days. But for those ten I will enjoy every single moment with them.

Third.. we went to the beach this weekend and I just need to say that I love the beach, the ocean, water, nature and really just life. Emily sat next to me today as we laid in the black sand and said “How is this my life” but actually this country is just absolutely beautiful, a different kind of beautiful than the many other beautiful places I have been blessed to have a part of my soul. The ocean is big and powerful but also so peaceful and so much fun. I could listen to the waves crash for hours and I could swim in them at any time of day and just be the happiest. I was raised as a water baby and I love it.. I thought of Michigan and freezing California beach trips and just soaked it up. Cause this was our last free weekend in El Salvador.

Next week we start our goodbyes. And oh is it going to hurt. When I think about it intellectually I know it is time to go home and take this experience into reality. I know that I am so excited to be there, to see my friends and be with my family and in the comforts of snow falling, tea, hot tubs, skiings, and then Santa Clara loving. But my heart cant quite intellectualize it as well and when I think of it with my heart it just breaks. I know I will be ok, I know there is so very much to look forward to, but this place has gotten into the depths of my soul. And I am going to miss it and these people so so very much.

So Im gonna keep saying it.. I will soak up the next ten days and carry them with me in my heart forever and ever. <3