I was watching So You Think You Can Dance and one of the judges said that you have to be able to present your dark side to the audience in a way that allows it to become light. And sitting on the couch, I heard my inner self saying “Yay!”

For there is an animal inside of us all, a veritable zoo of selves. If we simply disallow them, they will convert themselves into disease of all kinds.

There is a stark beauty in the human animal suffering courageously.

Let yourself be split open. Hide in the cave until you are ready to brave the day again.

Lick your wounds.

Then show us what you learned from the darkness.

I tell it this way. I fell. I got up. I fell. I got up. I fell. I got up.

And one fine day I became more like myself than I ever thought possible.

The layers of guilt and shame fused into a strangely-honed piece of armor that carried me
through the battlefield of life.

And when I was ready, I took a deep breath and burst them asunder.

But then I cycled back into a more human version of myself.

One that weeps easily and panics over the idea of death but dances on.

Everyone is playing hurt. Don’t fob your pain off on us. Take it into your own hands.

Then you will see the impossibility of carrying it yourself.

Get on that stretcher and let Someone else carry you the rest of the way Home.

Vicki Woodyard