The Potential of Resistance (Part 2)

What the rock says when asked

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The River Cannot Go Back

It is said that before entering the sea
a river trembles with fear.
She looks back at the path she has traveled,
from the peaks of the mountains,
the long winding road crossing forests and villages.
And in front of her,
she sees an ocean so vast,
that to enter
there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.
But there is no other way.
The river can not go back.
Nobody can go back.
To go back is impossible in existence.
The river needs to take the risk
of entering the ocean
because only then will fear disappear,
because that’s where the river will know
it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,
but of becoming the ocean.

Kahlil Gibran

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I am a lucky writer. I have had a few different writing groups and individuals whom I get to meet with, regularly, and then others who host a retreat now and then. In November 2024, a group of us gathered in the home of a published poetry and short story author, John O’Neill and his lovely wife - and very skilled artist - Ann, as they hosted us with delicious food and warm hospitality. From the cozy bed I slept in, to the spread of lunch and dinner and then breakfast, I felt nourished like I was on a coast of Newfoundland. We all welcomed our dear friend and mentor Barry Dempster, who was excited to prompt us with a writing assignment. In true Barry fashion, it was something we might never think of doing on our own.

I remember when I first met Barry as my creative writing teacher, back when he gave us seemingly incomprehensible writing assignments and took us on poet’s walks, while other times, we sat in his garden of colour, listening to one another reading our poems and short stories. Today is somewhat different and he delivers the prompt from his chair, seated beside his home care worker, who ensures he doesn’t wobble too far sideways, or fall on the ground, like he’s been doing a lot lately. Especially since last year, when his decades-long wife, Karen, passed away.

We sit quietly, waiting for him to speak.

“Find a stone,” Barry orders. “Walk around John and Ann’s property until one calls your name.”

So we do. Afterwards, we return to him waiting in their living room, and he prompts us further with a question.

“What do you think you can give me?”

We write for 40 minutes. Barry is unable to partake in the action due to his late stage Parkinson’s. Instead he watches us like a hungry eagle, as we dive into our pages in our journals, writing in the stream of consciousness. Writing without taking our pens off the pages. When we are done we take turns, sharing what we’ve written. As usual he says something like, “I didn’t know you had that in you, Jaclyn.” As usual, I feel criticized until I remember where I came from. Back when I was unable to access anything but the black and white rulebook. Back when things had to be perfect. Back before I let my unconscious mind do the talking. Back before I wrote, without censoring everything. Back before I decided I wanted to learn how to be a vulnerable writer.

The poem I shared above is one of my absolute favourites. A dear friend left it for me to find, on the desk of our mutual friend’s writing cottage, the one that she invited us to use whenever the mood would strike. It was there for me after I finished my specialized coaching training, back in November of 2021.

When I think of resistance as being something that has potential to propel us forward, I think of the river. I believe in what Gibran says in his poem. We can cling to the riverbeds, try to climb out to reside where we don’t belong, but one way or the other, we’re meant to eventually find our way to the ocean and there is no return. We cannot un-see what we learn to see. We cannot erase the aha moments. We are altered along the way, sometimes made into something unrecognizable. I suppose the only choice we have is whether we surrender to the current, to the flow, to the call of the ocean.

This is what I wrote last November next to “Find a Stone” and “What do you think you can give me?”

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I find the world simpler when I ask my body what is right for me.

Is it the right rock, I ask? My body leans away from it. So I walk towards a sparse stand of tall spruce, scattered with a few pine. How about here? My body says ‘yes,’ leaning towards the potato-sized half-buried stone, the one covered in fossils.

I struggle a little to tug it out of the ground, and feel the cool weight of the earth while I lift it towards my face, smell the earth falling away.

“There’s a fairy land in there,” Jacquie says.

“Pick something a bit bigger,” John teases.

I tend to select the smooth, rounded stones. The ones that are slightly manicured and pretty. This one is different. It is slightly ugly, rough on my skin, a pumice stone for foot scrubbing. I am learning to write from my body and this is what it feels like, sometimes. Uncomfortable.

Large pores, deep grooves, markings I cannot erase. Stories I cannot un-write. Stories waiting to be written. Breasts and bones healing from trauma, from grief, from loss.

Am I supposed to be this bulky stone, scarred and covered in forest ash, waiting to come alive?

What happens if some of the wounds cannot heal from the very writing of them? Is this the right stone? Am I the right me, this time?

I’m clawing away at the dirt that has kept me half-buried, half-breathing, half-alive. I am resurrecting the Jaclyn I was, at 3-years-old, the one that couldn’t know what her world was to become. Before traumatic circumstance and grief dug its talons down my father’s shirt, peeled his skin away, paused, and then peeled some more.

I want that tiny Jaclyn’s curiosity, the one who climbed into her daddy’s arms before all of that shame and blame seeped from his twenty-nine year old frame into my small body. Shame, like tiny fire ants marching between us.

Is it even possible to see that man? The man who laughed more than he darkened. The man who smiled with teeth showing. The man unfazed by sins like piercings and Jezebel make-up. That man who will admit when he doesn’t feel good. Was he ever that man?

Maybe his cancer will return. Maybe it will eat away at him the way his own axe has chopped and cut at him - his blame, his torment, his list of what-if that didn’t happen? What if he had saved his brother? What if he could have stopped the death angel from coming that fateful day. As if we can stop death.

“What do you think you can give me?” I ask the stone.

A chance to begin again.

A chance to remember my deeply rooted flaws and scars.

A grounding. A weighing-in.

The stone says, “Put me in the river and become me. Feel the way water moves around you, covers you, cleanses your carved grooves, dissolves earth soil, grime and moss. Wait for it to erode your pumiced texture into smooth. This takes time. Wait. Wait. Wait.”

The story isn’t written yet. How can I begin again? Who do I think I am?

What if I think I am exactly who I am supposed to be. Acceptable, worthy. Just as I am. Can I become more comfortable inside my own skin? Can I stop my rustling around in this world? Become a maker? Create for creation’s sake?

This rock is good at being still. May I be better at being still? What if the water doesn’t carry me to the ocean? What if my life stays in this rushing river and I am meant for this? To be surrounded by speed and become immoveable. Grounded.

Who am I becoming?

“What else do you have for me?” I ask the stone.

“Stop calling me a stone. I am a rock.”

I would hate to say good-bye to the river. But I am destined for the ocean.

Peace and love my friends,

Jaclyn xo

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Journal Prompt Invitation

I believe that the inanimate objects in our life have potential to speak to us. They are mirroring what is below, in our unconscious minds. Take for example, the cars we drive. We choose them because they reflect something about who we are. What is something you have chosen, because you loved it? Because it was calling to you. Why did you choose it? Maybe it’s a favourite shirt, a pottery mug, a lamp or a book. Maybe it’s what you do for a living. What does it say about you? If you were to know, what might this choice, this object reflect about who you are? Maybe you think it can give you something? Peace, joy, fun, power or prestige?

Whatever it is, write for ten minutes, about the first thing that comes to your mind. Feel free to share with me or comment below.

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