I love this poem, for it speaks to our deep desire for self-acceptance and love. A place where we do not judge or criticize ourselves; we welcome and love ourselves.

During our development as children and adolescents and growing into adults, we are “told” by many — families, communities, schools, religions — who to be, what and how to think, and how to act. We comply without realizing it. We accept, merge and become to keep ourselves safe, to belong and to maintain a sense of dignity. Our shape protected us as children. But now as adults, that early shaping may no longer be useful and can keep us from living our desired life.

During our work together, we examine those shapes, asking if they are still useful. Through new practices, the body learns and reshapes itself. Long-held beliefs associated with those shapes, that impinge on our desires, can be released so we can welcome and love again, that stranger whom we desperately want to love.

Here is the poem.

***

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.