Tenderness & Tenderbits

This is today's Truthbomb from the ever-inspiring Danielle LaPorte.

Sounds easy, right? 

Defend your tenderness. 

Of course the things that sound easy never really are…are they?

Tenderness.  Those soft, raw, unexposed pieces of your heart and soul that haven’t been beaten to a pulp yet.

The parts that loss hasn’t carved into with the ferocity of a blade slinger.  

Suicide, drug and alcohol addiction, overdose, loss on top of grief on top of mourning.  

Years and years of mourning.

The weight of it all cripples any tenderness that has the balls to stand its ground.

Tenderness along with innocence are my casualties of circumstance.

What was once tenderness is now covered in scar tissue.

What was once innocence is now cold, hard experience.

What's even more concerning is whatever battleworn tenderness might be bunkered deep within can’t even find solace in my sleep.

This grieving and mourning and wailing doesn’t fucking quit.

I wake up with it.

I live my days with it.

I tuck myself in with it at night.

That's when things really get muddy.

As my eyes close and sleep takes over, my subconscious mind continues to rip apart at my tenderness.

Visions not suitable for waking hours.

Abysmal sadness.

So, so deep.  

It’s a wasteland of despair, my dreams.

I’m failing my tenderness.  

Unable to defend it.

Weak to protect it.

Lacking faith that I have any pure tenderness left.

My own truthbomb is this:  My tenderness is broken. 

Which leaves me with one question...

If defending it has failed and it’s broken to bits...

Is there HOPE to HEAL it?

Because luckily I can say...

Somehow, some way my hope is still in tact.

Tara Mazzeo Jackson

Co-Founder of Storytellers:  The Collective, 

Curator for Bohemian Living, Owner/Artist of Bungalow Wilde 

and Blogger at Bits & Pieces.

Tara is a lover of yoga, bleeder of words and a bohemian city-kid who has a knack for rescuing stray animals.  

She has a mean case of wanderlust and you’d be hard pressed to find her without these things:

a journal in her bag, a camera in-hand and sun kissed shoulders.

Tara writes from experience, pain, truth, triumph and that place, 

deep down, where the words simmer in emotion.