These are trying times right now on many levels. There’s the coronavirus from a public health standpoint, systemic racism from a social justice standpoint, then there are the challenges that come with life in general from a personal standpoint, all coalescing at once.
At times it all seems like it’s too much to take. You just need a break. Then the other day as I was scrolling through Instagram, or Twitter – one of them – and came across this post that simply had Maya Angelou’s poem Still I Rise. I say simply, but really there’s nothing simple about it. A poem like that was probably either painstakingly written, or just flowed from God. Whatever the case, there’s so much power in every word. It’s not just something that you recite or read, it’s like you can physically feel each sentence reaching into your soul, giving you strength to live boldly in the beauty of who you are.
There’s power in words.
What a gift to be a writer.
Here’s Maya Angelou’s Still I Rise!
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
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