Mer-Tail Musings

I am growing back my mermaid's tail . . . I've started wearing long strings of pearls, strands of water-diamond rhinestones. What is it that I am reclaiming here -- that has been circling the ship, grazing the skin of the water's surface, then disappearing with a splash under the waves?

I find myself looking over the ship rail, down to just below the water's surface -- at a mer-tailed version of myself. She breaks the surface and peers up at me. Gazing back into her eyes, I wonder what it is that I will discover as I slip overboard and into the sea. . . .

My tail has reformed: in reclaiming my sea-tail -- I'm claiming my "see-tale"-- jurisdiction over the way I see myself, the world, and my place in it. It's okay that it’s a tale in progress. I turn over on my back, and slap the water’s surface, testing how it feels to have a tail again . . .  a see-tale of my own that I use, like a tail -- as a rudder to steer me,  to navigate these new waters of my life now opening before me.

As I float on my back, tail (caudal fin) gently sweeping up and down in the water, points of light come to my mind--different experiences of joy and connection with others--moments of being spellbound by natures beauty and might; also tracers of regret; disappointment. It's the first time I can own the regrets and disappointments without shame -- this arriving with the restoration, the reclamation, of my tail/tale.

There is majesty, royalty, reintroduction to Neptune's Court that graces us in taking responsibility for our own interpretive powers. We become visible again to ourselves, we grow a tail/tale of our own interpretive voice, a presence--free of the shame of our own self-abandonment when we put others definitions of us as superseding our own. Our song becomes whole again, rather than fractured strains of our innate melody carried around with us in a torn fishing net.

During Let's Talk TLA! Free Phone Conference Q&A and Poetry Open Mic -- Transformative Language Arts Network (TLAN) on October 28, 2016, guest Callid Keefe-Perry, educator, minister, advocate for the arts who is also the TLAN Council Chair how he uses Transformative Language Arts in his role as an educator. He shared that imagination was key in retaining creative engagement in our learning process and sustaining healthy, viable, supportive communities. When asked what was the greatest block to imagination, he replied, "Contempt," -- contempt for others or ourselves.

And contempt (blaming) is a cover-up for shame; shame of our mer-tails--convinced in an accumulation of discounting experiences that there is something fundamentally flawed about us. While guilt is about individual events, shame is a sense of our condition--that there isn't a lot of use or value for a tail on land!--that we are neither worthy nor effective, that there is nothing we have to offer that the world wants.

We reclaim the possibilities of our lives working for us when claim our own worth--as we are; right now. We are, and always have been, worthy of joy and success; worthy of dignity and respect, including our own; worthy of mutual recognition, honor, appreciation, support and celebration. Let's celebrate our mer(sea)-tails/ see-tales--our ability to see beyond the debris of shame. Enter Neptune's Court gates with your crown on, and your tail sweeping.