Do you Know about the Well?

We are exploring the benefits and the “how-to’s” of getting more in touch with our bodies and sensations. Previous installments available here.

Trauma and PTSD (the freeze reaction) tends to make us numb not only to our emotions and sensations, but also to our intuitive and creative impulse. This poem speaks to a process of rediscovering that creativity.

Do you know about the well?
by Paul Chubbuck

Do you know about the well?
Have you discovered its pure flow?
If you find that place,
you will never tire of its water,
always sweet, fresh,
and able to quench your burning needs.

From sip to healing sip,
this tonic never tastes the same.
Through millennia, is not every human work unique,
each sourced from that fecund spring?

If my days grow weighty or tiresome,
my mind fretful or annoyed,
then I have stayed away too long,
have settled for this empty bag,
dusty sameness shrouding my soul,
pretending memories can slake my thirst.

Though I have trod the way before,
still ofttimes I lose the path,
hidden, as it is, in an ever-shifting landscape.

But when I longed more than feared,
and dared more than doubted,
then have I again found my way back,
glad and grateful
to be able to taste again the elixir
and to return, laden with gifts.