Walking the Backside of Light

Samantha Wallen
Aug 8, 2017 · 2 min read

The oak outside her window learns to endure its shadow. She hears this happen in the hollow of her heart and understands she’s learning to do the same. The shoes she’s worn through to get here also tell her so. So much walking the backside of light, all the ways she goes dark on herself as if it were breathing. An involuntary gesture of small fears sanctified into a night’s cold wind. She knows now how to dress herself when these nights come. She wraps herself in a memory of luminosity, like the glow in her mother’s eyes when she first spoke to her of galaxies or of her dream to set foot on every continent.

She, like the trunk of the oak outside her window, widens her capacity to meet the changing weather at every moment. Her arrival is slow, invisible to the naked eye. Yet she keeps ingesting more of life’s expelled air and gives back new inspiration simply by accepting every season. She keeps sinking her roots deeper into the ground as her limbs keep stretching ever higher to the heavens. Spacious. Grounded. She is a body balancing heaven and earth, shadow and sun.


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100 Naked Words

Est. May 2016. 100 vulnerable words, one day at a time. Every day.

Samantha Wallen

Written by

Founder/CEO WriteInPower, poet, writer, book coach, social justice disciple, steam-punk time traveler tending to where value, core wounds, and brilliance meet.

100 Naked Words

Est. May 2016. 100 vulnerable words, one day at a time. Every day.

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