Black Ink and Parchment

Feel icicles on your eyelashes? Are snowflakes drifting from your words? Certain people, events, and emotions in our lives have a natural coolness that steals your inner spark, leaving you frostbitten. So, if you are shivering, here’s a list of things you can burn to warm up:

Bridges to places that no longer serve you.

In our lives, we create connections, friends, and places that bring a sense of comfort. We are happy to travel across this bridge as many times as they ask us to because there is a mutual exchange. But maybe the career or person on the other side is no longer traveling to us. We are always carrying everything to them. The journey becomes tiresome. As the bridge between here and there becomes unstable, repairs maybe attempted but often it is never the same. If you lose the warmth of your soul as you cross it, light a flame.

 Dead branches.

Family trees sprout  roots, branches, and leaves; however, some branches hang on too long and rot, while infecting the rest of the tree. Eventually, the branch has to hold itself up. It may have spawned from the trunk, but it has its own branches and leaves to care for. The trunk could give some support if it wants, but it doesn’t have to after the branch has its own family or has grown to where it could be considered its own tree. It can and should care for itself. If it doesn’t, add the dead branch to the bonfire of what is no longer needed.

Logs of false responsibilities.

Carrying the obligations of others is exhausting. Life is tough. And yes, it’s nice if you’re making life easier for other people by picking up a load once in a while. But don’t let them consume your time with responsibilities that they need to complete themselves. If you have time, great, but you have permission to defrost from whatever happened today. If that means sitting and watching the world burn down, so be it. Just because others perceive you as having ‘free time’ doesn’t mean you have to fill it with their plans, expectations, or problems. Add that log to the fire.

Old love letters.

Holding on to former relationships makes us chilly towards new possibilities. It is nice to reminisce about what we used to have, but how much more of yourself are you willing to lose to what might have been? Did they freeze you out when you were together? Did you spend more nights in the cold instead of cuddling on the couch? Or maybe there just wasn’t a spark. Blank pieces of paper are waiting for you to pen a new story with them. So why are you looking over something that once froze your heart? Besides holding onto old letters, we miss opportunities that might relight our inner flame.

Photos of the Past.

The mistakes we once made can haunt us enough without people constantly showing us a photo of what we used to be. What is done is done, and you may change as many times as often as you would like. Our lives are not “photographs” frozen forever in a moment. You cannot go into the past and remove the freezer burns you caused to yourself or others, but you can move on. And you don’t deserve to be reminded of that person anymore. Use the photo as kindling and watch the past go up in smoke.

Start a bonfire, let the embers fly, warm up, and be reborn as a phoenix.