Give Yourself Time to Reflect

By Victoria (Tori) Martinez

We've come to the end of National Poetry Month. I want to give myself time to reflect on what I wrote, what I edited, and most of all time spent with community around poetry. I invite you to take some time and reflect on your own experiences as well.

It never ceases to amaze me how much I learn from young people. Their passion and excitement are contagious. And that includes youth from the age of five years old, to young adults. This past month I had the opportunity to conduct several poetry workshops. A few lines of poetry created by participants stayed with me. The emotion behind their lines are universal. So, let's talk about it.

Have you ever looked back on your life and tried to recall the most meaningful moments with your loved ones? Those moments that you know had the most impact on you, moments that were turning points in your life, moments where your loved one said something so profound that it touched you to your core. Well, those were the moments we were revisiting during our poetry workshops. And for most of us those memories were vivid, bright, colorful and full of details. But there was one young man who reminded us that sometimes those memories don't fully recall the exact words we so desperately want to remember. A line from his poem hit everyone in the room.

“Trying to recall dichos you don't quite remember.”

That line brought me back to memories of being in my grandmother's living room. Memories of sitting at her feet while she sat in her squeaky, antique, rocking chair. Memories of sitting with great anticipation for what story she was about to share. The smell of freshly carded wool in the background. The sound of clicking from my grandfather on his loom nearby.  The feel of carpet beneath my hands. And the look of determination of my grandmother's face because she knew she was about to impart ancestral wisdom to us. It was such a happy memory that he brought back to me. But like him, try as I might, I could not recall the exact words she would have said.

Later, at the last poetry reading I did for National Poetry Month, I shared a poem.  I wrote this poem about how we come out of a dark place, a sad place, a place of hurting and to community. The title of the poem is Power in the Broken Masses, and it's one of the poems included in my debut book of poetry A Call to Awaken. After the poetry reading a gentleman came up to me and said that this poem, finally, brought him hope.  We talked About the struggles happening in the surrounding community and the difficult changes, especially for our young people. I was so grateful that's something I wrote brought him a sense of hope again.

The broken masses, we heal ourselves. So that no longer broken, standing in our power… The power of our collective voices shattered the silence, we are heard. The power of our experiences expose the shadows, we are seen… we are the change and this is the power of our broken masses.

There is also power in reflecting, in remembering, in allowing ourselves to be changed and empowered by those memories. I invite you now to recall your own meaningful memories from your childhood, or from this past year, or this past month. Allow yourself to sit with those memories for a bit. What do you see, hear, what colors are there, what people are there, and why is this memory coming up for you? After sitting with that memory, start writing and see what that writing becomes. Maybe it will be a poem, or a letter, maybe a blog post you'll share with others like this one. Thank you for being with me through National Poetry Month and happy remembering!

This blog post is copyrighted to the author; no part may be reproduced or used in anyway without the author's permission. The information shared here is based on personal experiences.