Hi everyone! How are you guys doing? Hope you are all enjoying your summers/holidays wherever you are! 🙂 I apologize for my lack of blog posts lately. Work has been keeping me very busy and I sadly don’t have a lot of energy leftover to be online as much as I’d like. I tend to update my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/rarainbowsite more often, so feel free to ‘Like’ me on there if you wish. 😉
Today I want to share a couple spoken word poems by the very talented Shane Koyczan. I first heard Shane’s poem Instructions for a bad day after the wonderful Elizabeth of The Girl With Arthritis posted it on her page…co-incidentally when I was flaring and having a bad arthritis day. As someone who loves reading and writing, I absolutely loved Shane’s poem. If I had my way, I’d make every person on earth listen to it ;). As someone whose been living with autoimmune arthritis for most of her life, this poem was especially meaningful to me. And that’s why I want to share it with you guys too. When you live with illness, there are bound to be bad days (and nights 😦 ). In the past I wrote this message specifically for persons who are new to their diagnosis of illness. I’d like to share this beautiful poem, which holds so much truth and can be very applicable to our situations. I’ve included some of my favourite lines of the poem at the end of this post.
I’ve also included another beautiful spoken word piece by Shane Koyczan titled To This Day. This one focuses on bullying and rising above it and is absolutely worth hearing. I actually feel that this should be played in schools, if it’s not being played already.
“There will be bad days. Be calm. Loosen your grip, opening each palm slowly now. Let go. Be confident. Know that now is only a moment, and that if today is as bad as it gets, understand that by tomorrow, today will have ended. Be gracious. Accept each extended hand offered, to pull you back from the somewhere you cannot escape….. Despite your instinct to say “it’s alright, I’m okay” – be honest. Say how you feel without fear or guilt, without remorse or complexity… If you think for one second no one knows what you’ve been going through; be accepting of the fact that you are wrong, that the long drawn and heavy breaths of despair have at times been felt by everyone – that pain is part of the human condition and that alone makes you a legion….So be a mirror reflecting yourself back, and remembering the times when you thought all of this was too hard and you’d never make it through. Remember the times you could have pressed quit – but you hit continue….Be the weed growing through the cracks in the cement, beautiful – because it doesn’t know it’s not supposed to grow there….If you are having a good day, be considerate. A simple smile could be the first-aid kit that someone has been looking for. If you believe with absolute honesty that you are doing everything you can – do more. There will be bad days, Times when the world weighs on you for so long it leaves you looking for an easy way out. There will be moments when the drought of joy seems unending. Instances spent pretending that everything is alright when it clearly is not, check your blind spot. See that love is still there, be patient. Every nightmare has a beginning, but every bad day has an end. Ignore what others have called you. I am calling you friend…. Everyone knows pain. We are not meant to carry it forever. We were never meant to hold it so closely, so be certain in the belief that what pain belongs to now will belong soon to then. That when someone asks you how was your day, realize that for some of us – it’s the only way we know how to say, be calm. Loosen your grip, opening each palm, slowly now – let go.”
“Instructions For A Bad Day,” written by Shane Koyczan.
I hope you guys enjoy these poems as much as I do. Feel free to leave a comment about them. Thanks guys!
Enjoy your summer!
❤ Ms. Rainbow
RArainbow 