Tag Archives: hope

I’m Still Here: Tara Darlene Smith’s Incredible Comeback from the Edge

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It is my intention with this website, to provide hope and encouragement to others, primarily through the power of music. Before I share the article Tara composed for us, there is no better introduction to this remarkable woman and the things she accomplished than this short video and song written and produced for her by Songwriting with Soldiers:

Sunflowers in Iraq

By Tara Darlene Smith

Sunflowers grew in Iraq, too.

In Ireland, my chosen home, I drive past a bright cluster, and remember. 

Sunflowers were the perkiest part of any convoy I drove on. Sometimes they were a blur of yellow, other times, I luxuriated in a longer glance. In Iraq, I could have gotten someone killed for tracking beauty instead of potential danger. Behind ballistic-grade sunglasses, I’d glimpse their sunshine petals and deep brown flesh. When their faces turned towards light and danced on the wind, my grin was tough to conceal. I did my best.

Smiling was frowned upon. As was joy. And those were the only two things I was ever any good at. 

I pretended to be proficient at soldiering. My fear was that no one, especially not me, bought my act. I came from a land of greens and blues, golden light and malls that sprawled. Desert air wasn’t so different from the feel of summer in the suburbs. And without all of those Targets and Starbucks in the way, in Iraq, I had a better view of the horizon. Pinks, oranges, and purples stirred parts of me I had to re-stifle daily. 

I hadn’t expected anything beyond desolation. How could the enemy live beneath such lush skies? Parched earth was the neutral backdrop of my musings. Or rather, a stage that showcased every violent contrast. I was told we were there to help. I was also trained to kill. Protectors or predators? At war, there was never time to reconcile such conflicts.

We remained coiled springs, tense and ready for release. But whenever mortar rounds were launched at our base, we did not fire back. We hunkered in bunkers, down, down, down, like ants. More like contained cockroaches, never free to scurry from the light of explosions. Why were we taught to fight if retaliation was unauthorized? And how could peace grow from such unstable soil? 

No answers came from questions I dared not ask. Instead, I fixated on micro-battles within. I supressed a lilt in my heart whenever desert rain washed over us. Or when those defiant sunflowers brightened the beige landscape. My smile bloomed through the cracks in my Kevlar. You could send the California girl to war, but you couldn’t (fully) remove the song in her soul. I held on to the rhythm that sunrises, sunsets, and starry nights provided. 

Cranes delivered more stacks of cement, placed around our sagging, mustard yellow tents. Unless their dusty roofs took a direct hit, we were “safe” because of those thick gray walls. Smooth on the sides and flat up top, we waited until the sky blackened, scaled them, then perched. The cool night air felt closer atop the barricades. A constant threat of death inspired the stars to twinkle with greater intensity. Or maybe, war had permanently altered my vision.

When I believed the enemy was everywhere, I was constantly rewarded with evidence. Blasts of bombs and color intermingled in my mind’s eye. A fiery sunrise as we started the day’s convoy foreshadowed the abandoned vehicle we drove past that afternoon. The scent of burning tire flesh clung to my clothes. How that green overturned truck came to be engulfed in flames was a mystery. Explanations were not handed down to low-level soldiers; confusion was part of the collateral damage. 

The underbelly of patriotism was ignorance. I was blinded by mine. But I started asking myself silently, secretly, What am I doing here? Question marks in my heart twisted and rotated, then morphed into anchors. 

And what about that roadside bomb, perfectly designed to harm from a distance? A few seconds delay in detonation meant that I was not converted into mist. Everything rattled as I drove through, but my HMMWV was only dusted with fine blue powder. Beyond the immediate gift of more time to exist, I craved clarity. Why did they want to kill me? Decades later, part of me still can’t help but take that IED personally. 

Sometimes, I have reimagined the attack. Like the blast happened near a golden expanse of fields. No sunflowers were about that day. But in my reclamation, seconds before impact, their petaled faces have appeared. In slow motion. The explosion. Then, catapulted leafy green bodies. They rose. They hovered above the tan armor of my truck. They fell. Left to wilt on hot pavement after I drove away. Forever released from joyful wind dances.

No matter how far my mind wanders, fresh Irish fields, and the air they sweeten, bring me back. On Ireland’s rugged soil, I am grounded. 

My California roots flourish in this soft rain, and the longer I’m here, the brighter I bloom. What has faded between war and now is my desperation for certainty. I could fill a thousand pages with all that I don’t understand. As unanswered questions remain in the ether, what matters most is that here, I am safe to ask them.

Then the greens, blues, and gentle light remind me to focus on what I can feel. Like warmth in my core that spreads to my limbs when I rest near an open turf fire. Or a grin that lingers on my lips long after I drive past a vibrant garden. Because I am free to savor this simple truth—sunflowers grow in Ireland, too. 

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TARA DARLENE SMITH feeds her soul by writing and reading creative nonfiction. She hopes to move ever closer to her truth one word at a time. She has studied creative writing in California and Colorado, earning her B.A. and M.A. Tara believes that where she writes is as important as what she writes about, and most recently has moved to the captivating west coast of Ireland to work. Tara’s love of the sea, traditional Irish music, and building community through storytelling have collided in the most fantastic ways in County Clare. As she continues to craft her memoir, Tara is fueled by caffeine and fierce optimism. Please visit her website at www.taradarlenesmith.com

***If you, or anyone you know is contemplating suicide, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Prevention Lifeline provides free and confidential support for people in distress, prevention and crisis resources for you or your loved ones,  24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Simply call 988.

For more information on Songwriting with Soldiers: https://songwritingwithsoldiers.org

Sunflowers photo credit: Susanne Jutzeler, Schweiz from Pixabay

Hope Opens Doors

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Photo courtesy of Pixabay

Photo courtesy of Pixabay

I’ve never suffered from depression, but very recently, I found myself teetering on the edge and I wanted to share this story because lots of people suffer from depression. You see, two years ago, I had surgery on my ankle to repair a shredded posterior tibialis tendon (the tendon that goes under your arch and up the inside of your leg). It was a traumatic experience and the recovery has been long and painful.

A few weeks ago, I went back to see my doctor because I still have pain and swelling in my ankle. She told me that the surgery had obviously not accomplished what we had hoped, and asked how I felt about having more surgery, the procedure we should have done the first time, but because it was even more extensive with twice the recovery time, I opted for the less invasive one. It was now apparent that I had made the wrong choice.

Sitting there in the doctor’s office with my swollen, bare foot dangling off the edge of the table, the thought of having to undergo more surgery instantly plunged me into a suffocating darkness. I’ve had surgeries before, and my body does not take kindly to being cut on and stitched back together. It’s always a traumatic experience for me. Besides, there were no guarantees that the more extensive surgery would correct the problem either.

Returning home from my appointment, the crawling, bleeding, agonizing darkness sunk even deeper into me like thick black tar invading my soul. For days, I cried. I drank too much. I slept too much. I ate all the bad food I could get my hands on. I became lethargic. I couldn’t think. I felt very, very sorry for myself. I just knew that I was destined to be a cripple for the rest of my life. All I wanted to do was divorce myself from this rotten, messed-up body that keeps failing me. On the other hand, I had enough foresight to realize that if I didn’t watch it, I could slip into a bonafide clinical depression and I could see how easy it would be to go there, because the bad news was just one more addition to an already long list of negative and serious issues I’d been dealing with, so this new information didn’t just cause me to focus on foot surgery, it caused me to view my entire life through a lens of how terrible everything was. And I teach workshops on how to live the life of your dreams! How could I be an effective teacher if I was seeing nothing but the things that were wrong with me and my life?

But I was so down, I couldn’t see any way to pull myself out of the darkness, plus all those thoughts about not being an effective teacher only made me feel worse about myself. I needed to get my shit together somehow because I was sinking. Fast.

A friend then recommended a physical therapist in Boulder who specializes in foot and ankle issues as well as scoliosis. I knew I had scoliosis, and I wondered if perhaps that could be exacerbating my foot issues. My foot doctor concurred.

Photo courtesy of Pixabay

Photo courtesy of Pixabay

Yesterday I went to see the new PT. She looked at the x-rays of my spine—curved in two places—nice. She checked my flexibility and told me that my foot issues were likely caused by my scoliosis, and even if I were to have more surgery on my foot, it probably wouldn’t solve the problem. She said that we needed to treat the whole body–not just one area, and very likely the foot issues would resolve themselves in the process. Wait.  Seriously? A small light went on inside my heart. Was she saying there was hope?

She told me that my tendon was good and strong, which was encouraging because my initial thoughts had been that the surgery had all been for nothing–a total waste of time, money and pain. But the surgery didn’t go so far as to determine the cause, which was now becoming obvious—scoliosis was causing me to put pressure on the arch of my foot, hence the pain and swelling. Ah ha! An explanation that made sense!

The PT gave me a few suggestions to try in dealing with my posture and they helped instantly. She told me that she was optimistic that their unique program for scoliosis patients could help me live a normal life again because it had helped lots of people from all over the world. It helped my friend.

I felt hope rise inside of me like a gentle kiss of summer rain—a kind of hope that had previously seemed unlikely at best. Suddenly, the world looked brighter and all my problems, not just my foot issues, but all my problems and fears seemed manageable. Tears ran from my eyes—tears of hope that I could be pain-free again. Oh my gosh! What pure joy that would be!

Hope. Opens. Doors. Hope gives us the tools to keep going when all seems lost.

I can’t remember when I haven’t had pain, and just to have hope that that day is coming, for real this time… I can’t even begin to tell you how much this means to me, especially when I saw myself spiraling down into the quicksand of depression and all because I didn’t realize there was another option besides more excruciating surgery.

Sure, it’s easy to think positive when things are going fairly well; it’s a lot harder when suddenly the ground gets pulled out from beneath you due to the unexpected death of a loved one, a serious health issue, or any number of other things. Hope moves mountains. It gives us the strength to take another step.

Please know that no matter how terrible or dark things may seem, there’s always another option, and that’s the reason I wanted to share my story. Because although it may not always be apparent, if we keep looking and don’t give up, we will find the perfect solution, maybe something even better than we ever could have imagined and perhaps in a place we never thought to look.

There’s hope for everyone. There’s love for everyone. There are good things for everyone because there’s enough for all of us; the Universe (and our minds) are only limited by our thoughts. Please don’t ever give up.

 

Possibilities

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December 31, 2009

 Clouds, rainbow, shadows

Pouring myself a cup of coffee, I head upstairs to my computer to wrap up the final edits on DANCE OF THE ELECTRIC HUMMINGBIRD. But as I glance at the pages before me, my little notes scribbled in the margins, I pause. It’s almost done.

It’s also New Year’s Eve and a small voice in my heart is telling me that it’s more important to post on my blog than to work on my book, so here goes:

There’s something about the prospect of a new year that fills me with hope. Its possibilities are endless.

Lastnight I met with a friend I hadn’t seen in years. She asked me to explain what my book was about. I did my best to condense six years into a two-hour conversation. I thought I was simply recanting the story, but afterward, she hugged me. With a new light in her eyes, she told me that she was excited because my story had caused her to think about her own life. For years, she’d been feeling restless and couldn’t figure out why. She kept getting the idea that she was meant to do something important for the world, and yet, something kept stopping her.

After hearing about what had happened to me, she said that she now sees the importance of listening to her inner self and pursuing that which calls her, even though she still isn’t quite sure where it will take her. But now she is inspired to take that first step on her path! By my simply telling her what my book was about? I wondered. Wow.

To say I am humbled is a gross understatement.

She’s not the first to tell me this. After hearing about my experience, people have often told me the same thing, and I almost hate to say this out loud, but maybe this story is magic. It certainly has been for me.

I can’t wait to share it with the rest of you! Stay tuned; it won’t be long now. I have a strong feeling that 2010 will be the year.

In the meantime, keep believing in yourself. Use the new year, with its limitless scope of possibilities, to cultivate and nurture your dreams. You already have all the answers. You just need to give yourself permission to hear them within yourself.

Wishing you a blessed and happy 2010.

–Baja Rock Pat