Join us for Writer’s Quote Wednesday. This week’s challenge word is ‘REBIRTH.’

Yesterday, I saw a video posted on Youtube of J.K. Rowling, talking about failure, It is one of the most heart wrenching and inspiring things I’ve ever seen and so jammed packed with fabulous quotes that I could NOT pick just one and chose to add a link to the short segment. It’s only around 2 minutes, and part of a longer address to graduating Harvard Students.

Please take a look at J.K. Rowling on the benefits of failure

To say this video knocked me sideways, is an understatement. It prompted me to write the piece below, and I realized – as I was writing – that we really must DIE to be truly reborn. The old J.K. died, the old was burned away and, left with a pen and paper, she wrote her new life as she wanted it to be.

This is how I see my own rebirth:

MY OWN STORY

 

The house looks like it’s been bombed.

Photos of hope still adorn broken walls,

Betrayed smiles staring back at me.

The bricks and mortar of a life –

Thoughtlessly, callously, strewn –

And trust lies, shattered, on the bedroom floor.

 

If I stay here, I will end here

If I have not already gone

The air is poisoned and there’s nothing to sustain me

But I stare through cracked and dirty windows

Looking for a sign,

And I see nothing.

NOTHING.

 

I remember back

To long ago

When I believed in magic

And I seek my trusty wand

In desperation

Poking out from beneath someone else’s dream,

It calls to me

But it’s broken in two pieces

From the battle.

I hold them in my hands and lift them high

 

WHAT IS MAGIC FOR, IF NOT FOR THIS?

 

I grasp one piece of wand and sketch a portal

On one unbroken stretch of wall

And then I draw a handle

Then a lock

And finally,

I draw myself a key.

 

I TURN THE KEY…

 

There is nothing on the outside of the portal.

Like walking into a whiteout

And so I crawl

And draw myself a path.

A path AWAY

A path TOWARDS

On my knees…

 

I WRITE MY OWN STORY NOW…

 

Wendy Anne Darling, 2016.