Becoming Peace

 

I feel we need outer and inner peace. Inner peace helps us be healthy and happy. This empowers us to contribute to achieving outer peace in our community and, ultimately, in our world. As someone with chronic illness, I struggle with inner peace. Anyone with allergic or autoimmune conditions may wonder why cells in our immune system, our own protective army, would turn on us and cause debilitating symptoms. It's like my inner landscapes harbour needless wars.

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Having a chronic illness can also make us feel ashamed. Even though I “know better,” I still catch myself wondering if I did something or thought something that causes my symptoms. And since conventional medicine has little to offer me, I have tried almost everything I could find, within my financial limitations, to get better.

This poem reflects on inner peace from my perspective as someone struggling with outer symptoms.

 

Becoming Peace

 

Peace.

You elude me.

 

I am told you are my birthright

That you are in the space between breaths

That I can cultivate you in my inner garden

That you are there in my essence

 

But my symptoms distract me from you

The turmoil in my guts

The turmoil on my skin

I feel constantly irritated

I can't remember a day without

An open wound

 

Others seem at peace

And write from that place of knowing

 

I feel undone and unpeaceful

And write from that place of not knowing

Hoping it is from a place of becoming.

 

I do believe in you, Peace.

 

Maybe you really are there

In each of my cells

In the curves of my DNA helices

In the music of my soul

In my sleeping baby's smile

 

Maybe you are with me always

And I must learn to access

What is already always there

 

Maybe I am Peace

And just don't know it

In this place of becoming.

 

By: Dr. Julie Comber, Writer, Songwriter, Researcher (http://juliecomber.com).