Tiffany Nicole Fletcher

Browse Author by Tiffany Nicole Fletcher

Quarantine Spring 2020

Quarantine Spring 2020
by Tiffany Nicole Fletcher

What is survival
What is eating and drinking
is it having paid work
is it being able to go outside at whim
is it having love?
How do we measure the worth of our days
what is the sound of overcoming
Of all of our efforts, what is it that lasts—
what remains;
which fiber, which thread we’ve woven
cannot be torn?

Love is an element—
burning, cleansing, enveloping, steadying:
a force,
a purifier,
a solid ground.
An opening, a freedom—a hope;
a hope that our days
will have counted for something
in the end.

We are entering the eternal
where communion becomes greater than consumption
and we are made new again.
Spring has emerged and all of Earth is singing that
we are ripe for remaking.
Listen,
the center is forming now.

Facing Challenge, Healing, Nature, Peace, Personal Growth, Resilience, Self-care, Spiritual Practice, Spirituality, Wellness

Rooted in the Source: Spiritual Connection and Resilience

One of the most important things you can do right now is to locate your true Source and keep drinking from that well. In “normal” (non-pandemic) times, we enter into our relationships and lean on each other to varying degrees, ebbing and flowing in that way based on who has energy to give, the dynamics of our relationships, how we manage stress, etc. But in these times, everyone is under intense, chronic stress in different ways. Everyone is a pot leaking water, and you are a pot leaking water, too – so if you need to truly be refilled and replenished like never before, you can’t look to another leaking pot. You have to go back to the water source.

Facing Challenge, Personal Growth, Self-care, Spiritual Awakening

The Crucible: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Experience is Like the Spiritual Awakening Process

Yesterday I had the realization that many aspects of this COVID-19 pandemic experience are similar to what it’s like to go through the process of spiritual awakening.

To be called into a spiritual awakening usually entails finding yourself in some kind of retreat from the world you’ve known. As you go deeper into the process, there are periods where you can feel like you’ve been closed off in a solitary interior room, for a time frame that you have no control over. Some people are actually physically isolated from others during the process, whether by leaving a familiar community, loss of relationships, or by undergoing a drastic change in life direction. Sometimes illness is the cause of this retreat from “normal life.” The temporary isolation is necessary and protective.

Peace, Personal Growth, Self-care, Spiritual Practice, Spirituality

Dancing with Fear

Everyone is dancing with fear right now. It’s unavoidable; it’s in the atmosphere; it’s a constant thread woven through the media reports we’re consuming to stay informed; and having fear is understandable given the haphazard, disorganized government response to the coronavirus in the U.S.

But the challenge of this pandemic is also presenting us with an opportunity – the opportunity to develop as skillful a relationship as we can with fear. If we can do that, we’ll have a strength and skill that we can continue to make use of even when this crisis is over. Here are some of my suggestions for how to do it:

all i ever wrote, Love, Poetry

The Children of Eda

The Children of Eda by Tiffany Nicole Fletcher

There is a calling and its pull is ancient:
to mother
and so be a partner with God;
to be a creator of a tribe,
a vessel.

Centenarian oak tree
under whose branches
many have been sheltered,
we know that our story began in you.
You,
the defier of storms,
she of sass and sharp tongue
who, though made of small frame
would put grown men in their places
if need be.
Eda. Mother. Granny.
Stander of every test of time. Strong one–
rest now.

For the first time in one hundred years
your hands will be completely silent.
Those hands that have carried babies
and grandbabies,
tended flora and coaxed beauty from the soil
hands that nurtured our Tata until his last day
hands that held hymnals, and turned pages in the Holy Book,
your hands fashioned flour and fruit into tarts to nourish us
and wove thread into lace,
cloth into dress.
Your hands made magic;
they fostered life.

And now your story continues to write itself
through us, the children of Eda:
for, we parent and we serve
we make beautiful things and
we sing songs unto the Lord
we live our faith,
we defy the odds
and we survive storms.
We are strong women
and men strong enough to love strong women.
We never give up; we always rise.

Granny, we are a whole field of oak trees now—
standing tall, we are your children,
a tribe full of overcomers.

In memory of Eda Flax, 1918-2019