There was a time when I had all the words, and none of them could say what I was carrying.
I could explain where I came from. I could move between languages. I could make sense of my story in ways that sounded clear to others. But there was a feeling that didn’t belong to English or Spanish. It lived somewhere else—somewhere in my body, in memory, in something I didn’t yet know how to name.
If you’ve ever felt that, you know what I mean. That quiet frustration of having something inside you that doesn’t translate. The sense that what you are living is real, but somehow not fully expressible, especially when you live between cultures, where even the idea of home begins to shift and language doesn’t always follow.
When Language Falls Short
I remember a moment while practicing somatic expression when my body began to move softly, and without warning, tears came out. Not from a thought, but from something deeper. For the first time, I wasn’t trying to understand what I felt. I was inside it.
That moment changed the way I understood expression. Not everything can be processed through organized language. Some experiences move through sensation, rhythm, image, and silence.
For me, poetry became the place where those experiences could exist.
Not because I set out to be a poet, but because it was the only way of expressing that stayed when everything else fell short. Before I could say what had happened, I could write what it felt like. Poetry became a way of remaining in relationship with myself and with the place I was in. Not just observing it, but feeling part of it, as if something in me was learning how to listen to the land, the natural environment, and respond in return.
Poetry was not a tool. It was a channel between body and language, between what I experienced and what could be expressed. A way for words to transmit what was already alive without forcing it into something it was not.
And maybe this is what happens when we replant, when we learn to live in new soil without losing what we carry.
Poetry as a Place of Return
“Belonging, I’ve come to see, is not about where we are. It is about how we remain in relationship with ourselves, with what we carry, and with the land that holds us.
Over time, I began to see that I was not alone in this. Many of the women I work with have been writing like this for years, fragments, journals, sentences, poetry that don’t follow rules. And yet, they don’t always recognize the value of what they are creating. They don’t always see that what is moving through them is not random, but deeply meaningful.
Sometimes, when they read their own word and have the chance to pause, they experience a quiet recognition, as if something in them is being named for the first time, as if something sacred is speaking through them.
Because there are languages beyond logic. There are parts of you that do not need more analysis. They need a different way of being met. For me, poetry is one of those ways, not because it is reserved for a few, but because it belongs to all of us. A way of staying close to what is real.
Like I once heard growing up, “We all carry a little of a musician, a poet, and the mad one within us.” We all carry that capacity to be emotional, creative, and at times illogical.
When we allow ourselves to write without forcing structure, something begins to shift. We come into contact with ourselves in a different way. We remember that we are not separate from nature, but part of it, that what moves through us follows rhythms that don’t always need to be explained, and that being here is about relationship, not just place.
For many of us, challenging situations like transitions and migration have moved more than our geography. It has moved our nervous system and reshaped how we perceive, relate, and belong. And in that movement, poetry can become a place of return not to a place, but to a relationship and to a place where we can simply be.
Belonging, I’ve come to see, is not about where we are. It is about how we remain in relationship with ourselves, with what we carry, and with the land that holds us.
So if you’ve ever wondered whether what you write matters, I want you to consider this: What if your words are not something you are creating, but something you are receiving? What if what you have been writing is not random, but a way of staying in a relationship with yourself? And what if there is nothing to fix, organize, or explain, only something to listen to?
What have you been carrying that doesn’t yet have words? And what might happen if you allowed it to be expressed as it is?
For those who felt this land within, stay close to it. For those who felt this land within, stay close to it. There are spaces where this way of being in relationship with what you carry can continue to unfold, slowly and with care, in rhythm with others. At times, these spaces take the form of small circles of poetry and reflection—like Poetry as Witness: A Contemplative Circle of Nature & Word (April 30th, 7:00 p.m. EST, via Zoom).
Until we see each other, may your winds take you where you need to be.
Re-Member and Re-Plant.
Your amiga,
Lorena