Grace is a place I've come to inhabitat the edges of my own ruinous heartwhere life flourishes, as it does in every bramble,these joins between the worldswhere the fruit is tart and the thorns feel sweet.When the long night, sharp against my throat,steals my breathand I do not know how to forgive myself for being,it … Continue reading Be welcome.
Author: ANGorniak
I am a clinician, a writer, and an educator who finds meaning in facilitating the healing and transformation of others. I am a Brigidine and a Druid practicing mostly within the framework of Ár nDraíocht Féin. Scholarship is important to me as one way of knowing, but it is not the only one that informs my life and work. Certainly, my devotional relationships and engagement with my ancestors, the persons (human and otherwise) who surround me, and my gods do as well, often in ways that can be difficult to articulate but which I value. I reside in Texas, a land whose beauty echoes in my blood and bones. I am a former foster youth, queer, and learning to live with rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia. My clinical and research work as a psychological professional focuses on trauma and its sequelae, on healing and post-traumatic growth for people and families and systems, and on working in ways that are Pagan and LGBTQ+ friendly. In my free time, I read voraciously, play tabletop games and DnD, enjoy classic cocktails, study herbalism and garden, bake, play with fiber arts, and enjoy exploring with my husband and pups.
Hunger in the Dark
Hunger in the Dark The grandmothers are wailing, heads covered,faces creased with the stories of their living.They offer honey to those passerby who hear them,hoping for even just a glance.What we would heal, we must know, willingly.With our own broken edges we have put out our eyes,refusing to countenance what must be.The grandmothers whisper medicine, … Continue reading Hunger in the Dark
A Prayer to All the Mes I’ve Killed
If I call your name Beloved, would you know it is you to whom I speak? You are the sacrifices of my survival; we chose, each of us in our turn, to make that bargain.Oh, Beloveds, hear my prayer as the beating of your own hearts, I entreat you! I reach for you in voice … Continue reading A Prayer to All the Mes I’ve Killed
Thirsting Spirits
I said once that the only protection she could give me was a sharp and shattered heart. Did it break hers when she broke mine?or was it a relief when my own jagged pieces drove her further away,when there was no longer the demand to hold,to care,to comfort.To mirror the mirror that she shattered. Perhaps … Continue reading Thirsting Spirits
Our Gifts
My friend Katelyn told meabout a story (that I still haven't read,as so many of our storieshaven't been read). They told meof how they spoke of the waythat we humans return to earthas a matter of course, how,without intervention, we becomethe soil in which all else may flourish.To be human, then, is to bea story … Continue reading Our Gifts
Maw-mouth
Skin full of shadows, hauntedby what belies the mythat the center of the story,a distance not grantedexcept in the illusion of authorship.I can protest my innocence,claim, truthfully perhaps,that I am not the one who carved these wordsinto the stone foundation of a lifemade hungry by all the needsI could not meet.Still, it was my invitationcalling … Continue reading Maw-mouth
Ravel
My compass whirls meaninglessly, disoriented,and I am blinded by the afterimageof a brilliance that was never really mine.Empty, finally, in the face of what I cannotun-know within my own heart,enclosed by the dense unrealityof the person projected on the shellof a self that never really was.I grieve the necessity of what will be,the only resolution … Continue reading Ravel
Darning
The warp of my life is writtenin the words no one dared to speak.Secret shames and sorrowsspun fine, a story strong enoughto break open a heart. I spillinto these jagged places, emptied,cavernous enough to hold all that isin tenderness, seen. I am nothing.This thread, the patterning, is at timesan incandescent agonyfed by each breath, choking.This … Continue reading Darning
Quenching
Some words once spokencan never again be silenced.Some truths once knowncan never be set down.They hang, shimmering, betweenall you were and all you became,between what you've lovedand all you could have been.There are choices that spring forthfrom the sundering at the foundationsof a soul broken open by the rootsyou wove into yourself, a rhizomaticrelatedness with … Continue reading Quenching
Three Tools: (a writing workshop):
One: Collaborative Wordbank: (mountain):Rooted in the watersTheir flow the beginning and the edge of beingA lush invitation, to the depths fallingThere is refuge only in the walkingSettled rhythms workingThe deep release of standing in now Two: Frame of Reference: (a teapot):Writer to Object:Hard edged but not angularRidged and communicative to fingertip and tongueWarm, wet inhalations … Continue reading Three Tools: (a writing workshop):
Rooted Flame and a Deep Wellspring 