Uncomfortably, Beautifully Human Emma Evelyn Campbell

What was your favourite poem? What did it bring up for you?
with love,
Emma

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The final week of my Sunday mini-series, where I read through and speak on different poems from my book, 44: A Journey Through Poetry.
This is poem number 42 in the fourth verse of my book. In this video, after reading the poem to you, I talk to you about finding unconditional love with yourself, going beyond what you should do and having the courage to choose yourself. I invite you to answer the question “what would it take for you to explore who you truly are?”
I also shared in the video how I visualise and connect with nature to remind me of my own. Below are the images I spoke about which I invite you to meditate on.
The Oak Tree, reflecting on how we can be both grounded and always changing, moving through cycles of life and death (Photo by Andrew Shelley on Unsplash):
The Earth, how it stays in orbit without holding onto anything, only supported by the invisible forces of our Universe (Photo by NASA on Unsplash):
Thank you to everyone for joining me on this journey through poetry. I’d love to hear what this series has brought up for you, please share with me your thoughts, reflections and questions in the comments or by email, emma@emmaevelyncampbell.com If you’d like to purchase my book, you can find it available here.
with love,
Emma


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Thank you to everyone for joining me on this journey through poetry. This is poem number 27 in the third verse of my book. In this video, after reading the poem to you, I talk about the conflict between listening to the dreams you experience inside and embracing your current reality. I offer some questions for you to reflect on and invite you into your own exploration of uniting this conflict.
Thank you so much for listening or reading. I'll be back next Sunday for Week 4, reading another poem from 44 Journey Through Poetry. If you want to purchase this book and support my work, you can go to the link here.
with love,
Emma


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I feel torn by this my dear
How can you feel so far
yet
so near?
How can you make me feel so deeply
Then have me in the depths of
Confusion where I can’t seem to figure out our road?
Because when I ask my heart
it seems to know
That you’re

'The One'

That you’re the person I want to love until this life is done
I want to know

Are you going to continue to run?

Or will you see what I see?
Will we find each other in joy and harmony?
Or is this a dream that stays confined
to the deepest parts inside of me?

It scares me to think I’ll never experience looking into those eyes
Telling you
"I love you"
Feeling alive with your body touching mine
It scares me to think of living with this for my whole life
Without you by my side
So
what now?
When I feel the confusion taking over
Have I got to get over everything from the very start?
Or do I let you go?
And trust that in your heart, soon you’ll also know

That this love is here to stay

Is here for us to grow together each day
Is here to guide the way back to a Truth
We have forgotten to remember

That this ember cannot die with time
Because it was before time that it was even created
A time, somehow, we both awaited for
Even in moments it felt so unsure

I knew to keep a faith in what I felt so sure of

That just because it seemed illogical
To the logic of physical reality
I now refuse to let anything sway the knowing in me
The knowing there was something more I now feel ready to believe
That our love is more than words can begin to conceive
So, I choose to allow the confusion in
And yet

I know it can never win

Because the knowing from within is too strong
For the part of me that feels I could be wrong
Instead I choose to trust
To go beyond stories that I’m told
I should adjust my feelings to make room for
No, I choose to take the door of uncertainty
Of how it feels to lean fully into a love without guarantee
Without knowing how far I could fall
I follow this call
Because I believe

I am worthy to experience it all

So
my love
I’ll wait for you on the other
side
Of the fears, protection
the need to hide
And hold space for you to start
To see yourself through my eyes
So that we can begin a new
ever-expanding journey
Of both truly,
feeling alive.
That is poem number 19 in the second verse of my book, 44: A Journey Through Poetry. When I read this poem, I think of the intentions when I wrote it. I wrote it for somebody, a man, that when I wrote this book, I really, really felt so much love for. I actually dedicated the book to him.
It's really funny as I read now to see how that love has evolved and also to see how I was, very much, talking about myself. I was projecting this kind of half of myself onto another and trying very hard to bring those two things together. I was witnessing myself in this phase of separation, as if saying to myself, I want to believe in you, but I'm too scared to believe. It was this phase where I was very backwards and forwards between trust and doubt. I was wondering how I could reach this future self I felt? How do I get to the place I feel inside?
I think there's a lot of that created in our society because we have an idea of linear time. We have this idea that from here to there, I need to do X, Y, and Z and I need to get somewhere. I need to make it. Sometimes we apply that concept and that approach to ourselves as well. This need to reach that point where we have everything together and we’re fully healed.
This was kind of how it was with the love for myself. I felt it was somewhere I needed to reach, that there were things I needed to do to attain that love for self. Something that now I've realised, is that we learn about ourselves and we understand ourselves through separation and through isolation. But, we do it as if all the pieces are jumbled up and then we bring them together and I think for me now it's more about starting with the wh

*please note, there is potentially triggering content with references to themes of suicide and emotional trauma in this article/email, which some individuals may find distressing. Please ensure that you feel safe to continue reading. If you recognise that you need support after reading this article, please reach out to someone that you trust. Mind are a great UK based support network for people experiencing mental health, as are NAMI, for my readers based in the US. If you're not sure where to start, you can also reach out to me via email emma@emmaevelyncampbell.com and I can help point you in the right direction.

"These words on paper are an overflow of pure emotion, a mirror held up to the beautiful and perhaps less desirable parts of us. A candid expression of the human experience. This poetry tells a story that, as you read, you realise you have lived too. The writing invites reflection which we all need a little room for in our lives. Thank you, Emma, for your vulnerability."

I received this quote from a dear friend, Sofia, as she read my book before I self-published. I loved it so much that I used it as the blurb. My intention for creating this mini-series for the next (probably) 4 weeks, reading a few poems from the book, is to invite you into your own exploration of what it means to be human.

I'll read the poem, provide the context for it's creation and then share my own reflections on it as I read it years later. The questions I ask myself in this reflection are...

'how have I changed?'

'how am I still the same?'

'what is the wisdom I've gained?'

I also invite you to share in the comments or by email emma@emmaevelyncampbell.com what the listening of this poem brought up for you. If you haven't already you can join us for this series by subscribing for free below. You'll also benefit from a growing space where I share weekly thoughts from my heart, meditations and more heart-opening poetry. My intention is to continue to expand this space in a way that nourishes the reader and listener, whilst following my own intuition on what feels good. I want this to be an environment where you feel no expectations to do anything, other than to feel what surfaces for you as you connect with the words that are shared.
Uncomfortably, Beautifully Human is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I’ve captured the poem and my reflections below, which you can read if you prefer to engage with this content by reading over watching the video.
This feels so f*****g hard
I feel all the pain in my heart
I feel lost in the words
in my mind
created in a time when I could easily disguise
Now it all comes to the surface
I'm starting to regress to the part of my journey
where I felt so lonely
where I felt so lost
Like I couldn't breathe
Yes, I remember that version of me
where running was all that she could do to survive
Where hiding was all she could do to feel safe in this life
to repress everything that suffocated her
that cut her deep like a knife
Where all those tears she had in her eyes
And all she could do was pretend to be fine.
This poem is number 12 in my book 44: A Journey Through Poetry, which you can purchase here. As I read back this poem, I'm also going through this chapter and transition in my life now where there's this feeling of like, it's difficult. It's hard, but there's not that heaviness that I used to carry. So it's really a moment to see not only my growth, but also this compassion for the one, that version of myself that just was so, so lost and so, so afraid of everything and whatever would happen it would be this need to get away, to avoid, to run. At this phase, it feels more like a need to hold on tightly.
I must have wrote this 3/4 years ago, when I was reflecting on the version of myself aged 16-18. It’s funny now to read it back and see this pattern and how it has played out in different phases of my life. How sometim

If you’d like to join us for our next free Breathe & Be Community Guided Meditation and Writing Practice in association with you can register here: https://lu.ma/tpb5vl5p It’ll be held on Wednesday the 17th of January 19:00-19:45PM CET Timezone
with love,
Emma


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