A Foreclosure Story

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Last week, I attended the Kente Circle Training Institute conference. If you’re not familiar, Kente Circle is a Minneapolis-based mental health agency committed to helping people unlock their inner genius through a range of therapy, counseling services, trainings and more. This year’s theme, Race and Shame: Discovering a Path to Healing.

I learned a lot…still processing a lot. The poem attempts to reimagine what it means to live on borrowed time and unpacks shame. Behold my most pressing thoughts.

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If we're all on borrowed time
Then shame led the foreclosure
denying my dreams.
The lender, Life.
I stopped making payments.

Payments on what filled my soul.
Filled my being.
The asset collected
All that I am.
The best of me.

At what cost was the loss?
Bankrupt, practically.

Shame inhabited my thoughts
My actions.
My limiting beliefs.
I wonder how many
Have felt this way?
How many like me?

I am releasing
The judgment.
The debt of shame.
The pain and the rain.

Accepting the pieces of me
I thought were dark, but
Just someone else's shadow
Hovering over me.

Their baggage, not mine.
Not my loan.
The gold
Always been in my soul.

Accepting my flaws
Not as blemishes
But freckles to my personality.
The anchors that season
My humanity.

The perfectly imperfect
Curly, corky, calm girl
From the South side.

From the strongest kings and queens
The strongest stolen journeyers
To an unknown land
A land
Where I'm not always welcomed
And yet,
Go along anyway.

Words by Jocelyn McQuirter