Mental Health Shmentalhealth!

April 21, 2021

CENSORED

*an opinion piece

Trigger warning:

authentic communication

“ I think because we are forced to focus on covid 24/7 for over a year there is a hyperventilating on all fronts.

Fear breeding fear. Not a new aspect of humans but certainly a pointed energy with each and every human being made to focus on this one thing

all

the

time.

I’m doing it right now.

If we as a global tribe talked about the science and facts about anything that is killing us we would see this degree of fear pushing us together and then we exert individuality, and externalizers, we implode and fight. We seem to do that again and again until one side overpowers the other.

Some are tired of the conversation. Fear and a ‘power over’ mentality is in fact happening and it’s happening around something that one “side” feels should not have this much focus and money poured into it. The other side dismissed and foolish children. Neither truly, actively, reflectively listening to each other.

Some are huddling towards elected leadership and traditional beliefs around science and media structures with trust and adherence to what overtly or inadvertently we agreed upon as a society. I pay my taxes and enjoy most of the benefits. I can’t take only what I want and refuse that of what my people want or need. Democracy doesn’t work that way. I do not have a “right” to do say or act in what ever way I, I, mine, me, my wish.

It is the most powerful current conversation trumping all others.

Covid.

 I get both sides. I really think I’m getting both sides. I, like most, long for balance.

That’s not new of course.

The need for Balance.

We could have chosen to focus on the death toll from sugar and we could have banned it or socially punished those who disagree...those who choose to feed their children very little else. And there are sides here. Those who believe it is our right. Those who ignore the facts over industry. Those who chose one scientific journal over another. Those who don’t care and fill in line “oh live a little, it’s a special occasion” and those who start organic raw food gluten free vegan groceries. And about the shit in Splenda or Aspartame we feed each other and our kids? I mean pick a global catastrophe and make the world ...the whole world ...focus directly on that all the time for a year? Cancer. Rape. Indigenous rights. Domestic violence. Read the science there and tell me we ought not be hiding in our homes in protest!

All the fuss about this *one* is confusing for some when there are actually much more deadly issues. I am sad for those who’ve lost loved ones from this disease. Also for those killled from being beaten to death or from starvation or religious persecution. My heart truly truly breaks for all the grieving.

And yet. Have we stopped talking about human sex trafficking or the massively rising death toll of men over 50 by suicide, or the human rights atrocities of  pharmaceutical industry, climate change,black lives, Asian lives, lgbtq2 lives...

#musicianslife

“Pandemic” all day long.

Some are trying to be heard around the trillions of dollars being made by some others, directly related to this pandemic...and think specifically about which aspects of culture are morphing to its ultimate extinction. Which one do you prefer to have thrive?

Okay, I’m trying to have balance but I guess there is a bias towards, something fishy’s going on in the castle but us villagers are too tired and being rated by dragons to fight back.

I do not wish my 70 something mother to die. I really don’t. I love her viscerally and will be lost without her for a long time.

But I’m truly not certain that this global lockdown and culture fear mongering pointing trillions of dollars towards the purchase of an indispensable corporations chemicals while so much goodness withers, is worth even her beloved and precious life.

 I do not know.

Im not making a statements for or against the vaccine here. I wear a medical mask and sterile gloves and special protective goggles and sometimes full medical smocks for 9 hour shifts. And then masked to the store on the way home, may as well keep on the gear, then mask to do my laundry or meet a friend. I do the do’s. I’m worn down by the cultural expectations and will get the vaccine myself. Even if it’s a horrid long term thing or the only way to get some sense of normal connection again. I certainly don’t want to be left behind either way!

This is only an observance from my personal study and perspective. No scientists or anti maskers were directly harmed in my contemplation even though I have often been told my words and questions are “killing someone’s grandma”

I do have to note that humanity are making choices inside elements of torture (isolation, restrictions, loss of culture and mandating or denying spiritual gathering, negative messaging and fear battered across a blue screen designed to create dependency, rationing of resources and financial ruin for some etc). Lock the doors to the police and social services but open the mall. Forbid live music and nurture Facebook. Walmart and Amazon over local anything. I can sit in a large room full of people without a mask while I eat and drink and laugh but most can not, even in full medical coverings, visit their frightened or injured parents. Masked children growing up without the smiles and cooing and social teachings of their tribe.

And yes. We will evolve and we can live and re create and we do. We adapt. And some still spend their days helping each other.

I get we have been fighting for a covid vaccine since SARS and we have cured many many things w the right drugs. Insuline, methimozile, antibiotics and on and on drugs can prevent imminent death and suffering.

And yet there is a way in which we too often do not do the harder work underlying the disease but flail around with toxic responses. Some are asking if this might be one of those times where we are missing the point.

I do not know the absolute true. Of course I can’t yet know. But all of it does give me cause to question.  Most pointedly the current disallowance to question.

Censorship is deep right now.

There are of course those who need a cure and some semblance of a return to the world of connection and commerce. Some kind of felt normalcy perhaps. Some way, any way of stopping this shift weather it be a massive loss of humans or of spirit or of music or of...or of...loss loss and change. So hard! Longing and craving and loss on all fronts.

I also want a fix to be realized and activated ASAP.

Still, there are those who feel freedom and personal choice over ride even death.

War. Genicide. Police and military brutality. Alcoholism. Misogyny.

We kill each other. We do do that. The question now might be ..could be...what is truly where we, as a global race, are focusing all our resources towards and is that fundamentally the correct choice.

We tend to fight for the quick fix; the short term salve, rather than choose to do the hard work for a long term collective solution.

We also have a deep capacity for great love and compassion and connection. How do we focus the whole world on that?

I feel from my witnessing, from my corner of the world, that talking about the down side and potential long term effects while we are in the act of putting the chemical inside peoples bodies across the planet is a worthwhile conversion to nurture.

It’s about the freedoms to question and disagree and make educated informed consensual choices. Can we do that while in the elements of crisis, trauma and distress? I’m not yet clear on that.

The hardest part for me I think is the *logical* integration of information while there is so much conflict and contradictions and false news. Even what looks to be real is not and all sides feel “there” side is the right and just and real and factual scientific and philosophical stance. But only a very very small portion of humanity have and understand the absolute Truth and even smaller portion of those might be acting altruistically and the very best they can with what they’ve got.

I am not one who knows the actual truth about this yet.

I do not think anyone on my page is either.

So what’s the point of this letter?

I guess all I can really ask is that you speak to me and my mind offerings here with gentle respect. Refrain from assuming I am just like anyone else who has done you harm and give me the chance to be me, and to communicate and question and to listen to your respectful communications even if we disagree.

Especially if we disagree.

All I can do now is fight for authentic connection in what ever way is offered.

I’m not allowed to sit with you or sing to you or hold you and often there is no tone or eyes or heart beat to guide our connection.

My intention is always pointed towards love even when that love feels flaccid, impotent or so tried I need reminding of my capacity to Love even when bleeding beside you  in the trenches of Life.

Thank you for listening.”

Love,

MIRA BLACK

Black's Blog

Mental Health Smentalhealth!

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By Mira Black • August 30, 2026
Wake up, you slumbering Life. You have grown too familiar with the lie that keeps you fed but never nourished. Too comfortable inside the status quo, that well-decorated room where nothing grows but everyone says, isn’t this enough? Wake up like the first time your lover smiles and something secret begins to unfold between my words and your hidden place. Once I have tasted the sound of your voice between my lips, it is almost as if Life itself might finally kiss me. Make a wish of me. Make a choice. Make a move. Say my name like you mean it and prove me wrong for believing I am unlovable, as if you could. As if Love would ever agree to become a witness against me. Still, this mind screams inside the body, pulling thought from thought, knot from knot, trying to solve the ache with another plan. Caught in the old mistake: confusing the chase for happiness with the courage to be alive. Empty hands reach for the sky, but the sky does not explain itself. Morning comes. Your eyes doubt. Your body knows. And there it is, the bloody contrast between who you are, what you want, and the life you keep pretending is close enough. At least your feet still tell the truth. One step. Then the staggering next. This is how waking comes. Not as a choir. Not as lightning. Not as someone finally choosing you. But as the unbearable mercy of seeing clearly what you can no longer betray. The pulse runs wild. The teeth rattle. The skin rises. The muscles strain against all the silence you trained them to carry. Hold on to the procession that pulled you from the soft grave of almost enough. Do not mistake the dream for freedom. Do not mistake the familiar for home. Do not mistake being wanted for being known. Listen. The song in your head hurts because it is true. And all you know for certain is this: you have not been honest in far too long. So wake up, you slumbering Life. Wake up before the lie learns your voice and starts calling itself Love.  ~ MIRA

Loving Attention

By Mira Black • July 2, 2026
I spent years trying to outrun the darkness. As though healing were a race. Then one ordinary morning I noticed my attention. How it kept returning to the same abandoned house. The same hand unwound from mine. Naked intimacies with fire, ignoring the burn. As though love were something I had to earn. The same cup where your lips last touched it. The same wound begging to become my only religion. No one told me then I was never responsible for the darkness laid upon me. Only for the quiet miracle as my attention remembers to love me as I am. Not to force. Not to run. Just... stay. The kind that sits beside the dark without becoming it. The kind that remembers there is more sky than storm. The kind that notices a bird improvising her song even while the heart is still breaking.  Perhaps awakening is nothing more mysterious than this. Love looking so gently at suffering until suffering forgets to follow me home. ~MIRA

Me Wanting

By Mira Black • June 12, 2026
Dedicated to a beautiful Soul walking beside me from across the veil.

Touched Everywhere

By Mira Black • June 12, 2026
Do not call me unattached because I have learned not to beg at every closing door. This heart has not become clean. It has become weathered. There are names I no longer say out loud that still change the temperature of my body. There are hands I have released that still arrive in dreams as if the soul keeps its own appointment book. I know how to pray without building a prison around the Beloved. I know how to open and still let the river move on. This did not come from holiness. It came from loss. From repetition. From standing in the aftermath with my nervous system on fire like a city skyline bright with lightning I have mistaken longing for prophecy. I have called absence care. I have watched my body reach for what my spirit had already surrendered. So no, I am not untouched. I am touched everywhere. By grief. By beauty. By the unbearable intimacy of being human with no guarantee that love will stay where I place it. Still, I refuse the immaculate heart. Let me be marked. Let tenderness leave evidence. Let love ruin the small false self that thought safety meant never opening again. At three in the morning when memory walks through me wearing someone else’s voice, I do not call it weakness. I call it proof. Something entered. Something mattered. Something sacred found a door in me and left it open. ~MIRA #brave #canadian #poet

To Love.

By Mira Black • June 12, 2026
#griefjourney

Do You Hear God?

By Mira Black • June 12, 2026
 Do you ever hear God? I mean truly hear the voice of silence louder than the ruckus across the street. Like thunder Like proof Like God is simply sitting next to you? Do you ever hear God whispering more loudly than the storm? Sometimes the depth of love inside your own heart shining, breaking opening, folding, smashing, like a lake against the rocks under the full moon torrents days before the rain? Do you ever hear God say your name? Not the one you were born with, nor the one your parents claimed. The other one. The secret one. The name only your Soul remembers when the world stops. Please tell me when you notice magic rising suddenly to kiss you for no reason except that you are here. I used to hear God. I used to feel warmth gather around me like I was the most cherished daughter, swimming in clear water, certain of the song singing to the wind. I used to know the words by heart. When magpies landed at my door, I knew they were for me. A certain melody mystical messengers made for me from my Beloved. I knew the veil was thin enough to let the dead kiss me sometimes. I knew the world was speaking in riddles and rhymes I could understand. Some call darkness failure demanding light when I am also mud, blood, hunger, river, ash, and a new moon sky. I have listened too long to people who fight over God as if God is a house only they can afford. And when I ask them about God, they laugh like I have said something only children do. When I ask them about God, they turn away afraid of demons, while I burst into a million pieces of light, realizing I’d been listening to God all along. ~ MIRA

When the Bird Bowed

By Mira Black • May 3, 2026
I am ready to loosen my grip on the illusions I carried though these arms grew strong dragging every fear that named itself love Still something ancient calls me to make room for the tools a crone requires She asks me to set down that carbon-copy collection of who I was supposed to marry refuse the costumes I was taught to tally seductress saviour silenced witness whore the scorned woman still sharpening her sword against herself But these hands now forged through fire and blood hold a softer thing a soul stitched from silk and mud called from dark rooms where grief learned how to sing Still the maiden asks why this path chose her  the mother bleeds without a child to name the longing woman still trembles at the rescuers song But no one is coming now and strangely that truth has become holy because the story keeps unfolding beyond romance beyond survival into something vast enough to hold all of me Last night I dreamt in full colour birds everywhere winged messengers crossing impossible skies gone were the men who betrayed me gone were the women who vanished when I needed them most I stood alone among rot ruin and medicine Then the great white bird came massive silent radiant it stepped toward me without fear as if it already knew me You are free it said without speaking You are clean You are ready And then the bird bowed slowly deliberately to me My body filled with tears old instinct reached outward searching for someone to witness this holiness but something wiser returned me to the feathers to the moment I fell to my knees not in shame in recognition And the great bird still bowing gave its final breath as though surrender itself had come to feed me and suddenly I understood some things must die so the soul can start kneeling before its own Mastery -MIRA

Lost & Found

By Mira Black • June 7, 2025
It's always been a lot of work to be me. To carry the terrified little girl inside my head who still will not listen to a word I have said. A vigilant, visceral witness holding on to every bit of business this chaos called Life has handed her. Forgiving broken men. Taking the blame for the ways they came to abuse her. This morning, while storming the terrible castle I built for her, I noticed something new. I noticed how easily I pet the demons drawn to my lap, how tenderly I feed them, even after they attack and leave me bleeding on whatever floor they abandon me on. The same floor I swept every day, mopping up the footprints of my father muddying the face of my lover. Forgetting I was never meant to save any of them. Today, I gave back the guilt I swallowed. I told that little girl she was done holding on to that evil. I got this, I told her, and knew it was Truth. For the first time, she believed in the proof of my presence. You do not have to fight for love anymore. Let go of the fever forged in the darkness, the one that left you alone as if your only choice was to be used for your magic until your witchery dried up with nothing left for you. Stop hurting yourself for a muse. I found you, dear one. Fifty years following crumbs from the table of Love, calling it enough when it never was, and here you are, still alive inside me. Nothing broken. Only buried. Nothing taken. Only carried for far too long. Set down the old idea that you do not belong. I am here, my love, my daughter, my best friend, my song. Turn away from the lie that you are lost and alone. I Am here. ~ MIRA

The Shift

By Mira Black • June 7, 2025
 The shift. The turn. The changing of the guard from red ruminations of regret and denial slowing the world down and turning the veil on holding space for the trauma in its wild unruly ravenous tunnelling through my guts, to a pitch dark room wretched and wrecked each and every time a thought of being loved arrived and then here in this presence I notice a space of fragility open clean pain rearranging the window of a new gratitude which I had bet my life would no longer hold me close. The shift The claiming The very book of naming what is no longer True but held such depth of truth in a love story where even Love could be proud. Reality can not be fought. I tried. Keeping my eyes shut though my mind wakes up and I bargain and plot remembering what was what on the morning my life shattered. Let me go back, I spattered through tears. And then and then poor little Me must be held by my tribe while I cannot feel another feel or take another breath. I believed I would not survive. The shift The glow There is only this unknown. What is here and then here and then here? Now. What will I choose inside and how to create something to weave together these shards of time before the thousand little cuts grow stronger than I? One. Then another. Milliseconds tied and trained after every patch comes untamed to find a quilting of patterns renamed so that I can finally understand why God left me here suffering like the pleas in Gesthimani. My blood wasn’t enough to keep death at bay. Today. And then another and try to love each other. That’s all I’ve discovered so far on this trepidatious path. The he’s journey just blasphemy. The shift The flow. Somehow Ive grown new muscles to carry the gifts of grief across town and into new fields where something magical wishes me to sing again with no promise the opening will keep me from harm but asked me to do it anyway. ~Mira
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