WHERE.I.AM.

WRITER: EMILY TUIOTI

NEW ZEALAND

I have been pondering for many months what I ought to say about
...finding my crown.
My journey to finding myself.
I have thought and thought.
I have considered and reconsidered
I have doubted myself a little bit....
asking am I certain that I’m even wearing a crown?
have I made a glorious and triumphant arrival at the gate of
CONFIDENCE or SELF-LOVE or FLAWLESS UNDERSTANDING OF
SELF?
I was terrified I hadn’t.
Was I (am I ) crownless?
What a thought.
And yet.
A bit of my story.
I love words. I am even studying them extensively in school.
I like to collect them. And plaster wise ones all over the place.
I have created many books of words.
Some mine. Some others’.
In trying to share my crown journey, I have stumbled through many of them.
And found
Forgotten bits of wisdom I had jotted.
Moments of inspiration that gave me hope
Uncanny predictions about the future.
While I was looking
I found this gem.
It may not make perfect sense to you.
But when I read it
I understood
My journey.
My pursuit of my crown.
It’s a poem I wrote several years ago.
And even though it’s about darkness....
to me it is illuminating.
And so here I’ll share.
nostalgic
is a word that i think of
when i’m nighttime driving
passing snowy mountains
surrounded by cars
hurrying
towards
sleeping until tomorrow
i think traveling is going and returning
while realizing that the world is
big
ger
than i give it credit for.
i think of where i am
life seems to dictate that we assume that the place where we are is
consistently
the wrong place to be
but
i choose to be where i am
in this place and headed
where i am
perhaps the question isn’t even so much
where we are
but where we are heading.
so thank you for starry winter nights
driving fast listening to echoes of who i was
knowing where i am is okay
because i am directed
point of the mountain.
So i have realized that for me
The joy is in
the journey.
And I’m discovering and wearing my crown along the way.
Right now it says that
I am a wife
I am a graduate student.
I am a mama.
I am a sister.
A sister-in-law.
A friend.
A neighbor.
A poet.
An American.
A Caucasian.
A blonde.
I am a lover of words.
I love learning to cook.
I pin, I facebook, I do homework, I read childrens stories, I go to the playground, I walk, I smile, I
cry.
I am a believer in God.
I am these things.
And yet I am still BECOMING all of them.
Wearing my crown...is a process, not an event.
I like me.
I am still learning from me where I was.
I like me where I am going.
I know that there is wisdom
In loving where we are
And believing in the intricacies of life that continue to shape us and mold us and create us as we
continue where we are heading.