Image: What We Get to Keep
© Jan Richardson
From time to time I find myself wondering—Amid all the losses and letting go that life requires of us, is there anything we get to keep? Is there anything that returns to us, not in the same form by which we once knew it, but in a way that reminds us that through all the changes and impermanence, there is something that endures, that has the capacity to stay with us? Something that comes as the opposite of loss, or as its antidote; something that repairs a seam of our heart with its unexpected return.
If you wonder this, too, this is a blessing for you.
Sometimes What Goes from Us
Perhaps it will come
as the lightest thing
imaginable,
a gentleness
you had thought
impossible
nesting in the hollow
of your hand—
the blessed
gift of it
nothing you would
have dreamed
but for how it now
appears,
come to tell you
sometimes
what goes from us,
remains;
sometimes
what flies from us,
returns.
—Jan Richardson
from How the Stars Get in Your Bones: A Book of Blessings
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Using Jan’s words
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August 7, 2026 at 12:50 PM |
I love this poem, Jan. It is one of my very favorites.