For Gillian on her 21st Birthday

 Twenty one seems like a significant birthday, particularly here, stateside. While the mystery of alcohol isn't present for you, there are other reasons I deem this day, your birth-day important. To begin with, it is the day you entered this world and offered your light. Goodness, I am so grateful. The year of twenty was fairly full, as life typically is. To offer a synopsis here doesn't seem appropriate this year. I do feel as though a poem might better serve that time and the looking ahead to twenty one.  Your story is yours to share. My words are for you, yet delivered in a public space. Please remember that I love you more. You carry the divine within and embody all that is good. Simply because you are you. Everywhere and always. You are beautifully you. So, happy twenty first birthday dear daughter. May this next year wrap you in love, carry your dreams delicately and bear hope and witness to all of you and your journey. 

Here is a poem by Nikita Gill. Because yet again, her words are an offering of wishes and hopes and desires for your year ahead and everyday thereafter. 

The Ocean You

Every time you think you are broken, 

know this: you are never really breaking. 

No one can break an ocean,

darling, all you are doing,

is breaking the glass that is holding you back,

diving deeper into your own depths, 

discovering yourself in pockets 

of the most somber waves,

rebuilding your heart with coral, 

with seaweed, with moon coloured sand dust.

So stop trying to hold yourself back inside that glass,

it was never meant to hold you.

Instead, break it, 

shatter it into a thousand pieces...

and become who you were meant to be,

an ocean, proud and whole.