PROSE – MOONWASHED WEEKLY PROMPT

Mind, body, and spirit—it’s not just a slogan on a t-shirt or a phrase tossed around in self-help books. It’s a lived, gritty process. It doesn’t happen in a straight line. It doesn’t always feel peaceful. It asks to be practiced daily, especially in the moments when we’re coming apart.

When my wife was dying, I was unraveling. There was no calm breath, no quiet meditation that could hold me. The pain was too loud, too sharp. I couldn’t go to the dojo—I knew I might hurt someone. So I turned to the only thing left that didn’t require restraint: writing.

That’s where Memoirs of Madness was born—not from ambition, but necessity. I wrote because if I didn’t, I was going to explode. Writing became my release valve. My attempt to find balance in a world that no longer made sense. It wasn’t polished. It wasn’t composed. But it was honest. It was survival.

Healing doesn’t always look like light. Sometimes it’s just sitting with the darkness long enough to stop being afraid of it. Writing gave me a place to do that. Not to escape pain, but to face it with something steady under my hands—a pen, a page, a place to speak freely.

People like to talk about acceptance, about “new normals,” especially when you’re going through something irreversible. I’ve been told I may never return to the person I was before. And maybe that’s true. But I also know it’s not the whole truth. I know there’s more to me than what’s been broken.

Throughout my life, I’ve encountered teachings I didn’t ask for. Moments of awe, loss, surrender, and grace. I didn’t always understand why they came, but something in me knew not to reject them. Writing became the way I made sense of them. The way I honored them.

It’s not therapy, exactly. It’s more like a mirror. Each word reflects something back at me—something raw, something I need to see. Writing doesn’t heal like medicine. It heals like movement. Like breath after being underwater too long.

Writers tell the truths we were taught to keep quiet. We witness the small miracles—flowers bending to the breeze, the call of a bird we can’t see, the still gaze of an animal watching us. We notice the laughter of children that vibrates with something pure and untouchable. We let it all into our bones. But writing is how we let it back out. How we stay connected—not digitally, but spiritually, viscerally.

Every sentence I write is a thread that connects me to the person I’ve always been beneath the layers of grief, anger, and expectation. Not the old self. Not the broken self. But the essential one. The one that endures.

I once asked: Who’s smarter—the adult or the infant? Predictably, everyone said the adult. When I pressed them, they said the child doesn’t know anything. But I disagreed. I said the infant. They laughed, of course. All but one. That one asked me, “Why?”

“Because the infant sees everything,” I said. “They feel everything. They haven’t learned to numb themselves yet. They haven’t picked up the habit of pretending. They are unfiltered truth.”

That’s what writing brings me back to. That clarity. That honesty. That wholeness before the world taught us to break ourselves into pieces.

Healing through writing isn’t a return to what was. It’s a return to what’s real. And sometimes, that’s more than enough.

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Author’s Note:

I sat looking at the challenge image, thinking about the beauty of that moment frozen in time. I found myself wondering how to capture something like that in words. Lately, I’ve been studying Buddhism—not because I want to become a Buddhist, but because I’m wise enough to know that truth can’t be found with a closed mind.

Next thing I knew, this piece came through me.

It’s not all I have to say on the subject, but it’s a beginning.

Thanks, Eugi.