I have made so many mistakes in my life. It’s true. I hope that you never eat perfection here, only bowls full of messy encouragement.

Grace and kindness have kept me breathing in places where I felt my life could never be redeemed again. None of my words would ever have the brazen cheek to stand up in the public gaze, if I had not decided a long time ago, that I was shaped from old ways and old influences and old hunger, and that I have failed others. But even more so, I have failed myself, but I am not going to tell you those stories today. And, in any case, they are no longer wounds, only teachers. Their lessons live in my writings and in each stitch with which I leave marks on the fabric that finds its ways into my hands.

But all day I have held a small story in my mouth, and she wants to set off on her own now and I have learnt that I am only the guardian of a story, never the owner, never the gatekeeper.

I am only the one that feeds and waters and nurtures, by planting my famished attention wherever the messengers trill and hum and burn, in order to draw my gaze.

This story is small in stature, but she is fierce in her presence.

She is also that frustrating thing: a story that speaks in opposites; sings in two tongues, and it is up to you to decide which song to carry home with you, if any.

Shall I begin? Are you sitting comfortably? Good.

Here is a most important thing: everyone deserves another chance.

Careful now! Don’t jump to conclusions here.

I did not say that everyone deserves another chance from you, just that everyone deserves another chance.

The story, who is threadbare with all the living she has experienced, wants you to know that second chances are for every soft body, but second chances don’t always look the same to every soft body.

Sometimes at the heart of it a second chance might look like you holding their name up as the dawn arrives to find you on your bed in front of the window, waiting for the light, and there, instead of wrapping their name in fear, or anger, or unforgiveness, you are able to say:

‘may you be happy, may you be healthy, may you be well in all things, and may you be at peace.’

Sometimes a second chance looks like you building the boundary wall that your grandmother should have built, but didn’t, or couldn’t, or wouldn’t, and your story sent you a body that would cause your days to experience the same loss, had you not held the soft shell of your left ear to the ground to listen for the wisdom that is now yours. Are your fingers raw and moss-stained from finding the right shaped stones for keeping your heart safe? Well done. The story applauds your courage. She wants you to know that she is so grateful that one more heart is safe tonight.

It takes courage to build a life—to make something out of nothing.

Use your prayer-words well. Or if you prefer to use a spell, then use it with great respect for the outcome. Both work.

Some will say this is not so, but really, it is your intention that lights the flame.

Keep your heart pure. Defend the light at all costs. You are the light.

Now, on taking things apart, this wee story has much to say. Did I mention that she was once something entirely different? She once lived in another place but wasn’t called until today.

Her seams are entirely ripped apart. When she arrived, she had other stories stitched into her sleeves. Oh, she was so well-loved! I could tell the instant I held her in my hands, ‘This one has seen many things. This one is made up of second chances.’ But again, on taking things apart, I have much to say, or rather, the story has much to say.

It takes a fierce courage to take a seam ripper to a life and to pull it apart.

As I am packing this story’s travelling bag, filling it with sprigs of rosemary and a smooth, black tourmaline to keep the-things-that-would-steal at bay, I am wielding the seam ripper with the obstinate determination of one who has known failure as a meal seventy-times-seven.

I know what it tastes like to eat the grit and wonder at the vast emptiness inside of me. I have been given second chances by others, often from the ones I least expected it from, and ‘oh, the weeping gratitude of finding my feet washed by the wide-open spirit of a body whose heart I broke. You don’t know grace until you have completely broken someone’s heart and you discover that they didn’t leave. They were always there, waiting to sit with you in silence.

No lectures. No scriptures. No holy injunctions.

Be careful what you ask God for.

If you want to learn how, with her mothering presence, She sings lullabies to the broken-hearted, you need to know that you will most likely be the one to break the heart of another soft-bodied child of hers and live to tell of the love that stayed. But also, you might well be the love that left, or was left behind. This book has many endings.

Second chances speak with different tongues, but always there is grace sprouting in the soil.

This afternoon, I have ripped apart a little dress. Edwardian, I think. I hear you gasp!

Let me tell you something about this little dress: it has seen a life. It is stained. There are holes under the sleeves. Something has feasted on parts of the back closure.

I prefer not to think of things that feast on the softness of this world. There are many.

This dress was stitched by other hands in another century and here I have spent an afternoon ripping its seams, cutting the delicate lace with my small embroidery scissors.

I do this kind of thing. It shocks some people to their core, the way I can take things apart, rip seams out, pull days’ worth of stitches right off the knitting needle without so much as a I-have-spent-so-much-time-making-this-mistake-that-I-have-to-give-it-a-home.

No. No. No.

Also, you should know that this was not something that I was given as a child.

I had to find it for myself.

The stories I could tell would make you weep.

This little dress is now in pieces. I will use every scrap. I will make something beautiful from it.

Isn’t this what we do, or at least, what we try to do?

I could say that it was easy, but truth be told, I wanted to hold onto the beauty on the little wooden clothes hanger.

Still, here we are, talking about second chances, and grace, and having our lives washed by the kindness of others.

And also, that sometimes the second chance is for us. We get to choose things because our grandmothers, and our great-grandmothers didn’t know how, didn’t know they could, or wanted to so desperately but they were surrounded by people who had pinned their name onto God, breathing air into the holy’s lungs, instead of the other way round.

As you read this, I don’t know who you are. I don’t know how many second chances you have had. They are limitless. I do know that. Because we can give them to ourselves.

We can rip the seams of a life. We can wash feet, but listen, we don’t have to.

Sometimes, from behind our stone walls, we can hold names up for God to soothe.

Listen, we are not God. We are not even the hands and feet as some would say.

We are soft-bodied children caught in adult bodies. We are hurt by some, and in turn, we hurt others.

We give second chances, and we are second chances.

And when we can’t sit at the same table, we can take things apart and make something beautiful from it. We can be peace, refusing our bodies to be a nursery for war, refusing our mouths to be a cradle for judgement. Still, this will look different for everyone. This is ok.

You are a life. They are a life.

The story, who is threadbare with all the living she has experiences, wants you to know that second chances are for every soft body, but second chances don’t always look the same to every soft body. She wants to know if you have heard her singing. Did you listen closely?

How she has thrown her song over both sides of the wall.

And grace, how she goes between the fields, climbing the styles in her work boots, carrying basins of warm water, always searching for feet that have known failure.

This is what it is all about.

© Liezel Graham 2023