Rhonda Chavez was the seventh of nine siblings raised in Weymouth – one of those grayish towns couched in the Massachusetts bay, where no one seems to have any idea where to go next. When Rhonda’s older sister announced she was joining the military, it was as if the lighted seam of a doorway had appeared on the hard wall blocking her future from sight. Rhonda followed in her sister’s footsteps, the promise of a career and access to education carrying her far from home and the childhood she had left there.
Before heading out, she spent years writing poems she penned in moments of solitude then quickly hid away. Over the following decades, she would spill the truth of herself into this ongoing book, convinced no one would find in it any value. She practiced this solitude through the continuous traumas she faced in the following years. It was not until her late fifties Rhonda came to understand the repercussions of hiding herself away.
When her older brother died at the age of 60, the sense of safety Rhonda had cultivated through years of suppression suddenly lacked conviction. She had seen both bookends of his life, this brother so close to her own age, and felt her own mortality nearer than ever before. Would she make it to 60? Who would she be when she got there? Less than two years later, Rhonda’s sister passed away at age 59 – a year older than Rhonda herself. Eventually, her family’s grief compounded in a final tragedy when her younger brother, David, a fellow veteran, died by suicide at age 58. In five years, Rhonda had lost three siblings, each within a few years of her own age. The balance she’d kept through self-medication and her ritual of poetry-hiding teetered like never before.
Later in David’s house, sorting through his things, Rhonda discovered box upon box of journals covered in his handwriting. Short stories, poems, drawings, diary entries, songs – he had been keeping the books of his internal life, just as she had of her own. Heartbroken and frustrated, she realized then the only two options which stood before her: “I pretty much dared myself to either fix myself or kill myself.”
Unable to accept that his work might remain unread, she decided to submit some of David’s writing to a publication highlighting veteran writers, and in a last moment of bravery placed a couple of her own poems in the submission pile. Including ‘Promise,’ a poem which Rhonda characterizes as a list of promises she had made to herself after her Five Years of Grief. “I will ‘live’ the rest of my life, not just exist,” it reads. “I will start by forgiving myself for all the years of self-neglect.” The response to Rhonda’s submission included the announcement that ‘Promise’ had received an award for poetry in the mental health category.
Rhonda began her SW:S retreat assuming she’d write a song for her brother. She began telling the group about him, about his life and all the thoughtful beauty he’d left for her to find. As she spoke, she began to see more of herself in what she was saying. She began to tell them all the things no one had ever asked her, her stories encouraged by the nods of agreement and comradery littering the circle. ‘We know exactly what you mean,’ they said, with their eyes and throats so stuck with remembering. ‘It happened to me too.’ Rhonda decided to write a song for herself.
When her songwriter, Terry Radigan, performed the song they’d written, ‘Me,’ on the final day of the retreat, a single hand, in place of lost words, continuously touched her shoulder from the seat behind. Recognition of the song’s meaning lay plain on the face of every veteran in the room, yet the hand belonged to a woman who worked for the catering company hired for the weekend. As Terry played, the woman cried and held Rhonda’s shoulder. What Rhonda had thought were inconsequential facts of her life were profound declarations of long-held truths for this woman. This person who had so accidentally appeared in her path; this person who could have been anybody. She realized then that it is not an inherent worthlessness her experiences possess, but an inherent power. They connect her to each person in each room she enters, if only she lifted her head and spoke up.
Rhonda reached 60 after all, continuing to write and share the stories of her life like never before; continuing to publish the poetry she writes (both for herself, and now, for others). Since turning 60, Rhonda has gone rock climbing for the first time ever, bungeed from a 70-foot telephone pole, ziplined vast expanses, and hiked 14,000 feet into the Colorado mountains. She takes the books of her life off the shelf with ease, and challenges herself to do things she never has, and never thought she would. And with strangers and loved ones alike she shares her stories, because she knows they are their stories also.
ME
Rhonda Chavez / Terry Radigan
I wore a mask
It was yellow like the sun
Rosy cheeks
And I had a smile for everyone
But on the inside
Was the thing I couldn’t let show
I was dark and scribbled
Just a wild tornado
Pretending to be
All together
Pretending to be
Someone I was never
So afraid to let anybody see
Me
Cause all I ever wanted
Was just to belong
So I had to lose myself
Just to play
Just to play along
But on the inside
I never did feel seen or heard
So I just stayed quiet
And never said
I never said a word
Pretending to be
All together
Pretending to be
Something I felt never
So afraid to let anybody see
Me
This is who I wanna be
Whatever this is
This is how I wanna feel
And how I want to live
Cause I’ve got so much love to give
It’s time to let go and forgive
Me
And stop pretending to be
All together
Pretending to be
Someone I was never
I’m not afraid to let anybody see
And after all these years ain’t it nice to finally meet
Me
© 2023 SongwritingWith:Soldiers Music (ASCAP) / Catherine the Great (ASCAP)