It’s funny. When I healed from my illness, I thought that was it. I thought that was my one true, golden lesson in the inevitable suffering of humanity. I thought I was going to emerge victorious from my pain and yay – hooray – hazah! for the wisdom and encouragement I could offer to those now experiencing the shit I left behind as I sat in the existential glow of my redemption.
Funny, Callie.. So funny. Instead, I’m realizing, as devoid from bitterness as I can possibly guide myself into being, life is not one hard thing. It’s not one difficulty you must overcome to find your happy existence. Instead, it’s understanding we often move from one form of pain or hurt to another and it’s entirely up to us to find the beauty along the way:
In the margins –
In the release –
In the joy still resting somewhere in your chest between sobs-
In the love you still feel even when the love you lost threatens to mute all the sound and whitewash all the color-
In the smile that still forms in the corners of your mouth and eyes as your daughter tells you she loves you-
Healing from my illness and subsequent emotional pain I could have never anticipated, I’m learning I will lose myself only if I forget all I learned when my body gave up on me:
We do not have the luxury of waiting for things to feel steady, safe, comfortable, or pain free to live. We must refuse to remove ourselves from that which moves us, even when, and actually especially when, we feel like we can’t move at all.
We must accept that the beauty and love we see circling the lives of others as we contemplate the darkness that seems to hover over our own – is the beauty and love we still deserve too.
It’s just that in the darkness, in whatever it is that hurts more than you can contain, that we adjust our vision to knowing the absolute miracle of feeling the light. We see the love circling as some just keep walking, numbly and half-hazardly unaware and one day dying without knowing the joy of living.
I now believe more than ever that some of us have to fall hard and be willing to get back up and talk about it. We have to be willing to bleed- to expose our wounds – in order to not only heal ourselves, but to become healers for the rest of us.
Observe your wound, friend.
Watch as it heals. And whatever eases it – whatever is balm to the pain — immerse yourself – find yourself there.
Read, write, run, scream, cry, roll down a hill, jump into water, throw paint on a canvas, dance, move, shake, listen, dream, create.
Just don’t for a minute forget you are still part of this world – grief may threaten to remove you from what you had expected, but I think – maybe – it also offers us the opportunity to more closely see all that beauty and love and joy that circles around us.