A snippet of a poem that caught my eye today by Louise Gluck from “first memory”
“…from the beginning of time…I thought that pain meant I was not loved.
It meant I loved.”
Sometimes, in relationships with other human beings, something comes along that just sweeps your feet out from under you. Looking up from the ground, bewildered and a bit breathless from your fall, you are given the opportunity to make a choice. You can chose to entomb this pain into your very cells and nurture it’s growth like a mold in the damp dark. Or you can expose it to the sunlight and seek freedom in the very moment you feel the pain. Feeling what you need to feel, be it anger, grief, betrayal, sadness, fear… whatever your heart needs to express… while opening up your clenched fingers and letting it fly away from you. To not take root.
You may mutter, easier said than done, (I know that I usually do) and, YES! Its hard, sometimes it takes everything in you to keep that bitterness from taking root… especially when history repeats itself and old memories butt right into the fresh ones, deepening and expanding what may have started out as something small and now resembles something more along the lines of the scarier looking monsters from “Where the Wild Things Are.”
So, how do you keep from freezing in fear at the sight of those old monsters? Seek sunlight (friends, faith, truth, wisdom, inspiration, creativity, journaling, painting, expressing…) and try to stay supple so you can bend instead of break. Seek out where your plumb line of gratitude runs… whether it be in finding the wisdom to walk on, courage to find your voice, trust in your partner and yourself or just the gratitude in knowing that by feeling something… anything… you have invested in another person’s life and answered the call to love.
I grew up in a family of zingers. We zinged at fork point for emphasis. We zinged going up stairs. We zinged while driving in cars. We zinged while sitting in chairs.
