healing Archives - Adulting: Second- Half

Monday – Funday

Good morning. I’ve had the most restful, restorative, balancing weekend. My husband has off of work today, so we both slept in. When we finally woke up, after experiencing a weekend full of rain showers, we looked out of our windows to witness a marvelous, sunny day. The picture above is the top of our screened in porch. The rain drops are sitting on top and they are being kissed by the sunlight and so they are creating the most beautiful, rainbow-y, glittery cover you’d ever want to see. Nature never ceases to amaze me.

Yesterday, I read an interesting article. Sarah Sloat wrote an article for The Atlantic about “eldest-daughter syndrome”. Here are some quotes from the article:

“Women are expected to be nurturers. Firstborns are expected to be exemplars. Trying to be everything for everyone is likely to lead to guilt when some obligations are inevitably unfulfilled.”

“Being an eldest daughter means frequently feeling like you’re not doing enough, like you’re struggling to maintain a veneer of control, like the entire household relies on your diligence.”

“At least, that’s what a contingent of oldest sisters has been saying online. Across social-media platforms, they’ve described the stress of feeling accountable for their family’s happiness, the pressure to succeed, and the impression that they aren’t being cared for in the way they care for others. Some are still teens; others have grown up and left home but still feel over-involved and overextended. As one viral tweet put it, “are u happy or are u the oldest sibling and also a girl”? People have even coined a term for this: “eldest-daughter syndrome.”

I’m the eldest daughter and I found the article to be relatable, but I’m not convinced that it is just an “eldest daughter” thing. I think that it is a daughter thing. I think that it is a woman thing. I’ve known many eldest daughters who didn’t fit the definition of “people pleasing kin-keeper.” They set out on their own, striving for adventure and independence much like their brothers. However, unlike their brothers, they were often shamed for their actions, or made to feel selfish or unnatural.

Last month, my daughter brought home some college friends to attend a local festival in our area that is somewhat akin to our city’s own Mardi Gras. She also included some dear high school friends who attend different universities. Her boyfriend, who is also a student at a different university than our daughter, was also in town to celebrate with his friends. And our youngest son lives downtown near to where the festivities would be, and so our daughter wanted to be sure to see him and celebrate with him as well. At the end of the night, when our daughter and her friends, who were staying with us, came home, they all looked exhausted but happily satiated . . . . except our daughter. She looked mostly exhausted. She had been so busy trying to coordinate everyone else’s great times that she felt depleted, frustrated and slightful resentful that no one seemed to notice the efforts that she had gone to for this event. I hugged her hard and I snidely said, “Welcome to womanhood.”

What woman has not felt any of the emotions above? What woman has not felt any guilt for not fulfilling traditional society’s definitions of nurturer, daughter, sister, mother, etc.? What woman has not felt some secret resentment that the men in her life are not subject to these same standards and expectations? What woman has never asked herself, “I’m happy that everyone is having a wonderful time, but who in the hell is taking care of me? Who really cares if I am doing alright?”

When we “give to get” that’s called codependence. When we get all of our self-worth from what we do for others, without keeping what we are doing for ourselves, as an equal part in that equation, that’s called martyrdom, and martyrdom has a way of going down a dark road to a desperate loss of our own individual identities. When we define ourselves only as somebody’s wife/daughter/mother/sister, etc. we find ourselves empty when we ask ourselves, “Yes, but who are you?”

How to heal this? It’s the same as being able to heal anything. It starts with self-awareness. It starts with asking hard questions and being able to feel the uncomfortable feelings that often come with the true answers. It’s being able to define for yourself what your roles mean in your life, and what you are willing to do in these roles, even if others don’t agree with your choices. It’s creating boundaries. It’s defining “self-care”, and what that means for you. It’s developing self-worth that isn’t reliant on other people’s judgments and values, but those of your own. It isn’t easy. Healing is never an easy process, but to live the fullness of life and our own individual purpose, healing is crucial.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

1446. What have you done that is out of character for you?

Thumbs Up

I’ve had a numb thumb on my left hand since March of this year. The numb thumb is the last symptom to stubbornly remain after a miserable, agonizingly painful experience which was diagnosed as “cervical radiopathy” or commonly known as a pinched nerve in my neck (to this day, I honestly can’t think of any one particular event that caused the original painful experience. I just woke up with it one day, and it was truly awful for about a week). I’ve doctored for my thumb – with my general practioner, a neurologist, two different chiropractors, two different acupuncturists and I’ve had an MRI. (It turns out that I have bulging discs in my neck, but apparently so do a vast majority of us who are in our fifties and beyond. These bulging discs often do not cause symptoms and discomfort.) I’ve bought all sorts of contraptions and pillows and I’ve taken muscle relaxers and I’ve faithfully done a gazillion physical therapy exercises on a daily basis. I’m not ready to consider surgery. My thumb is not painful. It’s annoying, at most.

Interestingly, I get a massage with a wonderful massage therapist about once a month. One of my best friends recommended her to me, and so I knew right then that this massage therapist would be extra special. And she is. My massage therapist is perfectly fit for her occupation. She is kind, intuitive and absolutely dedicated to her clients. She is even a little bit “geeky” about her profession, and she loves when I ask questions. She is dogged to find answers. Rarely do I leave her office, without us pouring over her phone about something concerning muscles or nerves or the best balance of modalities to use in order to heal. I love my massage therapist. I love her earnestness and curiosity and passion. These traits are so contagious and enlivening and inspiring to me.

The last time I got a massage was a few weeks ago, and I told my massage therapist that my latest chiropractor said not to touch my neck and I reminded my massage therapist about the bulging discs in my neck as seen in my MRI. She looked at me and she firmly stated: “Kelly, I’ve been thinking about this situation and I don’t really think your neck is where the nerve is being blocked.” She then brought her anatomy chart over for me to look at and she told me that she believes that my nerve is trapped by my scapula in my shoulder. (I did notice that she always seems to spend a lot more time on my left shoulder than anywhere else when I have a massage.) “You know, a lot of people have bulging discs and have no symptoms. It’s just a hunch, but I really think that your focus needs to be on your shoulder.”

And so I left her office that day and I did some research. I found this on the internet:

“Dorsal scapular nerve (DSN) entrapment syndrome is an under-recognized cause of neck and shoulder pain. DSN injuries can be the origin of a well-defined chronic pain syndrome, often referred to as DSN syndrome. DSN syndrome is often characterized by a dull ache along the medial border of the scapula.”

And since then I have been faithfully doing unique exercises designed to address this issue and I have gotten more sensation in my thumb then with any of the other treatments I have tried all year long. I actually have real hope related to healing this numbness in my thumb, for the first time in a long time.

I don’t want to become one of those older folks who bores everyone to death about her various ailments. I write this as a reminder that when it comes to our health, we really are all unique. We have to be our own advocates, and not blind sheep when it comes to taking advice for the health of our bodies. We have to be open-minded, hopeful, dedicated and true to ourselves. If you look at the “medical food chain” of the practitioners listed above, the person who has helped to guide me, and to heal my thumb the most is the massage therapist, perhaps thought by some to be the “low man” on that particular totem pole. Interestingly, my massage therapist is the one who has shown the most dedication, time and interest in helping me with my situation. And I don’t say this to disparage the others. I think that they all wanted to help me, but medical practitioners face a lot of constraints and limits these days, that are out of their own hands. In the end, I am dedicated to helping myself, and to healing myself, and I am grateful for anyone who has helped me along the way.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Healers and Wholeness

Since last Monday, I have been grappling with a pinched nerve in my neck. I have pulled muscles before, even in my neck, but this experience has taken “pain in my neck” to a whole new level that I have never experienced before. Now, if I ever call anyone a “pain in the neck”, it will be possibly one of the worst things which I could ever call a person.

In the beginning of this pinched nerve mess, I started out thinking that I could just stretch my neck out, with some light exercises. This plan, instead, took things to a whole new level of miserable and excruciating. I then assumed that a day at the beach, vacillating between hot sand and cold water would do the trick, all the while downing Aleve and Advil like candy. That ended up being a sand-filled, “how am I even going to get up and out, from this beach chair?” disaster that sent me to an Urgent Care the very next morning. In conjunction with my doctor’s orders, I got prescription strength Aleve and Advil, and I rested on the couch, all this entire past weekend, watching an entire season of “Love Island”, and other stupid, mind-numbing shows, on the couch, with the kind, cuddling company of my daughter. (They say that love and laughter is the best medicine.) While this was peaceful and enjoyable, by Sunday, my restless self was still in a great deal of pain, and so I caved to starting steroids. Since this pinch nerve situation happened last Monday (and I am still not even sure how it happened!) I dreaded every single night (as did my husband), because until last night, I could not find one comfortable position to prop myself up into, in order to fall to sleep. For a week and a half, it took me a good 45 minutes to an hour, until I reached utter exhaustion, to finally fall asleep in a strange contortion of me being twisted in tandem with a heating pad and a mountain of pillows. I looked like a living Picasso painting.

But then, yesterday, I remembered that a wonderful acupuncturist had cured a pesky eye twitch of mine in just a couple of sessions, a few years back, and I thought that it couldn’t hurt to see what she might have to say/do on the matter of my neck. And last night, after a few needles and ear seeds later, I had the best night of sleep I’ve had, since this whole fiasco started. My arm and thumb still feels a little numb (in case you’ve never experienced it, and I hope that you never have to, pinched nerves in your neck radiate through your entire shoulder and down through your arm all the way to your fingers and thumb), but the pain is gone. I have one more session today, and my acupuncturist is confident that I will feel better by the weekend. She didn’t “tsk tsk” me for going to Western medicine first, and using her as a last resort. In fact, she told me to continue following their orders, too. “We will work in tandem,” she said, “to get you better.”

I am a believer in the yin/yang of all healing practices. What I love best about Eastern practices is that my acupuncturist started yesterday’s appointment with, “Okay, what is your body trying to tell us, my dear?” Sometimes Western medicine seems to just want to put a quick bandaid on to the symptoms. But Western medicine is backed by a lot of science and technology, and in my life, I have witnessed that all healers have the same thing in common: A deep calling to help others to make themselves whole again. Just like there are many paths to God, there are also many paths to healing. And ultimately, I think that our minds, and our bodies, and our spirits feel appreciated and “seen”, when we don’t take them for granted. Our bodies notice when we take a pause, and we show that we are willing to amble down different paths of healing, in order to make ourselves whole again. And so this helps our cells to relax, and they jump aboard the healing process, too. Pain is just a cry for help, to set things right. There are so many different healing modalities available to get any of us to wholeness, if we willingly surrender our controlling ideas of “how and when” we should arrive at “whole and well.”

“A healer’s power stems not from any special ability, but from maintaining the courage and awareness to embody and express the universal healing power that every human being naturally possesses.”
― Eric Micha’el Leventhal

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Scars and Wounds

gentle reminder from my elders this morning, “Remember to speak from the scar, not the wound” -@DrBlackDeer, Twitter

As an emotional fire sign, who can turn into a fire-breathing dragon in seconds flat, I needed to read this tweet this morning. We’ve all experienced so much emotional lashing out in the last few years, haven’t we? And there are a lot of people and institutions that have some terribly bloody wounds right now. These wounds need to be healed and to be integrated and to be understood before any healthy lessons can be gleaned from the experiences that created the wounds.

The best lessons come from the places and the people who have done the work and taken the time to heal. The best lessons come from people who have had the wisdom to do a lot of self-awareness, introspection, and self-care to heal the wounds, before assuming they have anything to truly teach about a particular situation. The most sound wisdom comes from a calm, serene, compassionate, peaceful part of others and of ourselves, and not from a brash, emotional, reactive state. Asking ourselves the question, “Am I reacting or am I responding?” gives us real clarity in any situation that has any kind of emotional charge.

In an emergency room, it’s much easier to talk about how I got a certain scar that is now mostly healed over, than to explain how I got a throbbing, full of pain, bleeding gash. In fact, in that situation of a fresh wound, talking about it is relatively pointless. The immediate action is to take pertinent steps to heal the wound and stop the bleeding. There will be plenty of time to talk about it later.

I keep hoping that 2023 will be that restful, reflective, “healing the wounds” kind of a year that it seems that we collectively need, in order to move on with clarity and purpose. Scars can be quite beautiful when they serve as reminders of healed wounds and wise lessons obtained from those wounds. The only thing that a fresh, throbbing, bleeding, gash needs is immediate, personal attention, and a quiet, clean, safe place to start the healing process.

In the beginning of this year, it seems to be a fine time to take a pause to lick our wounds. Healing is a timely, personal process that must happen, before that healing can be shared as wisdom which will be truly helpful to others. When we give our wounds the chance (and we don’t keep picking at the scabs), and the space, and the time to heal, they quickly become the healed over scars of our experiences. And then it follows: “Speak from the scar, not from the wound.”

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Today’s Mantra

These are the memes that spoke to me from Twitter today. I read also on Twitter that Harry Styles is extremely upset about what people are putting out on social media about his girlfriend, Olivia Wilde. He said this about Twitter: “a s***storm of people trying to be awful to people.”

I think Harry is right. Social media can be extremely negative, harmful, mean and bullying. It can also be filled with inspiration, beauty, and wisdom. It’s what you look for in anything, that makes it so. Most people, places, and things are just neutral. We put the meaning and stories and attention into/on the item, or the person, or the relationship to these people, places and things. What is terrible for me, might be wonderful for you. The key is to put the focus on what is wonderful for you.

Are you letting yourself be loved, you grumpy little shit? Earlier this week, I got a root canal and honestly, I haven’t felt this good in quite some time. I realize I had been walking around, ignoring a growing, gnawing problem (literally in my head) that I was hoping would magically just disappear. Most of the time, life doesn’t work this way though, right? Our bodies, and our emotions send signals which grow louder and louder, for a purpose. They are saying, “Let yourself be loved, you grumpy little shit!”

Truthfully, I have more energy and vitality than I have felt in a while. I had the infection removed and my whole body is sighing with relief. My husband read that in the 1800s, people had a higher average body temperature than we have these days, because many people walked around with low-lying infections and diseases that could not be remedied. We have so many remedies these days for so many problems. Are you utilizing the remedies that are needed for your own mind, your own body, and your own spirit?

Today’s mantra is “Let yourself be loved, your grumpy little shit.” (and this means putting a big emphasis on showing love to yourself in your every waking moment, and in every decision that you make for yourself. Love and gratitude radiates outward from a healthy, loving heart. We will all benefit from your healing.)

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Scarface

If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.
— Thich Nhat Hanh

Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.
— Leo Tolstoy

To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness.
— Erich Fromm, psychoanalyst

All therapy is grief work. – Edith Eger, famous therapist who survived the Nazi Camps

About five years ago, I went to a therapist, as I was working through some “stuff” that was happening in my life, and I was wanting some professional insight on how I could better deal with my “stuff”. Living with the fears and the uncertainties that come from my son’s epilepsy, was a major part of that “stuff.” Despite completely believing in the value of therapy, and despite knowing that it is the strongest people in the world who admit that they have problems, and seek to change for the better, I still felt vulnerable and embarrassed about being in therapy. I take pride in “keeping it all together.” I consider myself to be a pretty responsible person. I became extremely concerned about what my therapist was writing in “my chart.” So, one day, I point-blank asked him (with some admitted trepidation), “So what’s my diagnosis? What are you writing down there?”

“It’s simple,” he said, “You are grieving.”

Grieving is hard. And it’s not just about losing the ones we love. It’s about coming to terms with how truly vulnerable we are in life and what little control we really have in what happens around us. We grieve different stages in our lives being over with. We grieve lost opportunities and relationships that end. We grieve about mistakes which we have made. Grief is exhausting and overwhelming at times, but if we don’t let ourselves do it, we shut off the valve to all feelings and sensations and emotions. A lot of people who end up shutting off that valve to the normal cycles of feelings and emotions, end up with terrible personality disorders and debilitating addictions, which ironically, ends up making relationships, and even life itself, even harder to navigate and to experience. We have the ability to cycle through, and to experience our feelings, even our grief feelings. Our minds, and our bodies, and our souls were designed to experience the awe of all of it. We must trust this fact, in order to experience the true fullness of our lives.

This same therapist gave me a visual for grief that I have always found to be the most helpful information that he ever gave to me. I believe that I have written about this on the blog before, but this visual analogy is good enough to be worth repeating. It truly helps:

When we first experience a trauma, our wound is deep, and bloody, and so painful that it’s scary, and often overwhelming in its ugly searingness. Anything that even comes close to touching that wound, puts us in scorching pain. We are fearful and sensitive to anything that might so much as graze our vulnerable wound. Eventually, though, that wound starts to scab over. It becomes a little less sensitive to the touch. It doesn’t need as much hyper-vigilant protection. But of course, as life goes on, something happens related to our initial trauma, and that scab gets ripped right back off, and the healing process has to begin all over again. This can happen many times. But finally, after enough time and patience and growth and love and self-care, the wound becomes a scar. The scar never goes away, but it is not nearly as painful to the touch, as it was, when it was a fresh wound, or a even when it was a scab. The scar serves as a reminder of the pains which we have survived. The scar serves as a reminder of just how strong we truly are, and the truth about just how much we really feel and love and give, to the one and only life which we have been gifted to experience. In that sense, scars honestly can be the most beautiful parts of us. Scars remind us of just how much we have lived, and how much we have loved.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Broken Crayons

“Trauma breaks you into pieces. Healing teaches you broken crayons still color.” – Inner Practioner

I don’t think there is anyone on Earth, who can say that this coronavirus situation hasn’t caused them any amount of pain and trauma. If there is such a person, they are either in deep denial, or a complete sociopath. Even if your own life has been relatively unaffected, it still breaks one’s heart to see the news stories of others who have lost loved ones, to this disease.

So with the assumption that my readers are people of feelings and empathy, I am going to go with the idea that we all have suffered some amount of trauma, concerning the coronavirus. It’s okay to admit that you have undergone some trauma. In fact, the only way to heal from any kind of trauma, is to admit to yourself, that it actually happened in the first place. That is usually the hardest part. If you keep trying to artificially scab over, or put a band-aid on a festering wound, it won’t heal properly. You’ve got to dig deep into the wound, pull out all the growing infection, and administer the correct daily medicine, for the pain to properly heal. This is what allows the trauma to be a thing (or a scar) of the past, and not an ongoing, unconscious driver that negatively affects elements of your every day life and relationships.

I think that the reason why a lot of people choose denial, versus dealing with their trauma, is two-fold. First, people think that it is strong to gut through situations, keeping a stiff upper lip. Somewhere along the way, we got the strange notion that admitting that you have a problem, makes you weak. How messed up is that! It is the opposite of strength, to stay in denial about a situation that has caused you pain. Still, we often choose to stay in denial because we fear that if we squarely face everything about how a certain trauma has affected us, we are afraid that we will fall apart at the seams, and stay stuck forever. And that is the second reason, why we keep our traumas, unfortunately, all bottled up.

When we finally get brave enough to look at our traumas honestly, and with sincere acceptance, that is when the real strength and healing begins. That is when we fully understand that broken crayons are still able to make the same vivid colors and artwork that they did before. And you know what else? Typically broken crayons end up being stronger than when they were whole. They aren’t as fragile. It is much harder to break a small piece of a crayon, than a long, elegant, fresh crayon, just coming out of the box. Also broken crayons recognize themselves in the other broken pieces, and that is where the truest compassion arises, giving the artwork of life, an even deeper depth of color, and meaning, and emotion, and joint, mass strength.

What’s a little broken in you, since the pandemic started? Has the pandemic triggered old, unhealed traumas in you? Have you allowed yourself to shed some cleansing tears? Have you reached out to others for support? Have you allowed yourself to be a little broken, realizing that even the most “perfect crayons” have little imperfections and will wear down a little bit, over the years? (Remember that the shrinking down of a crayon, comes from love and use, over the years. Everyone knows the favorite crayon in the box. It is the one crayon that is barely there, from being so useful and loved so much. It’s the “Velveteen Rabbit” of crayons.) What if, right this very minute, you had your favorite crayon in front of you, in your hand? You know the one. Your favorite crayon is that “go-to color” that you always looked for in that big, old Crayola 64 box, and you always tried to incorporate it somewhere in every one of your “masterpieces”. My favorite Crayola crayon was called “Burnt Sienna”. Now, what if, right now, you took your favorite crayon between your fingers and you broke it like the “Karate Kid”? (Don’t pretend like you never did that. Or at least, don’t pretend that you never witnessed that naughty boy in class who you secretly had a crush on, breaking the crayons with one hand, as you feigned shock and disgust, but secretly thought that this move was kind of cool and daring. . . . .until he got his dirty mitts on the Burnt Sienna crayon.) So now, your favorite crayon is broken right in front of you and you are required to draw a lovely picture of your life. You are drawing a picture of a path, leading into the sunshine of your future. The path is your life. It must be drawn in your favorite color, the one that really speaks to you, from the depths of your soul. So you pick up your broken crayon, and you cradle it or put a little tape on it, and you understand that while the crayon is a little broken, it can still draw your path in the very color that you had been envisioning that path to look like. And now you also have a little spare piece of crayon, in your back pocket, for those times in the future, when the path gets a little rocky again, and you need to draw on, a new direction. It is almost as if, in some ways, the brokenness of the crayon, has multiplied its capabilities. You now have the knowledge, that came from experience, that you will be ready for that rocky piece of road, up ahead in your path, because you now have the inner depth, and the experience, and the acceptance, to know that broken crayons will always have the ability to draw and to color, until they are completely used up, and then disappear into the horizon, and into the completed master piece of Love.

Are you passing on love, or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

A Hole in the Bucket

Given recent events, the outcry to stop our nation’s division is getting louder and louder, but how can this be done? The reasons for the division, in the first place, come from such strong fundamentally different ideas about what the right solutions are, for so many facets of our society. My friend recently repeated what is often said to couples who are having marital problems. We need to stop thinking of each other as enemies, tearing each other to the bone, and instead, see each other as loving people, allied against the problems which we face. Perhaps this would be easier to do, if we contemplated and we realized how much more alike we all are, than we ever truly and deeply realize.

I recently read a parable that made so much sense to me. My regular readers know that I sometimes explain humanity with the idea that we are all branches, or leaves, or roots of the same tree. Sometimes, I make the analogy that we are all different cells of the same body. This new parable talks about the idea that we are all submerged buckets in a huge, vast, timeless, limitless ocean body of water. Our submerged buckets are all individual and different. The buckets are different sizes, and different colors, and different shapes. Some of the buckets are quite fancy and some are quite simple. Yet, each bucket is truly unique. Even the buckets that appear to be the same, the “twin buckets” so to speak, are submerged in a different part of the ocean, and so they are likely to have unique marks left on them, from a passing shell or a shark fin, that helps distinguish them from all of the the other buckets. In short, these buckets represent our own shells. Our shells are made up of our own living bodies and forms, plus our personalities and our egos. But interestingly, just as all of the submerged buckets are filled with the same ocean water, all of our submerged buckets, each contains inside of itself, the exact same “stuff” – soul, spirit, God, Awareness, consciousness, Love, Source, whatever you want to call “It” – essentially the stuff, the essence, the force, etc. that makes all living things “alive”, versus inanimate, unconscious things like our couches or shoes or bricks. Thus, as the ocean is inside and yet also, outside all of the submerged buckets in the parable, so is the very same Universe inside and yet also, outside, all of us and all living things. Keep in mind, all of the buckets are one-of-a-kind. They come in all arrays of colors and all forms. They have landed in different parts of the deep sea, and so they have had vastly different experiences. Some buckets are quite porous, almost like a thin membrane, and what is inside of the buckets, and what is all around the outside of these buckets, flows in and out of them, quite easily. These buckets might sometimes get labeled as “fragile and sensitive.” Some buckets are solid and thick and stay deeply rooted at the bottom of the ocean, surviving all sorts of deep water disturbances. These buckets might sometimes be described as “hardened and tough.” Some buckets have been really been put through all sorts of tests, attacked by sharp toothed fishes and steel propellers and pollution, and they have the scars to prove it. Perhaps these buckets sometimes get called “damaged.” Some buckets have been around quite some time, and they are covered with barnacles and sometimes are considered to be “set in their ways”, deeply rooted in the sand. Some of the buckets have gotten so old and so worn, that they have disintegrated, so that the part of the ocean which was once contained inside of them, has flowed back into the vastness of the stable ocean that has surrounded them, for all of their existence. The buckets are all just buckets. They aren’t good nor are they bad, they are just vehicles for the ocean water to flow into and to experience itself, in a distinct light. Each of the buckets was formed differently from a physical standpoint. Where each bucket has landed into this vast ocean, and what they have experienced in their individual places of landing, have helped to shape and to evolve them even more, into their own unique selves. If we can see ourselves as the submerged buckets, we know that our outer shells are just the form which we were born into, plus the experiences that we have gone through along the way, creating a recognizably unique person, and a colorful personality. Still, like the submerged buckets, we are all filled with the same “stuff”. And better yet, just as the ocean covers all of the submerged buckets, we are all surrounded by the very same powerful “stuff,” that is also contained inside of all of us. A lot of us have forgotten that fact. A lot of us think that we are just the shells of ourselves. A lot of us think that we are just the bucket part of ourselves, and that is when we lose all sense of our connectedness, with all that is. That is when we play small and get mean and greedy and defensive and fearful and angry and puffed up. Because really, what is a bucket compared to the vast ocean? A bucket by itself, is dwarfed by the ocean and lonesome on the shore. A bucket, by itself, is a fearful state to be in.

In yoga, people often greet each other with “Namaste.” Loosely, translated, it means, “The spirit in me, recognizes the spirit in you.” In other words, I can see past your bucket form, to all of the beauty and creation which is held inside of you, and which is also held inside of me. Maybe if we all work harder at seeing past the bucket walls, of anyone we meet, (understanding that their bucket covering was created out of their own experiences, which may have been vastly different experiences than our own experiences), we can get a glimpse of what really lies inside. Maybe by us trying to see the spirit inside of others, we can help them to remember that they are much, much more than an empty, decaying vessel, and in the same light, they can do the same for us. And then all of us can feel more confident, in the face of the challenges ahead of us, knowing that everything which we need, in order to prosper, individually and societally, is inside of all of us, and all around us, for all of eternity.

He fills heaven and earth as the ocean fills the bucket that is submerged in it, and as the ocean surrounds the bucket so does God in the universe He fills. “The heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee.” God is not contained: He contains.”

— Aiden Wilson Tozer

Are you passing on love, or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love. (this will be the daily mantra of the blog, for the rest of this year.)

The Healing

“Nobody tells you this but sometimes the healing hurts more than the wound.” – Think Smarter, Twitter

Think Smarter nailed it once again. I remember when I gave birth to my first child. He was nine pounds, which a baby that size was much less common, over twenty years ago. Of course, going into labor and giving birth to my son was quite painful, but no one prepared me for the fact that I would feel like I had been hit by a Mack truck, for a good long while afterwards. Pushing my robust baby out of me, ended up spraining my tail bone and I had to sit on a rubber doughnut for weeks. Of course, my son is worth it. I’m not complaining. He is one of the greatest joys and loves of my life. Still, when I saw the quote mentioned above, this is one of the many instances, in my life, that came to my mind, to validate it. Before my first son was born, I read a million books on childbirth, listened to a litany of frightening childbirth stories, (which any woman who has ever given birth to a baby herself, and notices a young, pregnant woman, feels a compulsion to share every gory detail), and of course, I took the requisite neighborhood Lamaze classes. Everyone focused on giving birth to the baby. All of the advice was geared towards the birth episode, which typically lasts less than one day. Not once, not ever, did I feel warned about how physically terrible I would feel after the birth, and I didn’t even have a cesarean delivery.

We’ve been wounded here with the coronavirus, folks, in a big way. The initial gash of realizing that people were dying at an alarming rate from a disease for which we have no cure for, nor protection from, and then having to quarantine for weeks on end, and all of this happening, in a time span that felt nothing short of sudden, was shocking, alarming and intense, to say the least. The initial wound of realization was overwhelming and numbing. The initial injury hit us like a sledgehammer. It still seems utterly surreal. Still, we are going to heal from this coronavirus situation. We know this. We have already started to slowly open things up, to air the wound out, and we are trying to scab over this horrible situation, a little bit, in any way that we can. We have the smartest people in the world, working 24/7 to find solutions to cure the coronavirus and all of the damaging side effects and complications, that has come with it. We are all in a state of mourning for our losses, with some of us having paid the worst price of all, but still, we shall heal. It’s just that the healing is not going to be quick and easy and painless. No real healing ever is, from any kind of major trauma. The healing from any wound or trauma, is often the hardest part.

Today, I read on the internet, a quote that said, “Enjoy the space between where you are and where you are going.” Life is mostly made of those in-between spaces. And I don’t think that we were meant to waste the in-between spaces, by wishing them away. The vast amount of healing and growth and life, happens in those in-between spaces. We just don’t notice what happens in the in-between spaces, as much, because they are not nearly as jarring and life-stopping, as the unforeseen traumas and dramas, that stop us in our tracks. The in-between spaces are lulling and less interesting than the joyous, raucous conclusions and celebrations. But what do we celebrate on graduations? We celebrate the hard work of years and years of wisdom gathering and knowledge building and a child evolving into an adult. We celebrate the in-between space, starting with the first day of kindergarten, to the last day of high school, for a senior. There’s a lot of life that happened in that in-between space. And also, a lot of experience and growth that occurred in that span of many, many years, in-between. Every birthday is really a celebration of the in-between space between birthdays. Birthdays celebrate the life that happened in the in-between space, in the time period of one year. The in-between spaces are so very important. We need to be patient and grateful for the spaces. Right now we are in an in-between space that started with a horrible virus infiltrating the world and it will end with a calming, healing conclusion. We know this. Right now our job is to live as healthfully and peacefully and patiently as we can, in this in-between space. Little do we realize, that we are currently growing, exponentially, as individuals, as families, as communities, as nations, as the world, so that when we finally get to the healing conclusion, we will have globally transformed into a wiser, stronger, more compassionate, more clear version of what we were before. That’s what healing does. Healing is not easy. But a true healing, while inevitably leaving a scar, brings about such an authentic transformation in us, that sometimes we find ourselves perhaps even a tad grateful for the initial, sharp, deep pain, that brought us around to the in-between space, which helped us to heal into our most whole, our most authentic, our most enlightened versions of ourselves .