There is something so vulnerable about accepting ourselves right where we are – especially when right where we are isn’t a place that we’d like to be.
Often we want to be over there – wherever ‘there’ is. ‘There’ is often a future time when we feel more peaceful, more at rest, or free from feelings of shame, fear or sadness. And we can try so hard to get there!
The pressure to perform, to create a different experience for ourselves, or to ‘meet a standard’ is one of the most painful side effects of being on a healing journey.
It’s difficult, for the more we know, the more we see, and the more we educate ourselves about trauma, healing or mindfulness, the more we can feel driven to make ourselves or our life experience different.
We can feel frustrated when we get stuck or when we’re not further along. We can feel worried that we’re not ‘ more healed.’ We can feel discouraged and confused when we cognitively understand more than what our nervous systems can yet ‘hold’ or embody.
It is so vulnerable. And this tenderness is part of the healing path. There’s no way around it. If you’re feeling it, it doesn’t mean you’re doing anything wrong. It simply means you’re on the path.
It’s a paradox, how our desire to heal can put us into a state of separation. This means we feel all the separation emotions of frustration (and self attack), alarm and anxiety, and pursuit (all the ways we think we need to be different to be safe and loved.)
For this, we need our courage and our caring, all our compassion for ourselves.
If you’re on a healing journey, forgiveness is your friend and supporter. We can practice forgiveness by softening the expectations we have of ourselves, and softening the ways we judge ourselves when we don’t ‘get it right.’ We can practice forgiveness for the ways it’s hard to forgive ourselves.
And we can practice forgiveness for getting stuck in separation in the first place. For this is the vulnerability of being human, our shared experience. We all go there.
I’ll close with a poem that I wrote after the retirement gathering for my beloved acupuncturist. One of his fellow patients had brought a tray of pepper plants that she’d grown from seeds. I oohed and aahed over her plants like meeting a newborn baby.
What she taught me about seeds, I later realized, is as true for humans as it is for plants. Her words continue to help me be gentle with myself. I hope they help you be gentle with your seeds, too.
Sprouting seeds
Holding a tray of new pepper plants
I asked her how she did it. She
patiently explained the requirements
of seeds: warm light to coax them from
their dark caves, steady moisture to crack
the heart seam down the middle, a fan of
blowing wind to create sturdy limbs;
generous space for roots to spread
their dancing fingers. I thought planting,
water and sunlight were enough. But
now I understood why my seeds had
failed to bloom. When seeds don’t
sprout, we don’t blame the plant. We
explore the whole. As I walked away
I thought about my own dormant
seeds. I longed to hold each unripened
heart with a gardener’s generosity,
a sharp spade of possibility. I wanted
to know: what new life could grow
in that good green earth?