on being held.

When we are in pain, our tendency is to constrict ourselves, to preserve all of our energy so that we can just survive. This is a natural instinct. When we are in danger, especially if we know we will not survive the fight, we hide. Hiding takes the least amount of effort and is the safest bet for staying alive, hiding gives us time.

However, even in the most dire of situations, we cannot hide forever. We need resources, we need a way out to freedom. We want to thrive. Hiding may protect us, but it doesn't provide us with what makes life worth living in the first place, it doesn't fill us up with good things like love and joy and hope. It doesn't allow us to expand into wholeness.

Hiding makes us smaller.

I recently experienced a loss that knocked the wind out of me, more than I would care to admit. Losing love is like that I think. One day you are breathing clear and sure, and the next you are not. The next day you find that breathing is harder and slower, that it takes a more concentrated effort and determination than it did before. You come to see that you took for granted what came so naturally, so easily, and it leaves you weary down to your very soul.

In this space of loss, my impulse is to isolate. To turn away from others.

To hide.

I want to be able to safeguard myself from further suffering, I want to numb the heartbreak I have already felt. Loss has a way of bringing up a history of grief, of reminding us of every instance throughout our years in which we felt the stinging pang of abandonment. It feels as though loss takes something from us, every time, until we are afraid we won't have anything left. And so we hunker down. We put up our defenses.

We try with all our might to decrease our pain, and this takes quite a bit of energy. And so in our attempts to hide, to preserve our life, we actually do the opposite:

We become dead inside.

And while this may feel safer at first, we discover that it is no way to live, like breathing stale air or being stuck in the same mud day after day.

Let me be clear: desensitizing yourself is not the same as healing.

If we want to move forward, if we want to feel better, we must allow space to be broken, but also...

to be held.

We cannot make ourselves smaller in our brokenness because this does not allow room for healing to begin. When we go to the doctor, we don't say "I'm sick, but you can't help me." We move toward our physician, we allow them to touch us and examine our bodies, and it puts us in a very vulnerable space. And this is how it should be.

The doctor cannot help us if we don't show where we are hurting. But even more so, the doctor cannot heal us unless we give permission for that healing to enter our hurting places.

We have to let healing in, without running, without fighting, without hiding.

This can be exceedingly difficult, because it means we must remain open, we must feel everything that has destroyed us in the first place. It means we are trusting that our pain can be transformed if we let it. It means we are raw and sensitive and vulnerable and most likely in a state we would like to keep to ourselves.

It means we are allowing our most fragile pieces to be held, so that they can be healed.

So that we can be put back together.

So that we can be whole.

And isn't that much better than being broken?

Our safety is not determined by how many walls we can build to keep ourselves from being attacked.

It is determined by who is holding us.

And how we choose to hold ourselves in the process.

Are we growing, nurturing, speaking compassionately to our wounds? Or are we looking for quick fixes, easy remedies that don't require us to see the full extent of our injuries?

We cannot be healed until we are held.

And we cannot be held unless we are vulnerable: with our pain, with our shame, with our fragmented hearts.

I know it feels you may die from the pain of it all.

But don't shut down, don't hide yourself away.

Stay open so that you can receive, so that you can let in light and love, so that you can do more than survive.

So that you can thrive.

Your heart is still beating.

Don't lock it away.

Let it be held, with great tenderness, and with all your hope.

Healing takes time.

But so does hiding.

And only one of these options leads to you being truly alive.