sunshine and sadness.

Sometimes, after a long period of suffering and wandering around in the dark, we finally come up for air. It seemingly happens out of nowhere, like the sun coming out from behind the clouds, and we are able to take a deep breath. We recognize ourselves for the first time—in a long time—and are surprised by what we find:

That we are alright.

And I mean alright in the deepest sense of the word. What we feel is all is right—within—despite what is happening on the perimeters of our life. We can see clearly, all the ways we have been fighting and pushing up against our selves—all our difficulties and contradictions and wounded places. As Mary Oliver says, we can “let the soft animal of (our) body love what it loves.”

We can come home to ourselves.

We can look around with love and gratitude for all we have been through, marveling at the wonder that we have made it out and that we are okay.

And okay doesn’t mean without scars or an undercurrent of grief. I think it is normal to soften around the seasons that brought so much pain, to look back with a heartbreaking sadness for the person that had to travel in loneliness on that particular path, in that particular time.

Even Jesus wept.

And yet, we are given the gift of distance at some point—the ability to become separate from our experience, to look back and see what we learned. To realize that what was returned to us in the process could not have come through any other means, to understand that sometimes healing requires the breaking and resetting of bones.

We are not so fragile as we may seem.

But these moments—these truly precious, sweet moments with our truest self—they show us the way. One of the best things I ever heard was to lean into the glimpses of joy and love and peace because we will need them when the hard times come again. They are memories of sustenance that we can return to when we have forgotten who we are and what is most important.

It is never a waste of time to love oneself wholly in any given instant.

We are so unfamiliar with treating the parts of ourselves that are most uncomfortable with compassion. Our instinct is to run and hide, or bully and condemn. Neither gets us to where we are trying to go.

Can you be with yourself in your most difficult places? Can you look with a curiosity and an openness, a kindness even?

Because this is how we move forward just a little bit more whole. We cannot avoid our hurting places, no matter how hard we try. Eventually, they will catch up. But if we stay with them, gently accepting and welcoming and making friends with them—we will no longer fear the things that make us human.

This is no easy task, and sometimes the urge to go to sleep will win out.

Do not worry—the hibernation is sometimes a necessary part of the work.

But know this—there is always light available to you.

Even if it’s cloudy.

Even if there is a storm.

Even if you can’t see it right now.

It’s there.

And you will eventually find your way back once again.

My therapist used to say to me—you can borrow my hope.

So I’ll say the same to you.

You can borrow mine.

All is not lost.

And the sun will come out again.

 

on going to sleep.

I have been feeling so far away from myself lately. I think part of it is living alone in a pandemic—if I talk out loud and there is no one to hear me, do I even really exist? This past year has really brought into focus with excruciating detail how much other people remind me of who I am. All my good parts, the lively pieces of who I am exist in relationship to others.

This is very different from not being able to be alone—I haven’t ever been one to have my identity defined by those around me (though I am a well-practiced chameleon). I have found that for most of my time here on earth, I have avoided relational commitment while simultaneously dancing with relational longing (don’t leave me but don’t come to close). Now, don’t get me wrong, I am very good at procured intimacy. I can share with you vulnerable things, secret things about myself that I give away quite easily. But sharing and showing are two different things…

Just like being alone and loneliness.

It’s so, so easy to go to sleep in your soul when you are lonely and far away from yourself. And this is how the great mystics often define loneliness—being so distant from your true being, so disconnected from your grounded self that your heart physically hurts. I often describe loneliness as a longing—a reaching for something that is just out of reach. It can feel like a wide open ache, or an emotional straightjacket while you watch the world continue on without you.

The business of being lonely is very busy indeed.

I say busy because I have found that in the vast emptiness of loneliness I reach for what is outside of me, over and over again. It’s interesting because loneliness is a feeling we all want to avoid, but instead of addressing it directly we almost always build carefully around it. The thing is we usually know the thing that will make us feel better, but we are too depleted (we feel) to get there.

So we numb out, turn away. We let ourselves fade slowly because the thought of trying to do anything else feels like the absolute hardest thing. We allow stagnation because at least it isn’t scary. 

Predictability has its perks after all.

Staying awake is an intentional task, and quite frankly I myself am tired as hell.

And yet—

I am also sad, self-loathing, and all around dead inside.

I don’t want to feel this way, but I am so worn down from all this living.

And so the cycle continues—self-directed misery, avoidance, lethargy, apathy, loneliness…

Repeat.

To want more than this seems like not only an incredible amount of effort, but risk as well.

For starters, I would have to learn to like myself.

I would have to put myself out there.

I would need to learn to draw outside the lines, just a little.

I would have to draw my attention away from what is not there, to what is.

And all of this will require effort.

Yikes!

We have a saying in therapy:

When the pain of not doing something becomes greater than the pain of doing it, you will move forward.

My friend Erin and I have another saying—sometimes you just have to sit in your dirty diaper for a bit before you are ready for a change.

You may not be ready to do anything about the way you are feeling. I am not even sure I am.

But I do know this.

There is more.

This is not the end.

In the choice between going to sleep or coming to life, I have faith that I will eventually turn the corner.

That the dark will shift ever so slightly, and I will find myself again.

That the spark is still there, even if it is the faintest it’s ever been.

That even if it is only my one, solitary voice being echoed back to me that it is still my voice nonetheless—

And the only one like it.

I hope that wherever you are today you will know that you are not alone.

That things will get better.

And that soon we will begin to wake up, just a bit more.

Until the feeling of living brings our dry bones to life once again.