I am in the midst of a humbling experience right now. I think what better way to cope with it for me, than to write through the feelings. Martha Beck says, “I never wrote to sell myself, I wrote to save myself”, and I can identify so much with those words.
I am feeling raw this morning with the pain of others that I care deeply about. Raw as only a mother who has watched her son in the emergency room feeling helpless and lost, can. It’s such a terrifying process, and something happening to our babies is unthinkable. And yet sometimes the only choice we are left with is to learn to love harder and to blame and criticize less. When we are lost, angry, scared…. the best version of ourselves is rarely accessible. I am learning that in profound ways lately. So the enemy is that which tells us we are less than, that tells us we should/could do more or better. The enemy is the thought and stories we tell about ourselves or others, that are not generous. The unkind, the criticism, the blame, the anger and the pain.
I have needed to learn as a Clinician that some things are beyond the understanding and help of science. An intersection that requires love of self and patience and compassion for self and others. A personal sense of spirituality in whatever you can grasp onto for hope in times of suffering. But hopefully above all things the ability to “find the light in the darkness”, et lux entebris lucet.” This is a quote that I found in graduate school. I was asked to write a paper on the book Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. It was one of many life changing journeys into myself I would have.
I had to leave this post off here the other day so I’ll pick it up now to finish:
I’ve been catching up on some classic movies lately. The Mirror has Two Faces, which I deeply related to, and The Way We Were are the most recent two. I guess I am on a Barbra Streisand kick 😉
It is several days since an acute phase of a scary situation. The take home: the sun always comes out eventually, and usually much sooner than we think. Each time someone goes through such an experience they learn something about themselves. So is it really the worst thing we thought in the moment?
I am so grateful to have this space in life, the one that witnesses the deep of peoples lives. I am humbled and grateful for this existence.