Some Things Just Hurt: Allowing Our Pain

Whenever we experience pain or suffering, our common tendency is to believe that not only is the cause of our suffering in some way wrong but that our own response to it is also wrong. And therefore, we tend to surmise that we, ourselves, are also somehow wrong. Happily, the Buddhist teachings are designed to help us notice this common pattern, and learn how we can bravely open up to our own suffering and really get to know it – very intimately – so that we can become wiser and more compassionate, and eventually, become free of it.

This talk explores how we can better allow ourselves our own feelings through the lens of a half-dozen different teaching phrases. It includes a meditation at the end.

Transcript

So,

I know that many of you are aware of my love of what I affectionately like to call Buddha's Sticky Notes,

And these are short teaching phrases that we can easily write onto a sticky note,

And I actually encourage all my students to do this,

To write these down on sticky notes as kind of a great mind training,

Because especially if we place them somewhere where we can see them often,

The great news is that they actually work.

So,

These phrases are all pretty short,

They're usually about two to five words,

And so they tend to be really easy to remember,

And so the idea is that if we continue to reflect on these,

What happens is that they tend to show up for us when we most need them.

It's kind of like a life raft of sorts,

To remind us of much deeper truths,

Or remind us of our practice.

And so for this month's talk,

I'm going to offer you about half a dozen or so of these that are all connected,

Because they all relate to how we can greet our difficult emotions,

Our pain and suffering,

How we can greet these.

And I need to confess that even after studying and practicing these teachings for about 35 years now,

These particular phrases especially are all ones that I still really need to be reminded of,

Especially when the suffering just feels kind of heavy.

I honestly sometimes just forget,

And I know that I am not at all alone in this.

In fact,

It might be said that the entirety of the Buddha's teachings is aimed at helping us to learn how to courageously be with our suffering in order for us to reduce it for both ourselves and for others.

And we might even recall that in his very first teaching,

The Buddha offered us a very simple truth,

The first noble truth.

Which is simply that there is suffering.

There is suffering.

And of course that just seems like common sense,

Right?

There is suffering.

But if we're really honest with ourselves,

Whenever we're experiencing any kind of suffering,

Or dukkha in the Pali language,

Our common reaction is to believe,

Either consciously or unconsciously,

That it's somehow wrong.

Or maybe that it just shouldn't be,

Right?

And this is where the great paradox of the Buddha's teachings comes in.

Instead of following the lead of our almost instinctual tendency to run away from or judge our suffering,

The Buddha told us that in order for us to discover our way out of suffering,

We first need to be really willing to courageously greet it.

And then to actually get to know it.

And what this means is that we need to fully allow it to be here,

To really be with it with great kindness and compassion.

And then to actually examine it very closely,

Without judgment,

In order for us to learn from it.

In his teachings when he was describing the First Noble Truth,

The Buddha told us this.

He said,

Dukkha,

Or suffering,

Should be known.

The cause by which dukkha comes into play should be known.

The diversity in dukkha should be known.

The result of dukkha should be known.

The cessation of dukkha should be known.

Path of practice for the cessation of dukkha should be known.

You see a common thread there.

The great master Ajahn Chah,

Who was the teacher of my teachers,

Very famously told us,

There are two kinds of suffering.

There is a suffering we run away from,

Which follows us everywhere.

And there is a suffering we face directly,

And so become free.

And so this is where that first sticky note phrase that I want to offer you comes in.

And this one is from one of my teachers,

The great Joseph Goldstein,

Who reminds us very often,

Don't waste your suffering.

Don't waste your suffering.

Which means don't waste your suffering.

Which means essentially that whenever we're experiencing any kind of suffering or pain,

We actually want to bow to it.

Kind of use it in hopes that it can help us to become wiser and more compassionate,

And more understanding of both ourselves and others.

Tara Brock,

My dear teacher and friend and first mentor,

Offers us a similar phrase,

Which is more of a kind of prayer affirmation that we can use whenever we find that we're really struggling with something.

And so in our more difficult moments,

Tara suggests that we might say to ourselves,

Please,

May this suffering in some way serve awakening.

May the suffering serve awakening.

And I know that for me,

Whenever I can remember those two phrases,

It almost always encourages me to just stay,

To stay,

And to not run away from my suffering.

But as we all know,

This can often really just take a kind of Herculean effort,

Right?

To not want to just shut down or kind of put our hands over our eyes,

Ears,

And mouths in some way,

In an effort to just make it stop.

But here again,

We might remember that it's our resistance to our suffering that tends to make it even that much worse.

So it's that old Buddhist equation of pain times our resistance equals the amount of suffering that we're going to experience.

And if we really think about it,

A large part of our resistance is again,

Our belief that not only is the suffering itself somehow wrong,

That it somehow shouldn't be,

But that our own response is also somehow wrong.

And therefore,

We tend to surmise then that we ourselves are somehow also wrong.

So we tend to label all of it,

Our suffering,

Our response,

And ourselves,

Wrong,

Wrong,

And wrong.

And I need to confess here that for many,

Many years,

I was really caught up in this pattern,

Especially that pattern of making myself wrong for feeling whatever I was feeling in response to whatever I was suffering from,

Whatever suffering I was experiencing.

In fact,

During almost every single retreat that I attended with Tara,

Especially when I was in training with her,

Almost inevitably,

She would end up very gently repeating the same words to me,

Which were,

Shell,

My dear,

You're making it wrong.

Honestly,

Every single retreat,

Shell,

My dear,

You're making it wrong.

And the it that I was making wrong was the feeling itself,

The feeling of sadness,

Or grief,

Or anger,

Shame,

Whatever it was.

And therefore,

Of course,

Also myself,

Because I was then identifying with the feeling.

And so this is where I think another one of those sticky notes can be really helpful.

And this one comes from another one of my teachers,

The great Sharon Salzberg,

Who in her book,

Finding Your Way,

Told us this.

She wrote,

Some say that if only we have a positive attitude,

If only we approached our circumstances in an upbeat way,

We would feel no emotional pain.

I challenge this.

It's inevitable that by simply living a life,

Being a human being,

We will encounter times of adversity.

It is not because of our attitude that a pandemic,

Or 9-11,

Or a financial crisis,

Or a marriage,

Or a long friendship ending are oppressive or heartbreaking.

Some things just hurt.

I have found this basic truth liberating.

Some things just hurt.

And so Sharon's phrase for us,

Which she uses often,

Again,

Is some things just hurt,

Which I just love for so many reasons.

So the first is that it's kind of a modern day summary of the Buddha's first noble truth,

That there is suffering.

Or in other words,

Again,

Some things just hurt.

It's also a great reminder to us that we don't need to add to what's already here,

Our suffering by somehow judging ourselves for feeling sad,

Or angry,

Or upset,

Or overwhelmed by things that are in and of themselves sad,

Frustrating,

Or overwhelming.

We're human,

Which means it is just natural for us to experience the full range of our human emotions.

And this is exactly how it should be.

There's nothing wrong with this.

And there's nothing wrong with us whenever we're experiencing these feelings.

And so a very similar phrase that I use often is also from Sharon,

Which is simply,

We feel what we feel.

We feel what we feel.

There's no shoulds,

If you'll notice,

Around that.

I should feel this way,

I should feel that way,

I shouldn't feel this way,

Et cetera.

And Sharon explained the phrase this way.

She said,

In the teachings and practices I studied,

There was no attempt to belittle my pain or rationalize it.

And no one was reassuring me that things would surely get better soon,

Or reminding me to only look at the bright side.

All things we are conditioned to say and believe in the face of suffering.

For the very first time,

I felt permission and freedom to feel whatever I was going to feel.

I wasn't doing it wrong,

And neither are you.

Neither are you.

Which brings me to another sticking out phrase that I think relates to this,

Which I often use a lot in my formal practice.

And this one,

Again,

Comes from Tara.

She says that whenever we're feeling a difficult emotion,

We might try saying to ourselves,

Just simply,

This belongs.

This belongs.

And I love that phrase because,

As with all things Tara Brach,

It's infused with a lot of tenderness and compassion.

Right?

So just that word,

Belong,

Almost instantly creates a sense of being known and accepted,

Instead of a sense of being rejected or judged.

And so when we're telling ourselves this belongs,

We're really offering both ourselves and our feelings that sense of acceptance and tenderness.

This belongs,

And I belong.

And according to the Buddha's teachings,

This is exactly how we grow,

It's how we evolve,

Both mentally and spiritually,

By gently and kindly allowing,

By listening to our emotions,

Which is another word for contemplating or examining,

Listening.

We're training ourselves to stop judging and rejecting,

And instead welcoming all of our human emotions,

And then seeing what they have to teach us.

Which brings me to another one of those phrases,

Which is from a teaching from the late Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh.

And I often feel like this one is a kind of summary of our whole practice.

Thich Nhat Hanh told us,

Quote,

Our suffering is holy if we can embrace and look deeply into it.

If we don't,

It isn't holy at all.

We just drowned in the ocean of our suffering.

I repeat that.

Our suffering is holy if we can embrace and look deeply into it.

If we don't,

It isn't holy at all.

We just drowned in the ocean of our suffering.

So sometimes just remembering those three words,

Our suffering is holy,

Can once again help us to not judge or reject our suffering,

But to remember again that it's just natural,

That it's simply a truth of our existence,

And that we can again use it to help us to open our hearts and become wiser and more compassionate beings.

Whenever I'm contemplating being with my suffering or my pain,

There's a great animated children's movie that I often like to think about,

And I know many of you have likely seen this.

When it first came out about ten years ago now,

The mindfulness community was just really buzzing about it because it offered such an excellent way of explaining the Buddha's teachings to both children and adults.

And the directors actually consulted top neuroscientists all over the country in order to create this movie,

Which many of you know is called Inside Out.

And for those of you who haven't seen it,

It's about an 11-year-old girl named Riley who is experiencing a kind of crisis in her life.

Her parents have decided to move the family from this little town in Minnesota to San Francisco,

Right?

Which doesn't sound like a very interesting plot,

But what makes it fascinating is that the movie is set inside Riley's brain.

And the lead characters are her emotions,

Joy,

Sadness,

Anger,

Fear,

And disgust.

And they all battle to control Riley's responses through a kind of control panel in her brain.

And so when this big crisis is happening,

This big change,

Joy and sadness get lost deep within Riley's subconscious.

And fear and anger and disgust take control of her brain.

And I thought this was a pretty accurate description of what can happen when there's a kind of crisis or a big change in our lives,

Right?

Joy and sadness tend to get lost.

And fear and anger and disgust or judgment or aversion tend to take over.

And so the stars of the movie then are joy and sadness who are in essence partners.

And just to give you a visual,

Joy has these huge eyes and a bright green dress and a literal glow around her.

And she's constantly raising her arms up and leaping and spinning around.

And sadness,

The sadness character is just completely adorable.

She's short with big dark glasses and of course she's all blue.

And she tends to fall over flat on her face whenever joy wants her to do anything.

What's interesting is that for the most of the movie,

Joy is busy trying to make sadness happy,

Which of course is not working.

And this is so frustrating to joy,

Who's often shown rolling her eyes at sadness and just generally acting very annoyed with her.

Joy is also constantly trying to keep sadness away from these glowing globes that represent core memories from Riley's childhood.

And the reason for this is because whenever her sadness touches the globes,

They change to the color blue.

So joy has made it her main job in life to constantly keep sadness away from Riley's memories.

In fact,

Joy even goes so far as to draw a circle on the floor and then she makes sadness stand in the circle of sadness.

So she literally puts a boundary around sadness.

Eventually though,

Sadness does manage to pick up one of those globes.

And when joy snatches it away,

Sadness pouts and apologizes.

And she looks up and she says quietly to joy,

I wanted to maybe hold one.

I wanted to maybe hold one.

And honestly,

Of all the lines in the whole movie,

That one just completely melted me.

And I hope I won't ruin it totally for those of you who haven't seen it.

But in the end,

The movie tells us that it was normal for Riley to feel sad about something big in her life that was changing,

Which in this case involved moving away and losing all her friends and everything that felt familiar to her.

It was normal for her to feel angry about having no say in it.

And it was normal for her to feel fear when she contemplated her new situation.

In fact,

The Buddha told us that change or impermanence,

Anicca in the Pali language,

Is one of,

If not the main sources of our stress and suffering.

And so it absolutely makes sense that we all experience a range of emotions in the face of change,

Especially when it's truly life-changing.

Roger Ebert,

The late movie critic,

Summarized the movie this way.

He said,

This movie is saying,

Listen to sadness.

Sadness is important.

Sadness has something to teach you.

It stands in opposition to an entire culture that tells people that happiness is the highest,

Best,

And sometimes only permissible emotion and that sadness is an obstacle to being happy and that we should concentrate all of our emotional and cultural energy on trying to eradicate sadness so that everyone can be happy.

He went on to say that he believed that so much of this is a kind of cultural pressure that creates an insecurity within us about our own pain and suffering.

In fact,

The Dalai Lama,

Mother Teresa,

And other spiritual teachers have all commented about our particular American society and about how they've not witnessed so much self-criticism in any other place on the planet.

And I believe this is because of exactly what Roger Ebert was pointing to,

That we are culturally conditioned,

Especially through the media,

To believe that if we are not constantly happy and perfect,

That something is somehow wrong with us and that we should also somehow be ashamed of this.

For instance,

We might even notice ourselves experiencing some discomfort when someone else tells us that they're feeling upset about something.

Very often,

Instead of listening or offering empathy,

We might find ourselves either judging or maybe offering advice about how that person can fix this emotion,

Eliminate it,

Make it stop,

Go away.

We tend to almost automatically believe that whatever it is,

It's not right and that in some way it shouldn't be happening.

But in truth,

What's often making us uncomfortable is not the emotion itself,

But our perception of it.

My favorite Buddhist nun,

Pema Chodron,

Speaks about this kind of uncomfortableness this way.

She says,

The only reason we don't open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with.

To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves,

We feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes.

And as I mentioned earlier,

What's also true is that many of us tend to do the same thing to ourselves.

It's like we have this unconscious voice in our own heads,

Just like that joy character in the movie who is constantly telling us to cheer up,

Get over it,

Buck up,

Or buckle up,

Or just stop being sad.

We might even think about all the names we call ourselves when we're feeling sad,

All the labels we might put on ourselves or others.

Maybe it's pathetic,

Or sensitive,

Or big baby,

Snowflake,

Whatever it is.

We might hear ourselves saying things like,

What is wrong with me?

Or,

I should really be over this already.

Or,

Why am I so negative?

I need to get a grip,

Etc.

So again,

We tend to make it and ourselves wrong.

We might even think that we have somehow failed in our quest to be constantly happy.

Femme A Chaudron calls this our common dream of finding quote-unquote constant okayness.

Constant okayness.

So all of that being said,

As we all know,

Not trying to push away or reject our pain is really an ongoing practice for all of us.

As the Buddha taught us,

There's a very natural habitual tendency to not want to be with our suffering.

To want to run away from it,

Cover it over,

Just make it somehow go away.

But the interesting paradox is that when we don't allow or even acknowledge our pain or our sadness,

It can actually turn into depression because we're turning it inward rather than letting it out.

Inside out.

So whenever we're rejecting pain and not allowing it,

What we're essentially doing is locking it in,

Just as effectively as the Joy character did in the movie when she drew a boundary around sadness.

We're locking it in.

In fact,

Sometimes we can actually become angry at our own sadness.

And this can become a very strong wall when we're angry at sadness.

Many years ago,

When I was still offering eight-week mindfulness workshops,

Near the end I would offer guided loving-kindness meditations that begin with inviting students to get in touch with any grief or sadness that they were experiencing.

Of course,

Many people tend to cry during this practice.

But one time after the meditation,

A woman shared that what she kept sensing were walls that were being thrown up.

And she realized that she felt almost rageful at the sadness.

And she just didn't want to experience it at all.

And as she was speaking,

I invited her to see if she could just hold her actual resistance,

The resistance itself of kindness,

Because that's what she was experiencing.

That's what was there in that moment.

And the resistance itself needed her attention as well.

It was really okay.

And as she was able to slowly see and honor even her resistance,

Suddenly,

Finally,

There were tears,

Almost like the wall just crumbled.

And after class,

She let me know that instead of feeling overwhelming,

Her tears actually felt really good.

And it was a huge relief to her to finally allow herself to feel and express her sadness.

And she said to me,

Shell,

I was finally able to hold it.

I was able to hold it.

And because I love that metaphor of holding our sadness so much,

I wanted to share a passage that I love from a meditation teacher in New York City named Emily Hersland,

Who wrote about how she was able to meet and again,

Hold the sadness that she was feeling right after the 9-11 attacks there.

This is what she wrote.

She said,

I remember obsessively watching the news coverage as so many of us did,

Trying to make sense of what was happening,

Trying to get rid of the confusion.

I remember I was overwhelmed by sadness.

I had a doctor who was kind of a mentor to me and I emailed him asking him what I should do with my sadness.

How could I stop feeling so sad?

He suggested I turn off the TV,

Take a box,

Put objects in it that represented my sadness and put the box in a closet.

So I did.

I turned off the TV.

I took an old shoe box and put in some pennies,

A little elephant figurine,

A folded up tissue,

A seashell.

I named them all sadness and put them in the box and put the box in the closet.

Strangely,

It helped.

It didn't make my sadness go away,

But it felt more manageable and not as unwieldy.

I don't think it was the process of putting the box away in the closet.

I think it was the process of naming sadness,

Of touching it,

Holding it in my hands,

In my body,

Being with it.

It was real.

It was something I could be familiar with.

It wasn't dangerous.

It was safe to hold this feeling.

I think that our meditation practice can give us something similar.

It gives us permission to name what's here,

To hold it,

To touch it.

It gives us the ability to see what we are capable of holding in our hearts.

It teaches us to be kind to our experience in this way,

To give our experience the caring attention that we might give to a friend.

We can see that it's not an enemy.

It is not an enemy.

That story always reminds me of a quote I love from the Buddha who told us,

Our sorrows and wounds are healed only when we touch them with compassion.

When we touch them with compassion.

And just as with all the other emotions,

The Buddha taught us that the way to get past sadness,

Again,

Is to get to know.

In fact,

He asked us to become intimate with sadness,

To experience what sadness feels like so that when it arrives it doesn't totally confuse or overwhelm or frustrate us.

And so that we're not so afraid of sadness that we're locking it into that circle of sadness.

Through our practice we can begin to see that sadness is always a visitor.

And we can learn to allow sadness in whenever it arrives.

We can open the door and actually welcome sadness and sit with her for a while and maybe let her cry.

And eventually she does decide that it's time to leave.

But if we just pretend that we don't see her and lock her out,

She's just going to mope around the house and peek at all our windows and she's going to camp out on our doorstep and wail and pound on the door and generally make our lives miserable.

So we might even use our practice to start to notice when sadness arrives,

Which is very often we'll notice when there's a change.

So a relationship ends or somebody we love dies or we're fired from a job or we become ill or there's a disaster or a tragedy or a world pandemic arrives.

It might be when we have a big change in our whole belief system or when we have some sort of epiphany about something.

The reason change is often sad is because it always involves some kind of loss.

So sadness is intimately hooked on to grief.

And here we might recall the Buddhist teachings on suffering,

Which is that we suffer mostly because of the truth of impermanence.

We need to remember that life,

Ourselves,

All of it,

Everything we experience is actually constantly never ending change.

And so we will in essence always be saying goodbye to what was,

Which means that we will also inevitably be faced with grief and sadness.

Even though we all really want to avoid this,

We all tend to want to avoid change.

Just like that 11 year old in the movie,

We all tend to want to stay safe and cozy with what's familiar,

Right?

And not have to move away and face the possibility of change.

It also might be helpful to know that grief is an actual physical process that our brain goes through after a significant change.

So literally the limbic system in our brain holds an internal image of life as we know it.

And so whenever a change takes place,

New neural pathways must be built in order to accommodate this updated version of reality.

And so sadness is actually really powerful because it can introduce a crack in our limited and limited version of reality.

We thought it was one way,

We believed it was one way,

But now it's not that way anymore.

Or maybe it was never that way to begin with,

But we just believed that it was.

For instance,

We might go for years or even decades with some relationship that just isn't working.

Or maybe with a belief about ourselves or our lives that isn't working.

And once we allow ourselves to actually feel the sadness,

We might then suddenly allow a new reality to see things in a new light.

And of course building this new picture of reality quite literally takes a lot of energy and time for the brain to process,

Depending on the nature of the change.

And if we didn't understand that grieving is a necessary process in order for us to move forward,

We might find ourselves becoming impatient and wanting to skip this very unpleasant period of time.

From an actual survival perspective,

Science has actually suggested that sadness was hardwired into us to keep us safe after significant loss or change.

So we might notice that sadness is associated with a feeling of heaviness or sleepiness or a kind of withdrawal from activity and social connections.

And this withdrawal makes more sense when we consider that grief or maybe the time our brain is updating actually causes things like impaired short-term memory,

Decreased concentration and attention span,

Absent-mindedness,

Forgetfulness,

And distraction.

And so in primitive times,

If we'd experienced a major loss or big change,

It would actually be unsafe for us to go hunting or gathering.

At the same time then,

It's also very natural for us to feel afraid or vulnerable when we're feeling sad.

Again,

From a primitive perspective,

If it wasn't safe for us to go hunting or gathering,

It was truly a threat to our survival.

So it's just natural for us to now feel unsafe whenever there's a big change.

We might even recognize the words we use to describe sadness,

Words like exposed or naked or raw.

We might even experience that sense of,

If I really allow myself to feel this fully,

I might just die from it.

I might just die.

Today,

We need to remind ourselves that our minds have evolved and that even though it's unpleasant,

We actually can survive sadness.

It's not going to kill us.

And on that note,

Before I offer a brief meditation on this,

I'd like to read a passage that I really like from the Zen teacher Joan Sutherland,

Who tells us this.

We believe that if we begin this weeping,

If we open ourselves to the pain and to the poignancy and the terrible wounded beauty of life on this earth,

Perhaps we won't be able to stop and we'll drown.

But,

She says,

We do not disappear,

Nor do we drown.

Neither do we cry forever.

But if from time to time these tears are called from us,

They're no longer frightening.

They are a small ceremony keeping us close to the world.

They make us less brittle,

More resilient.

We weep because something is pouring in and we are overflowing.

Because it is impossible to say anything in such moments and it is equally impossible not to offer something back.

The salt tears are remnants of our oceanic beginnings and they are also the residue of the difficult sea we cross in this life.

We contain both the timeless depths and the waves watching over the fragile raft that carries us from birth to death.

So,

As you're ready and it's available,

I'd like to offer us a meditation on this.

So,

If you're at home,

You might find a comfortable seat.

Close the eyes.

If you're out walking,

I invite you to feel the bottom of your feet on the earth and feel your connection to the earth.

Become more embodied by really sensing the body moving through space,

Your feet on the earth,

The breath.

If you're driving,

I invite you also to connect with the earth through the seat,

Your hands on the wheel,

Connecting with the breath,

Sensing yourself traveling,

The body traveling,

Body breathing.

And for all of us,

Just taking a nice deep breath in,

Filling up the lungs.

Slow exhale,

Letting go.

Maybe a couple of rounds of these on your own.

Just to get in touch with the breath and the body,

Bring your awareness inside,

Into the body.

On each exhale,

Seeing if you can let go of whatever you're holding a little more,

Any tightness,

Tension,

Narrative,

Story.

Letting go on each exhale.

Breathing in.

Breathing out.

You might notice the whole area of the face,

Allowing the face to soften.

Imagine the skin around the head softening,

Forehead smooth,

Eyes soft in their sockets,

Teeth slightly parted so the jaw can relax.

Still breathing.

Maybe checking in with the shoulders,

Dropping the shoulders,

Letting them soften a bit,

Let go.

And if it's available now,

I'd like to invite you,

Just for this brief meditation,

To maybe place one hand or both on the heart,

If that's available.

Or one hand on the heart,

One on the belly.

Or just maybe imagine that you're doing this,

Connecting with the heart and the body.

Still breathing.

You might even imagine breathing right into the heart area.

Maybe even sensing the shape of the heart.

Can you imagine that you're maybe even holding the heart,

Allowing it to soften a bit with that soft touch with each breath?

And as you continue to breathe into the heart area,

You might start to sense,

What have I been holding onto here?

Is there something I've put a kind of circle around,

Something I might just not want to feel?

Just consider.

And as you're ready now,

See if you can begin to gently tell this emotion,

You belong,

Or this belongs.

Even if what's here is a kind of resistance,

Let the resistance know,

It's okay,

You belong,

This belongs.

Remembering to offer yourself great kindness and compassion for whatever it is that you're feeling,

Not making any of it wrong.

And if you're sensing some kind of identity around this feeling,

See if you can notice what you're believing about yourself.

And invite yourself to just feel the feeling,

Again without making it or yourself in any way wrong.

I just continue to mentally whisper,

This belongs,

I belong.

And sense what that feels like in the heart.

This belongs,

I belong.

And finally,

Just to end,

I wanted to share this poem from Rilke,

Who tells us,

You who let yourselves feel,

Enter the breathing that is more than your own.

Let it brush your cheeks as it divides and rejoins beside you.

Blessed ones,

Whole ones,

You where the heart begins.

You are the bow that shoots the arrows,

And you are the target.

Fear not the pain,

Let its weight fall back into the earth.

For heavy are the mountains,

Heavy the seas.

The trees you planted in childhood have grown too heavy.

You cannot bring them along.

Give yourself to the air,

To what you cannot hold.

Namaste and blessings.

Reviews

Beautiful perspectives. Thank you 🙏

I'd give this 100 stars if I could. The first time I've felt free to feel the true grief of betrayal trauma (after 30+ years of marriage) ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐💫🌠 Thank you, Shell 🐚 ♥ 🕊🕯🙏

This was so welcoming, once again. I love your kind, genuine and clear approach. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with us. Would love to have you as a close by neighbour/friend. Truly enjoy your "company"! 🌻🙏