3.31.16 Being ok

    I remember realizing that if I hung out with one of my kids, when they were all kinds of miserable, and just listened to them, and didn't go on and on about how it would all be alright and didn't get all uncomfortable about them being unhappy, but just sat there with them in their great difficulty or heartbrokenness or exclusion or humiliation or feelings of anger or worthlessness, that they'd spew it all out, and then stand up, cleared and kind of centered, and go off and figure out their own best solution.

    Oh, I'd forget over and over, and begin trying to make it ok, or tell them really what they needed to do....til I'd stop, and remember, and hush up, and listen.

    There was a trust conveyed in this way, that is tough to buck up to do. Because it feels ever so much better to fill our own needs of anxiety and distress at someone else's distress, than to find a comfortable-as-possible way of sitting with them, and it.

     Turns out, there is no magic way, for them or us. Not then, not today. But there is a start.

    And there is something irreplaceable and lasting in having someone else just sit, fully present, with you, in your hopelessness , or your misery. Even when there are very real very concrete things about to come down the pike.

I have a brother who does this. I can be talking or very distressed, and he will just listen. He won't try to fix it or comfort me or tell me everything will be ok. He just sits there in love and presence. Sometimes when I'm through, he'll share a few thoughts. But the end result is that by doing this, we confirm that the distressed person is capable. That we see their ability to grow up to this challenge.

    Soon enough, when we express ourselves and people swoop in...to stop us, to hush us up. to try to 'fix' it, to advise us on what to do, all that is somehow of no help at all.

    And we end up feeling like maybe, just maybe, if they are inadvertently to be believed, that maybe we are not so able, after all.

    I have found, over the years, that I can let someone know that I so appreciate them not trying to find solutions for me, and to just listen. That I'm glad they see that this is what helps me most. Oftentimes, then, they will see if they can shift like that. Instead of jumping about, defending me against someone, trying to make it all better.

    And so we learn to do the same thing, to be present, for ourselves.

When things feel so tough and impossible and pending and lousy. Really. And we feel roiled by the uncertainty.

    The very best way to care for ourselves remains to be present, aware that that right there is a thought. And that? That is a feeling. That each thought and feeling is wisely requesting permission to come on up. That they have a beginning and an end, right now. With more, maybe, to follow, certainly.

We learn that the reams of stuff coming up and out do not constitute who we are, or what our life is.

    Instead, they are us, doing some emotional housecleaning,

clearing the way for the next remarkable stretch of growth.