sit with it

Hi Maggie,

I think you are on the right track.  I like titles that are self-explanatory. I think you are wide open to Spirit and Spirit is smiling on you.

What do we do with the pain? We sit with it. We acknowledge it. We stop lashing out and running from it.

We realize it is a gift.  We either have pain from the loss of something beloved, something we let become part of us. Or we have pain because someone violated us.  Violation is not a gift. But the pain that calls our attention to it - that is a gift.

I think of the loss of a dog.  I have met people who say they will never have a second dog because the loss of their beloved companion was too painful.  They want to avoid pain, even though it means (to me) living a smaller life.  I agree that losing each of my dogs was exquisitely painful.  But the joy they brought me outweighed the pain of their loss.  I welcome the pain, because each was worth mourning.  And then they each taught me one last lesson - there is joy after pain and loss.

Violation is harder to embrace. I have said this before, but when I went through Al-Anon, it was so hard to look at our family and what happened to me. I wondered if I could bear the pain. But I did and it opened my eyes.

What was most painful though, was accepting the pain that comes with shedding the victim's role.  I had to see and accept how I passed the pain down the line, how I hurt my children.

This is still the hardest pain to bear.  But I have to sit with it, and allow it to become less and less ugly.

You know, it suddenly came to me that violation is a loss - it is bearing the loss of safety and love, of being of value, of being worth protecting...

I met a man who was a Plowshares Activist - a Catholic Worker who was arrested on purpose, standing up to the government.  And he spent time in prison. In prison, he saw his ministry as seeing those who fall through the cracks.  He said that even there, there among those society prefers not to acknowledge, even there, some still fall through the cracks.  We don't want the bother, we don't want the pain.

I think we look away, because we don't want help, but I also think we look away because we know it could be us. One wrong turn of fortune, and we're homeless...

Still working at night and wondering what I am doing...but I'm doing it.

And still fighting this bug...feeling close to exhausted. So I'm off to sleep.

With love and hugs from Clare