In the spring of my 42nd year I began the years-long journey of extricating myself from an intense, symbiotic seven-year relationship. What had started as a love that took me to never explored edges of my being, had become a painful enmeshment in which I'd gradually lost almost all the threads of connection with my deep self.
We were both feeling the deadening undertow of what we had become together. For a long while despair, confusion and frustration paralyzed both of us. We spun round and round in endless and ultimately useless attempts to "fix" ourselves, each other, the relationship. Consultation with a therapist seemed only to deepen the morass.
That June, in utter desperation and inchoate terror I packed my clothes and papers into the van that I had once lived in and tried to leave. I unpacked back into our house later that same day, too terrified to actually take the step of leaving. Two more days of anguish and the mounting terror of staying finally allowed me to repack the van and drive away in the blistering heat of the Ojai summer.
Except when I was working or feeding the animals I seemed unable to stop crying. Breathing was a real struggle: I had to stand in doorways and remember to force myself to exhale so that inhaling would become a possibility.
I would occasionally, for a moment or two, recover a small scrap of my once familiar balance. Then, a phone call with my ex would catapult me back into the anguish and terror. It was as if we'd been conjoined twins and the outcome of our separation surgery was in doubt. Did we each have enough separate, internal life support systems to survive? That I had done the actual leaving mattered not at all to me, I felt totally abandoned and bereft, deeply betrayed by the loving.
Never in my life had my capacity to "function" been so completely undermined. Never before had I been so unable to feel my own strength or wholeness. Never as an adult had I felt so completely devastated, so helpless in my anguish.
It took all the energy I had available to drag myself through the day. Always a night owl, I crawled into bed at 8:30 or 9:00. I packed and surrounded myself with pillows and literally pulled the covers over my head. I rocked and wept and thought I'd never get through or over the pain and suffering. I howled and keened and slept and dreamed.
And, I felt incredibly, endlessly, unremittingly sorry for myself. It didn't occur to me to think that it wasn't okay to feel sorry for myself or that it was "weak" or "indulgent" or "unproductive". It didn't seem I had any choice in the matter of how I felt just then. Though it had always before been my way to cope with the challenging and difficult times, "thinking positively" was absolutely beyond me. I was totally out of "cope"and bereft of hope.
With no sense of choice, I surrendered completely to feeling sorry for myself. It felt comforting and nourishing. It felt real and appropriate. It felt compassionate and caring to the broken and wounded parts of me. It went on and on for what seemed like a very long time. After a while, it became more of an intermittent experience. In between "covers over the head" times I found myself having hopeful moments of feeling survival and resurrection was a possibility. Then there were more and more of the hopeful moments. And, after that, longer and longer hopeful periods between shorter and shorter sieges of feeling sorry for myself. And, at some point, I noticed I no longer had anything about which I needed to feel sorry for myself. (In that growing season, at least!)
Surrendering to "feeling sorry for myself" had always before seemed a dangerous entry to a downward spiral from which there could be no return. Everything I was ever taught inspired this fear of "giving in" to feeling bad. Always before I'd had the strength and energy to fight the pull to collapse into feeling bad. I'd get busy, do constructive things, get into doing for others (how many articles about depression counsel just this?!!).
In this enormously challenging time when my suffering was too deep for me to use my old ways, I experienced a powerfully liberating truth. Feeling bad, feeling sorry for myself, is not dangerous, not a hopeless downward spiral. When I can surrender into the middle of it and be tender and compassionate with my aching, wounded self, it is a process. A path to my deepest self and a doorway to healing.
We live in a culture in which feeling bad, sad, despairing, grieving or depressed leads us to feel like a pariah, a carrier of some awful contagion. We are everywhere and every way encouraged to "get over it," take prozac- zoloft-xanax-paxil, think positively, not "be a drag" on our friends/family/colleagues by showing our sad faces. Submitting to this inexorable pressure leads us to close off from the rich, juicy and empowering discoveries that come from embracing our darker moments with love and compassion. Submitting also keeps us from discovering the truth that the only real way out is through!
Try pulling the covers over your head, curling up with a teddy bear and feeling sorry for yourself next time you're having a hard time!!
(Lesley Hazelton's The Right to Feel Bad, SARK's Transformation Soup and the wonderful website Life Challenges.org offer words -if you want them-to help support you as you risk being with the darker moments and risk feeling sorry for yourself.)
Be really tender with yourself.
P.S. So many of your delicious e-mails send appreciations for the affirmation, support and nourishment you receive from the site. When I answer them, I don’t always remember to let you know that having your own deck of the Rememberings and Celebrations cards is a way to bring this same loving voice into your everyday world, to have it at hand as you need to remind yourself of the "real" truth moment to moment in the crazimakingness of the so-called real world!
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The card on this page is part of a set of 64 handcolored bookmark-size cards called the Rememberings and Celebrations deck. They can be used as an oracle, a meditation focus or a "book-in-pieces" to kindle and grow a compassionate, gentle, unconditionally loving, fiercely protective inner-Mother to help you carve safe healing space for your emerging self and for the wounded little ones inside.
If you'd like a deck of your very own to support you in your journey, click here to download Order Form.
Please feel free to e-mail me at rposin@hotmail.com. to share your reflections and responses to any or all of what you find here . I'd really like to hear what touches and nourishes you!
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