Do you know when to end something?
Loss is a death that doesn't kill you.
Even though it feels like it will. Even when you feel as though you want it too…
After forty years, I am astounded and deeply in awe at what the human spirit and body can endure.
And sometimes we just need to be reminded of that; that you are resilient and strong and capable. That even though our very hearts and bodies seem to break, and at times, with only a flick of a finger, our hearts and bodies also know how to heal, how to grow strong, how to come back together again in new and redeemed ways, wisened, deepened, loosened, enlightened.
In his book, The Wisdom We're Born with: Restoring Our Faith in Ourselves Daniel Gottlieg said:
"That's what happens in our hearts. The holes do not disappear, but scar tissue grows and becomes part of who we are. The same takes place in nature. As the famous Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi observed, 'There are no straight lines or sharp corners in nature.' The most stable structures in nature— like trees or spiderwebs— have angular and curved lines. As our hearts grow larger, and we learn that scar tissue is not so ugly after all, we accommodate what we had thought would be unendurable. And we realize that the wisdom we have gained would not have been possible without the losses we have known, even those that seemed impossible to bear."
This is not a silver lining. This is not a way to pacify or try to turn a negative into a positive. Not one bit.
The point isn't to make everything into an object lesson, to find the good in it, to unearth some hidden gem in the depths of the trauma… If that is your goal, you're always trying to be ahead of where you are instead of where you actually are; you'll be demanding a resurrection before anything has had the time to die and be buried.
Glennon Doyle said:
"These days, when pain comes, there are two of me. There is the me that is miserable and afraid, and there is the me that is curious and excited. That second me is not a masochist, she's wise. She remembers. She remembers that even though I can't know what will come next in my life, I always know what comes next in the process. I know that when the pain and the waiting are here, the rising is on its way. I hope the pain will pass soon, but I'll wait it out because I've tested pain enough to trust it. And because who I will become tomorrow is so unforeseeable and specific that I'll need every bit of today's lessons to become her. I keep a note stuck to my bathroom mirror: Feel It All. It reminds me that although I began to come back to life eighteen years ago, I resurrect myself every day, in every moment that I allow myself to feel and become. It's my daily reminder to let myself burn to ashes and rise, new."
It's taken me forty years to learn that if something is ending, let it end. Let it burn. Let it go. Yes, sometimes this is unfair and tragic, and sometimes it's hard and painful, but at all times, all you can do when something ends is to surrender to the process - test pain enough that you learn how to trust it; how to trust your own transformation through it, how to let yourself break open, spill out, shed your skin, be vulnerable, let your body prickle with softness and healing, how to rise, new.
It may take a while for it to be clear that something is ending, that a loss is inevitable. Give yourself grace for the discovery. Hold yourself as you let whatever it is go.
Trust the process. Trust yourself: you know how to heal, you know how to evolve, you know how to rise.
CONSIDER THIS: 'Emotional pain can't kill you, but running from it can. Allow. Embrace. Let yourself feel. Let yourself heal." Vironika Tugaleva.
From this week’s series "Life Is Long and Very Short" this week, with a subscription, in the App.
Written by Liz Milani
Instagram: @thepracticeco
