The Protection of Tears

Healing, Letting Go, Trials 0

There are times in a woman’s life when she cries and cries and cries, and even though she has the succor and support of her loved ones, still and yet she cries. Something in this crying keeps the predator away, keeps away unhealthy desire or gain that will ruin her. Tears are part of the mending of rips in the psyche where energy has leaked and leaked away. The matter is serious, but the worst does not occur — our light is not stolen — for tears make us conscious. There is no chance to go back to sleep when one is weeping. Whatever sleep comes then is only rest for the physical body.

Sometimes a woman says, “I am sick of crying, I am tired of it, I want it to stop.” But it is her soul that is making tears, and they are her protection. So she must keep on till the time of need is over. Some women marvel at all the water their bodies can produce when they weep. This will not last forever, only till the soul is done with its wise expression.

— Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD, Women Who Run With the Wolves, p. 437

Having Forgiven

Forgiveness, Healing, Letting Go 0

How does one know if she has forgiven? You tend to feel sorrow over the circumstance instead of rage, you tend to feel sorry for the person rather than angry with him. You tend to have nothing left to remember to say about it all. You understand the suffering that drove the offense to begin with. You prefer to remain outside the milieu. You are not waiting for anything. You are not wanting anything. There is no lariat snare around your ankle stretching from way back there to here. You are free to go. It may not have turned out to be a happily ever after, but most certainly there is now a fresh Once upon a time waiting for you from this day forward.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD, Women Who Run With the Wolves, p. 403

The Highest Vibration in the Universe

Healing, Joy, Life, Love, Trials 0

Dogs and cats can love you. Nature can love you. Music that sounds like you’ve heard it your whole life can love you. Art can love you. Beauty can love you. Whenever you deliver yourself to the experiences, sights, and sounds that make you feel loved, your experience will change. Your problems won’t be instantly solved, but in the arms of love, they will start to feel different. You will feel different. Instead of being in the foreground, your difficulties will recede into the background and your experience of your catastrophe will be transformed. That’s because Love is the highest vibration in the universe, and when you can feel it for even a nanosecond, everything else in your life will fall into its proper — and lesser — place.

Of course, we don’t want love just in the abstract and in general. We want it to be personal and particular. That is, we want to feel and share love with real people in our lives. As you’re going through this extremely difficult time, therefore, lean on the people who love you. Run, walk, or hopscotch, take a train, a plane, or a bus, to the people who can give you some love. They are your family, your friends, your neighbors and colleagues. Sometimes they’re even strangers. Whoever they are, you’ll know them by how they make you feel. With them, you feel happy and whole. They are the people who recognize your spirit, who touch your sensivity, who nourish and enliven your body, who make you laugh, who “speak your language,” who share your interests, who ask how you’re doing, who call to see if you got the job, won the case, could get the car fixed for less than six thousand dollars.

They are the ones who will say the words that will carry you through.

— Daphne Rose Kingma, The Ten Things to Do When Your Life Falls Apart, p. 175-176

What Crisis Is All About

Healing, Love, Trials 0

When we’re beset by crisis, we also begin to recognize our own vulnerability. We see that in one realm or another we, ourselves, could use some assistance. And so, from the chalice of our own need, we start reaching out for help. That’s because once we’ve been taken apart by life, we are more humble, more open, more willing to both give and receive. We take bigger chances. We speak up. We reveal ourselves. We ask. We break down. We accept comfort. Words. A blanket. A meal. In time, we realize that something amazing has happened: that the more we reach out to others, the less lonely we feel ourselves. Somehow, even in the midst of our chaos, we are actually feeling loved. And the beautiful thing is that, the more love we need, suddenly the more we have to give.

Learning to love, loving more, that’s the bottom line of what a crisis is really all about. Through it, we are being asked to expand beyond the inordinate focus on ourselves — our obsession with what we need, want, and desire — to notice what we can share, how we can serve and be of help to one another. In short, we are being asked to enlarge the circle of our love. Of course, it’s not always easy to do this. It may be unfamiliar. But when we do engage, when we see and hear and respond to one another, life starts to seem less scary. The more you get and give help, the more it seems that you will actually make it through your own unbelievably painful passage. You sense that there really is a new future. Even in the heartbreaking present you realize that you’re not alone. Not only that, but instead of wearing out your biceps holding up a thousand-pound iron defense shield in front of your heart, you can let down your guard, let down your hair, give up your pride, have a good cry, and, in gratitude, receive the love that’s coming toward you.

— Daphne Rose Kingma, The Ten Things to Do When Your Life Falls Apart, p. 169-171

Beginning to Forgive

Forgiveness, Healing, Letting Go 0

To begin to forgive, it is good to forego for a while. That is, to take a break from thinking about the person or event for a while. It is not leaving something undone, but rather more like taking a vacation from it. This prevents us from being exhausted, allows us to strengthen in other ways, to have other happiness in our lives.

This is good practice for the final letting go that comes with forgiveness later on. Leave the situation, memory, issue as many times as you need to. The idea is not to overlook but to become agile and strong at detaching from the issue. To forego means to take up that weaving, that writing, to go to that ocean, to do some learning and loving that strengthens you, and to allow the issue to drop away for a time. This is right, good, and healing. The issues of past injury will bedevil a woman far less if she assures the wounded psyche that she will give it healing balms now and deal with the entire issue of who caused what injury later.

— Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD, Women Who Run With the Wolves, p. 401

The Process of Forgiveness

Forgiveness, Growth, Healing 0

Consider this: Many people have trouble with forgiveness because they have been taught that it is a singular act to be completed in one sitting. That is not so. Forgiveness has many layers, many seasons. In our culture there is a notion that forgiveness is a 100 percent proposition. All or nothing. It is also taught that forgiveness means to overlook, to act as though a thing has not occurred. This is not true either.

A woman who can work up a good 95 percent forgiveness of someone or something tragic and damaging almost qualifies for beatification, if not sainthood. If she is 75 percent forgiving and 25 percent “I don’t know if I ever can forgive fully, and I don’t even know if I want to,” that is more the norm. But 60 percent forgiveness accompanied by 40 percent “I don’t know, and I’m not sure, and I’m still working on it,” is definitely fine. A level of 50 percent or less forgiveness qualifies for work-in-progress status. Less than 10 percent? You’ve either just begun or you’re not really trying yet.

But, in any case, once you’ve reached a bit more than halfway, the rest will come in time, usually in small increments. The important part of forgiveness is to begin and to continue. The finishing of it all is a life work. You have the rest of your life to work at the lesser percentage. Truly, if we could understand all, all could be forgiven. But for most people it takes a long time in the alchemical bath to come to this. It is all right. We have the healer, so we have the patience to see it through.

— Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD, Women Who Run With the Wolves, p. 399-400

The Process of Integration

Growth, Healing, Life, Trials 0

Crisis cajoles us to move toward integration, to expand, to accept more. This process of acceptance is not incidental to a challenging time; it is one of its intended purposes. That is because, while our human nature prefers distinction, separation, and confusion, our spiritual nature seeks wholeness, inclusion, and union. Since we are ultimately spiritual in nature, life keeps pointing us in the direction of this growth. Like the kaleidoscope, it keeps offering us the pieces that we must put together.

Integration can arrive in an instant, when, through the free fall of surrender, you finally accept each one of the parts of your existence, even the ugly ones, even the irritating ones, even the ones you want to negate, destroy, and disown. Or it can come more slowly, as day by day, episode by episode, you gradually come to accept what has happened. When you do, you become whole. You become whole not because you have finally gotten rid of the painful or offensive item, not because you have escaped, but because you have embraced it. This is the process of integration in ourselves, in others, in the world. When we have achieved full integration, we know that there is only wholeness, which is enlightenment itself.

Moving toward integration, to the space in yourself where you can see the wholeness of life, gives you a sense of hope. It also brings great peace because you know that your life, even in this crisis, and your soul, for all eternity, are nestled in the blanket of wholeness where everything, even this very difficult time, has its perfect place.

— Daphne Rose Kingma, The Ten Things to Do When Your Life Falls Apart, p. 138-139

Whether to be Bitter

Forgiveness, Growth, Healing, Humor, Joy, Life 0

There is a time in our lives, usually in mid-life, when a woman has to make a decision — possibly the most important decision of her future life — and that is, whether to be bitter or not. Women often come to this in their late thirties or early forties. They are at the point where they are full up to their ears with everything and they’ve “had it” and “the last straw has broken the camel’s back” and they’re “pissed off and pooped out.” Their dreams of their twenties may be lying in a crumple. There may be broken hearts, broken marriages, broken promises.

A body who has lived a long time accumulates debris. It cannot be avoided. But if a woman will return to the instinctual nature instead of sinking into bitterness, she will be revivified, reborn. Wolf pups are born each year. Usually they are these little mewling, sleepy-eyed, dark-furred creatures covered in dirt and straw, but they are immediately awake, playful, and loving, wanting to be close and comforted. They want to play, want to grow. The woman who returns to the instinctual and creative nature will come back to life. She will want to play. She will still want to grow, both wide and deep. But first, there has to be a cleansing.

— Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD, Women Who Run With the Wolves, p. 394-395

Freedom Abounds

Growth, Healing, Letting Go, Trials 0

We need to let go because whatever we’re holding on to is keeping us attached to the problem. Hanging on is fear; letting go is hope. Holding on is believing that there’s only a past; letting go is knowing that there’s a future. In letting go, we surrender the weight of our burdens and find the lightness of being with which to begin once again. We open a door for the intervention of the divine….

New lands await, freedom abounds. Opportunities hide like rain in the clouds waiting for the moment to reveal themselves. The white canvas, crying out for paint, is alive with possibility. The freed man is free to fall in love again; the freed woman to claim her strength, find her true work, begin again at a deeper and more satisfying level.

— Daphne Rose Kingma, The Ten Things to Do When Your Life Falls Apart, p. 74, 75