Tears as Medicine

Growth, Healing, Letting Go, Life, Trials 0

We live in a culture that’s afraid of grieving; we don’t know how to cry. When our lives fall apart in one way or another, we usually try to take control of things and solve them, forget them, or deny them — rather than experience them, accept them, or see the meaning they may hold for us. That’s because underlying many of our responses to difficulty is the unstated assumption that we should be able to engage in life, liberty, and the unbridled pursuit of happiness without ever having to grieve — over anything. It’s almost as if we believe that pain, suffering, and challenge are bad and should never be a part of our path.

The truth is that pain is one of our greatest teachers, hurt can be a birth, and our sufferings are the portals to change. This being true, we need to know how to grieve, to mourn, to shed our tears, because grief is the cure for the pain of loss. Tears are the medicine of grieving.

When life is hard, when you’re in a crisis, you should cry not because you’re weak but because crying holds the power of healing. Tears, in fact, are the vehicle for transformation. When you cry, your loss moves through you to the point of exit. What was holding you up and eating you up, what was stuck inside your body, gets released and moves outside your body. Your physical structure is quite literally cleansed and, like a blackboard sponged clean, is available to receive the imprint of whatever wants to come next. That’s why, when you have cried, you will be reborn, free to begin again.

— Daphne Rose Kingma, The Ten things to Do When Your Life Falls Apart, p. 4-5

Multi-Volume Sets

Growth, Healing, Inspiration, Life, Trials 0

Though fairy tales end after ten pages, our lives do not. We are multi-volume sets. In our lives, even though one episode amounts to a crash and burn, there is always another episode awaiting us and then another. There are always more opportunities to get it right, to fashion our lives in the ways we deserve to have them. Don’t waste your time hating a failure. Failure is a greater teacher than success. Listen, learn, go on. That is what we are doing with this tale. We are listening to its ancient message. We are learning about deteriorative patterns so we can go on with the strength of one who can sense the traps and cages and baits before we are upon them or caught in them.

— Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD, Women Who Run With the Wolves, p. 237

Waiting in Pain

Growth, Healing, Trials, Trust 0

Most of us Christians don’t know how to wait in pain — at least not in the contemplative, creative way that opens us to newness and growth. We’re told to “turn it over to Jesus” and — presto! — things should be okay.

But inside things usually aren’t okay. So on top of everything else, we feel guilty because obviously we didn’t really turn our pain over or else it wouldn’t still be with us. Or we decide that God wasn’t listening and can’t be trusted to deliver on divine promises.

How did we ever get the idea that God would supply us on demand with quick fixes, that God is merely a rescuer and not a midwife?

— Sue Monk Kidd, When the Heart Waits, p. 28

Meaning in Trials

Core Value, Healing, Trials 0

These ten things — and I don’t care what you call them: ways, steps, practices, teachings — are things to do, to stop doing, to think of, to remember, and to become so that you can find your way through this very hard time. Their purpose is to show you that rather than being random assaults from an uncaring universe, the difficulties you are going through have meaning and purpose. Not only is your crisis here to get you to exercise your coping muscles, and therein to discover your strength; your problems also have a larger purpose. And that is to remind you of the quality of being that you truly are — powerful, loving, eternal.

— Daphne Rose Kingma, Ten Things to Do When Your Life Falls Apart, p. xvi-xvii

One Sure Love

God, Healing, Love, Marriage 0

If all the pain of the world were gathered together, and sorted by cause into great basins, the vast majority of tears would fill an ocean entitled “Unloved.” Because love is the deepest longing of the human heart — however hard we might try to pretend otherwise. When things get painful in our marriage, the arrows that pierce our hearts carry some message of You are not loved. The arrows might be Rejection, or Anger, or Betrayal, or Blaming, or even Silence. But the message is the same: You are no longer loved; you never really have been. We have got to anchor our heart in the one sure Love. You are now, you always have been, and you will forever be loved. It might help to say that to yourself, every day. Maybe every hour. This is the boat that carries your heart right across that ocean of pain to the safe haven of God.

— John and Stasi Eldredge, Love and War, p. 172

The Promise of Change

Growth, Healing, Life, Trials 0

The presence of pain is the promise of change. That’s because it hurts to suffer, and when we’re suffering we’re far more inclined to take risks, to take action, to fall on our knees, to break out of bad habits, to break out of the box in order to get beyond the pain that we’re in. Suffering, therefore, is always an invitation to change, to get into alignment with what is most true and beautiful in life, with our deepest and most expansive feelings, with Love itself.

It may not feel this way right now, but just as the oak tree, folded and invisible, lies whole within the acorn, so everything you need to live through this current anguish is within you. You are blessed. Your life is designed. If this crisis weren’t meant to be part of your life, it would not be happening. This is the moment and these are precisely the experiences through which your emotional body is being healed, your soul is being refined and enlarged, and your life itself is taking on a new meaning.

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

Forgiving and Letting Go

Forgiveness, Growth, Healing, Letting Go 0

Just to be clear, forgiving someone doesn’t mean you have to keep that individual in your life. Some people are simply going to have a toxic effect on you if you allow them to stay, and you will have to move away from them. It is how you end those relationships that will affect your spiritual progress. If you can love them, forgive them, and release them in a way that wishes them only healing, you will make excellent progress.

— Kathleen McGowan, The Source of Miracles, p. 137

Our Own Thoughts

Healing, Letting Go, Life, Truth 0

All the painful and horrendous things I was imagining were not present, and I realized suddenly and completely that it was my thoughts — and only my thoughts — that were tormenting me. If I stopped my thoughts, the pain stopped. And so it had. For about nine seconds. Then it all came flooding back, although from that moment on I understood one very, very important thing, perhaps the most important of all: learning to work with the pain of a broken heart was about learning to work with thoughts, not about changing any kind of reality. Because in reality, right this second now, nothing is happening.

— Susan Piver, The Wisdom of a Broken Heart, p. 25

Being Human

Growth, Healing, Life 0

“Human being” is more a verb than a noun. Each of us is unfinished, a work in progress. Perhaps it would be most accurate to add the word “yet” to all our assessments of ourselves and each other. Jon has not learned compassion. . . yet. I have not developed courage. . . yet. It changes everything. I have seen the “yet” become real even at the very edge of life. If life is process, all judgments are provisional. We can’t judge something until it is finished. No one has won or lost until the race is over.

“Broken” may be only a stage in a process. A bud is not a broken rose. Only lifeless things are broken. Perhaps the unique process which is a human being is never over. Even at death.

— Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, Kitchen Table Wisdom, p. 223