I've been having lots of conversations about pain and the unnervingly necessary role that it (and for the sake of argument, let’s include sorrow, anguish, anxiety, and fear) plays in our lives. It’s March, and we’re rounding the last corner of winter. It’s time to air out the house, clear out the clutter of hibernation, and return our attention to the proverbial garden. I am a Sunset Magazine devotee and each month, for an indulgent half hour or so, I escape into its pages. I devour the tantalizing travel articles, ardently dog ear and cut out delectable recipes that I will never make, and glance through the gardening section, just to keep up with the latest in... you know... nature. About a year ago I began noticing that there were some generally good life lessons to be learned in those gardening sections: prune in this season, plant in that one (“a time to reap, a time to sow” etc, etc…) In order to make way for the new, wether in a garden or in our own lives, we have to get in there, dig out the old, dead and dying parts.
And it's freaking painful! Grief, frustration, rejection, disappointment, abandonment, betrayal, it all hurts - it sucks - it more than sucks, it can throw us into what a mental health professional would call “Crisis Mode,” when it’s all we can do to breathe, eat, work, and sleep. I’ve been there. Recently, in fact. I liked to think of it as being in “Safe Mode” (does that even exist anymore in this world of sleek, touchable technology?) Back in college when my clunky, virus-ridden, laptop would get overloaded it would go into Safe Mode. The screen would become comically pixelated, everything bigger and slower, and only the essential programs could function. That’s what Deep Pain feels like to me - like you’re just big and boxy and awkward and trying to get through the day, week, month… year. Whenever I find myself, or someone I love, in these depths I think of my most favorite quote from my most favorite play, Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America.” Allow me to set the scene: Harper, a young newly-wed, in significant pain herself, is often left alone and has a tendency to hallucinate some powerful, perhaps even divine encounters. In one such instance she approaches the animatronic replica of a pioneering “Mormon Mother” (as the character is called) at the Mormon Visitor’s Center of Manhattan. Here is the dialogue that ensues: Harper: In your experience of the world. How do people change? Mormon Mother: Well it has something to do with God so it's not very nice. God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy hand in, he grabs hold of your bloody tubes and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out and the pain! We can't even talk about that. And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled and torn. It's up to you to do the stitching. Harper: And then up you get. And walk around. Mormon Mother: Just mangled guts pretending. Sometimes, we’re just “mangled guts,” but when we’re in emotional pain we don’t often give ourselves the permission to actually heal - to actually recover. We want to move through it quickly, or perhaps we dwell in it and let it fester; either way, I don’t think we’re that great at handing it in general. Maybe it’s because our communities and even our families have become more diffuse, maybe it’s because we hold ourselves and each other to unattainable and irresponsible levels of perfection - I don’t know, we can figure that one out later. Whatever the reason, it’s a bad one. We’ve got a new moon tomorrow (more on that next week), and a solar eclipse on top of that. Astrologically speaking, eclipses can slingshot us into periods of rapid change. Ever since I was a pre-teen, I’ve been fascinated by astrology; but I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, so I’ll keep this brief. According to Chani Nicholas (my favorite astrology blogger), eclipses bring big shifts, whether we want them or not. She opens her blog about this week’s eclipse with the following: “Each one of us has the right to heal. To heal from the pain of our past. To heal from the pain of the present. To heal from the pain that feels like it will never cease. It is our right. It is also our responsibility. For if we do not take up the tremendous task of healing, then we are sure to recreate and propagate our suffering.” Pain is the great Change Maker. If we listen to it, it’s got something to teach us. If we can honor it, and take the time to heal, to mourn, to lick our wounds then perhaps we can arrive on the other side of it with renewed perspective and hope - both of which can make change possible. Now is the time to do the healing. Spring is on the way with another cycle of birth and growth and flourishing life, and it's time to tend that garden...
2 Comments
Diane
3/7/2016 10:26:56 pm
Perfect timing, Callie. Thank you
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Crae
3/8/2016 08:46:22 am
You are a truly gifted writer and have great personal depth. Amazing! I see a seminar....workshops?
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