resilience

Feeling our way home

Remember the old instruction on what to do when you’re lost?  I can recall my parents and grandparents reminding me as a child—stay where you are!  Don’t go searching frantically.  Keep your wits about you and stay calm.  Easier said than done, to be sure.  When agitated, anxious, restless, or out of sorts, staying with the discomfort is one thing, and mindfulness invites us to stay.  In the words of Pema Chodron from her book, The Places that Scare You, “whenever we wander off, we gently encourage ourselves to “stay” and settle down. are we experiencing restlessness? Stay!  Discursive mind? Stay! Aching knees and throbbing back? Stay! What’s for lunch? Stay! What am I doing here? Stay! I can’t stand this another minute! Stay! That is how we cultivate steadfastness.” 

Okay, so perhaps we can patiently meet ourselves and rest with uncertainty.  But “stay calm”?  That advice is as good as bubble gum to a roof caved in . . . useless.  Furthermore, “just relax” can frankly sound like pretty annoying direction.  Rather than helping us to chill, the critical mind runs the chance of further fraying our nerves.  Honestly, our nervous system isn’t too receptive to the intellect’s guidance to relax.  Period.  Our bodies already have this wisdom built in, and our biology knows how to return to balance.  This requires the intellect to get out of the way.  So, perhaps the nervous system could offer this wise retort to the rational brain: “be quiet”.  The body is the pillar of experience in coming back to baseline, after all.

Dr. Christiane Northrup, renowned women’s health expert, has said, “We have to give our bodies credit for their innate wisdom.  We don’t need to know exactly why something is happening in order to respond to it.  Understanding comes after you have allowed yourself to experience what you are feeling.  Healing is an organic process that happens in the body as well as the emotions.  The intellect is the last part that gets it.”  How’s that for embodied brilliance present in our personhood at every moment?

So, what might it be like to become a homebody?  To come into being in our own bodies?  To let go of habit and, instead, inhabit this home we live in?  Deeply honoring the body’s wisdom.  The good news is that being willing to ask the questions doesn’t then bind us to having to provide the answer.  As Rilke has said, “Don’t search for answers, which could not be given to you now . . .”  It’s really through inquiry and deep listening we can open to the body’s wisdom.  Pema Chodron goes on to say, “Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.”  Wise guidance and sage advice, indeed.  So, why not turn inward, inviting yourself to stay awhile, even welcoming lived experience to sit for tea to learn from what it has to teach.  Who knows?  We may even enjoy our own company.

Lessons from an earthworm on love and resilience

Love is not always so sweet. Sure, the syrupy quality of love is often a bit “in our face” during February, but we know from our own experience that love can get down-right mucky at times. The gritty, dirty, grubby underbelly of love doesn’t get much coverage. It’s too bad. Which brings me to the earthworm. 

When I was little, I learned some valuable lessons from an earthworm. While it might sound like an unlikely teacher to some, know that I enjoyed much of my childhood playing in the woods, happily digging in the dirt, hair entangled. Back in those early days, I remember learning that, when cut in half, worms can regenerate and grow a new tail. Talk about resilience! This icky truth piqued my curiosity and desire to understand what could inspire the worm to grow back. As I grew older, I came to understand that, when it comes to growth and thriving, “it’s complicated.” Now, the biological details are important concerning the circumstances and conditions allowing this healing to go down, as is the type of worm, but let’s dig for the larger lesson here. How might we heal out of our own wounds?  

Were it not for love, we would not have access to the motivation and drive to grow, learn, care, and love in return. I recall the research study conducted about 70 years ago now by Harry Harlow with rhesus monkeys that suggests love is essential to promoting healthy development. Could it be that love is as essential to our growth as food, water, and safety? What if we considered love as foundational to our capacity to thrive; a core competency we may spend a lifetime improving upon? Which brings me back to the earthworm . . .

How do we respond under stress? When faced with challenge, can we channel our limited energy to regenerating and growing? When cut through to the core, can we recognize our own vast potential and reach toward new possibility?

The lessons from the earthworm stay with me; how we, too, only come to know love through the pain of loss. Sometimes this impulse toward regenerative love naturally arises, expanding easily from within. And during times of suffering, we may find it quite unexpectedly, buried deep in the earthy loam of our experience, hidden below the surface. Psychotherapist and meditation teacher Tara Brach has said, “The alchemy of compassion is to let ourselves be touched by suffering, including our own.” Meeting suffering with kindness fertilizes the soil that sustains love. This vulnerability invites us to push up our sleeves and really get our hands dirty, meeting this raw material of life. Now that’s love.