"Lighthouses don't go running around looking for boats to save.
They just stand there, shining."
Anne Lamott
I received this photo today from someone I've been working with for about nine months. It was her expression of gratitude for the time we've spent together navigating her journey through abysmal grief and suffering.
One thing she said to me, for which I felt honored and humbled was this:
"You never told me how I should feel or what I should do. You never made me feel judged or crazy like so many others. You don't rush my healing. If I cry, you just sit with me as I cry. If I laugh you understand that doesn't mean I'm over his death. You helped me when you didn't even know you were helping. Not just in your office, but outside your office. Just knowing you are in the world helps me. You are just there being you. And that is what helped me learn to swim. I watched you be you and you accepted me no matter what. I thank you for that comfort. There is no where else I can go to get that..."
There is no greater imperative for true healers than to surrender to powerlessness in the face of human suffering. We simply cannot cure the death of our Beloved.
We cannot wave our magic wands. We cannot prescribe a magic pill. We cannot clean it and make it pretty. Or contain it. Or manage it. Or label it. No label could begin to describe or capture its excruciation.
There is no magic mantra. No magic prayer. No magic ritual. No magic words or verse. Nothing cures this. Nothing.
While there is much debate over the new DSM-V's upcoming release, what I can say to my colleagues and students is that the healing from suffering does not come from anything you will say or do or wish or believe. It does not come from any theory of any book from any 'evidence-based practice' or any research.
It comes from the open heart of civic love. It comes from who you are with the other, like Buber's Ich and Du (I and Thou).
Not this sorrow,
you cannot drape it
over sand dunes
hoping it will blow into the atmosphere,
not this sorrow...
and the slow sound of the word
sorrow
sorrow
sorrow
begins a keening cry
soft and solid, loud
and languorous,
stretching pain until
it begins to wear thin in spots,
and the tears that watered rain forests
now collect in lakes, and
those who know this sorrow
plant a tree,
a magnificent tree.
-Ruth Ann Meyers Kulp
No.
We cannot row away the sorrow.
We cannot.
We can only be with its cry.
We can only be with its cry.
3 comments:
Thank you for this post...
Quote "...the healing from suffering does not come from anything you will say or do or wish or believe. It does not come from any theory of any book from any 'evidence-based practice' or any research.
It comes from the open heart of civic love. It comes from who you are with the other...."
I experience this daily, even with the littlest ones. Being there not just for the good, but the bad and the ugly, being non-judgmental, being present in the moment, not doing, just being, is what allows for healing.
As I experience almost daily the collective pain and sadness due to what I call soul ignorance the following sentence of your post speaks to me deeply:
"There is no greater imperative for true healers than to surrender to powerlessness in the face of human suffering."
For me human suffering is not just caused by the loss of a close relative (and we had our share of that in my birth family) but by the constant denial of states of powerlessness or states of dark night of the ego, which results in so much pain and suffering afflicted on one another that when I get in touch with this collective energy it sometimes feels totally overwhelming.
In this sea of denial of the 'unpleasant' aspects of life your blog really is a 'lighthouse that does not run around looking for boats to save. It just stands there, shining'.
Thank you for shining.
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