There is a part of me that is tender, hurt, grieving and super-sensitive. He feels like something very young. Of all the parts that make up this mysterious something that I call ‘I’, he is among the smallest.Deeply loving, filled with emotion, he easily gets caught up in a story of abandonment. His fears are specific, and strongly predictive. ‘You’ll leave me’, he says. By ‘you’ he means just about anyone - friends, lovers, family, teachers - and bigger entities too - community, this country in which I live, life itself. And by ‘you’ he also means ‘me’ - the one of whom he is a part, the one who is his home.‘You will abandon me’, he says, ‘and I will not be able to tolerate the loss itself, nor my grief at the loss. And what’s more, I know when I get abandoned it will be my fault. I’ll cause it by my actions, or by my inaction. Or because I was not able to prevent it’.He’s onto something, of course. Loss is a given of any human life. He - as I, as you - will eventually lose everything and everyone that we love. And his grief and tenderness is real, and appropriate to the scale of the coming bereavement. But this part, so young and with such a small horizon, is scared to live in the world because the loss feels like it is now. The abandonment he fears, ever present.He has some quite sophisticated strategies to try to head off the losses that terrify him. He wants me to feel his fear, always, so that we won’t make a mis-step. He’ll do his best for me not to feel, nor let on to feeling, the grief that he holds, nor any feelings that might make me vulnerable. He holds on very tight, and sometimes as a result I hold on very tight too. And he’s a master at getting his abandonment in first, finding ways I can get resentful and abandon other people before they can abandon me. He’s done this many many times - I have done this many times in his name. In a way, he feels vindicated when people do actually leave, because it shows that his world view, and his deep fear, are justified.He wants us to live in a very narrow space of possibilities. He’s only open for being seen by others in a very particular way (only with love and appreciation, never with judgement) and if he doesn’t get seen this way he’s quickly wounded, withdrawn, sullen, quietly rageful or doing his best to manipulate others so that the world is back to the way he wants it.Because this part is in such difficulty, he grabs my attention frequently. And when he does I identify with him. I take him to be me, and me to be him. And this is the big mistake. When he is in the driver’s seat I forget that there are things to feel that are different to what he is feeling, ways of seeing that are different to what he’s seeing, and different ways to act. When I think I am him, I am at my smallest and most afraid.Over time I have come to see that my work is one of self-remembering. Remembering that I am vast. That I contain multitudes. That as well as this part, there are others. And that my work is not to turn away, not to run from this tiny scared part of me - it is so easy to push him away, to visit upon him the very abandonment that he fears - but to hold him close, to cradle him, to honour him and his gifts. It is my work to welcome him home. To say to him, “Yes, I see you. I have you. You are safe here. You cannot fall”.And my work too is to know that, just as I know he is held in the vast something called ‘I’, I too am held in and am part of something vast that has no given name but might best be called ‘life’. When I know myself this way, as one expression of a phenomenon which brings me into being and out of which I cannot fall, I am freed from being a prisoner of my fear and available. I am freed to love in the way I want to love, to create, speak out, be vulnerable and intimate and angry and truthful and real and to risk the risks that are required to be fully alive, the very risks that he is too afraid for me to take.
Photo by Dmitri Popov on Unsplash
Could it be that it's time for you to give up looking good so you can be real instead?I'm not saying this lightly.Five summers ago, I found myself rendered momentarily speechless, mid-conversation, as a dear friend and I walked together for lunch. A few minutes later, flat on my back on the pavement, heart pounding, short of breath, mind racing.I knew for certain only after a few days - but had an inkling as it happened - that an undiagnosed blood clot that had been forming in my leg for some time had at that moment broken loose from its moorings.Terror, love, longing, hope, confusion.I called home while we waited for the paramedics to arrive."I'm fine," I said. "There's nothing to be worried about".Not, "I'm scared.". Not, "Please help me". Not, "I don't know if I'm going to be ok"."I'm fine".It was a hot June afternoon, blue skies, but there must have been clouds as I remember watching a seagull wheel high overhead against a background of grey-white."I'm fine".Just when I most needed help and connection I played my most familiar, habitual 'looking good' hand - making sure others around me had nothing to be worried about. A hand I've played repeatedly since I was a child.Even in the most obviously life-threatening situation I had yet experienced: "I'm fine". Too afraid to be seen for real, to be seen as something other than my carefully nurtured image of myself.It was there, on the pavement, that I started to understand in a new way the cost of holding myself back from those I 
We have to find a way to love our brokennessNo, not loving ourselves in spite of our failingsBut loving the brokenness itselfWe have to love all the ways we're lateAnd all the ways we missed the pointWe have to love that we were scaredAnd that we were ashamed to say itWe have to love that we didn't get it all doneAnd love that we imagined it was doable in the first placeWe have to love that we're such a glorious messAnd how we struggle to meet our own standardsWe have to learn to love, in short,all the ways we fall shortBecause our grace, courage and capacity to standOur care of what's broken in the world around usIs strongest when we're carriedby that which we've learned to cherishAnd not when we're miredin that which we've chosen to hate.
A meditation for those days when we feel small, abandoned, or on the outside of our lives.Bless these feet that carry me by day and by night.Bless these hands that touch, sense, and bring the world towards me.Bless these lungs, transforming air into life on every breath,and bless this heart, for the continued heritage of all heartssince the first broke into the stillness.Bless this mouth, that can say what only I can say.Bless this body for love, joy, grief, rage, despair and hope.Bless this 'I' for incompleteness.Bless this mind that discerns, wonders, confusesand occasionally makes sense of the chaos.Bless the uncountable mistakes, accidents, chances and failuresthat keep life going and delivered me to this moment.I do not know, really, what is mine to do.But I do know that I am here,along with so many others.So bless the here-ness of me, and may it be my offering,My thanks, my home.
There are a million ways to be. But we hold on tightly to the way of being that is most familiar to us - the one each of us thinks is who we are.And so when we're in trouble - or stressed, or feeling held back by the world or by ourselves, when we're longing, wishing, wanting, despairing - we tend to do more of what we already know to do. What we always do.Even when it hurts us.Even when by doing this, we keep the world the same as it has been for so long.We choose familiarity over our own growth, because familiarity seems to save us from risk. At least we know the world when it's this size, this shape.At least we won't be surprised.And, because of this, just when our habit is to rush to do something, it's often just the right time to wait. When we're certain we have to be certain, the right time to be curious. When we're most familiar with holding back, it can be the time to act. When we're sure we have to be strong, the right time to be vulnerable. When we're most ready to judge can be time to suspend judgement. When we're most harsh on ourselves it's the time, instead, to be exquisitely kind.And, when we're most despairing, it's often just the right time to hope.
We've allowed ourselves to become obsessed by youth.The way this has shaped our public lives is quite easy to see, from the relentless focus on youthful beauty in our media to the cruelty of causal ageism in the workplace.What's harder to see is how it is affecting the narratives we have about ourselves.We see all the ways that growing old is a falling apart, an endless series of losses, a disintegration. And so we try to stave it off, denying what is happening to us. As we grow older and as the time remaining to us diminishes, we become diminished in our own eyes. In this way we rob ourselves and others of our dignity.But here is an account of ageing from the Jewish mystical work, the Zohar, which points to a different possibility:
When we're feeling fear, sorrow, anger or emptiness at the world - or at any situation we find ourselves in the midst of - perhaps it would help us to remember:That when we speak our fear we draw on the courage and dedication it takes to speak;And when we express our sorrow it can arise from our love and care for what has been lost;That we can speak about our anger best by finding the commitment to justice from which it comes;And that our emptiness, our sense of what is still missing, is also the possibility from which something new can arise.Every anguish, every sorrow, has its truest ground in a kind of dedication, hope and love. And when we can remember that, rather than just the anguish and sorrow, our chances of being able to contribute with dignity are deepened and widened and made more real.