Tag: acceptance

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The Birthday of the World

The Story of the Birthday of the World

as told by Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D.

“ In the beginning there was only the Holy Darkness, the Ein  Sof, the source of life.  Then in the course of history at a moment in time this world, the world of 1000 thousand things,  emerged from the heart of the Holy Darkness as a great ray of light.

And then (perhaps because this is a Jewish story) there was an accident.  The vessels containing the light of the world, the wholeness of the world, broke. And the wholeness of the world, the light of the world was scattered into 1000 thousand fragments of light.  And they fell into all events and all people,  where they remain deeply hidden until this very day. 

According to my grandfather, the whole human race is a response to this accident.  We are here because we are born with the capacity to find the hidden light in all events and all people, and to lift it up and make it visible once again, and thereby to restore the  innate wholeness of the world. 

This is a very important story for the world today.  This task is called tikkun olam in Hebrew, which means the restoration of the whole world.  This is a collective task.   It involves all people who have ever been born, all people presently alive and all people yet to be born. We are all healers of the world.

 This story opens a sense of possibility.  It’s not about healing the world by making a huge difference.  It’s about healing the world that touches you. That’s around you.  This is our power. “

I remember the day as if it were yesterday, despite it having been many years ago. It was a time in my life I was feeling incredibly sad, broken really. The gravity of my heavy heart was pulling me down in ways that everyday living felt insurmountable. On this particular day, I remember feeling a level of desperation that accompanied my unrelenting grief. The desperation was fueled by a need to feel different somehow, to escape the confines of my body and be liberated from the mental chains to which I was bound.

It sounds trivial now, but that morning I had forgot my running shoes in the bag I packed to take with me to work. I had to run; I craved some relief. In retrospect, maybe I was trying to run away from how I was feeling or outrun whatever it was I was afraid to face. I don’t know, but after a trip to the shoe store and a new pair of running shoes in hand, I headed to the gym. It was a cold, sleeting, and miserable that day. The gym looked out onto the parking lot, easily seen from the open expanse of windows lining the front wall. Even the repetitive churning of the treadmill was not enough to drown out the voices in my head.  I felt alone.

What happened next, I can only describe as a spiritual experience. Transcendental moments are almost impossible to translate. Words fail to capture and convey the importance of the moment or to relate the absolute certainty that something inside you changed from that felt experience. But this was such a moment for me. I looked up from where I had been staring at the console, watching the seconds drag on, willing my mind to focus on something, anything other than my present experience. I happened to see a young man walking into the gym who was clearly disabled. There was something wrong with one of his legs. He dragged it behind him with much effort. His gait was off, he moved slowly, exerting incredible energy with every step. I admired his grit, his tenacity, and his will to make it out on a cold, dreary day to the gym when it would have been much easier to stay at home. But what really shifted my perspective that day was watching how the people around him offered to help. Whether it was opening a door or carrying his bags, there were offers of assistance and support every step of the way to help him reach his goal.

In a split second, I felt in my body something break apart, tears fell down my face, and I grasped the magnitude of the revelation, I was him. The only difference was, I carried my affliction on the inside. Whether I came into the world that way, or it was from my own history of childhood trauma I don’t know. What I do know is my inside matched his outside. Things I had imagined to be easy for other people, things they maneuvered effortlessly felt unexplainably hard for me. My pain, I dragged along beside me silently.

But there were significant differences as a result of his disability being so clear for the world to see. Unlike me, he had no way to hide his limitations. I, on the other hand, exerted a great deal of energy keeping my brokenness hidden from the world. Shrouded in shame and relegated to the shadows. As I watched him that day, I wondered how much I had missed out on by keeping my woundedness closeted away in isolation.

As the people around him saw him struggle, they went out of their way to open doors, help him get checked in, and there were likely countless more accommodations made to make what was already difficult, any amount easier. Because his need for help was so visible, it allowed others to be there and support him in a way that provided comfort and healing. Something I had been denying myself by masking my wounds behind a veneer of invulnerability.

But no more. I decided that day that whatever I had to do to bring my brokenness into the light, I would do it. By masking my pain, I was making it harder to find the hidden light and bring healing and wholeness to myself and offer the same to the world. When we invest so much time and energy into building a façade of perfection, we miss what is most true. That for each of us, the light is hidden in our places of darkness. There is no path to healing without going into the recesses of the shadow to reclaim the light that resides within each of us. As we grow less afraid of the dark in ourselves, we become more adept at guiding others on this hero’s journey. The Birthday of the World reminds us we are all healers on this road to find the hidden light and make it visible once again and restore the innate wholeness of the world.

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How to be ok when your not ok

We live in a world where we are constantly bombarded with messages about what it means to live the American dream and achieve the perfect life. Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat have given us the unique ability to filter out the less glamorous aspects of our lives and offer to the world some watered down, inauthentic version that fits with that idealized image. I have thought a lot about the costs and where have we have paid the price for these advances in technology. I have wondered if the rise of the internet and social media have played a part in the frightening rise of mental health issues, especially among our youth and young adults.

Before global connectivity and social media, what we learned about our world came largely from our flesh and blood relationships, our family and friends. We had the opportunity to learn through these deep and meaningful relationships, that life is often messy, imperfect and filled with the unexpected. This is the price of being human. Sure, many of us spent time, even before the rise of the internet, trying to hide the more uncomfortable aspects of our private lives. But here’s the thing, in real-life that’s a lot harder to do.

Our heartaches and struggles are unconsciously revealed through the subtle rounding of our shoulders when we walk, the unexpected catch in our voice, or the hint of sadness in our eyes. The countless ways the people around us really know who we are without our having to say it out loud. How often has a friend intuitively known when something was wrong, the truth revealed by our subtle cues long before we found the strength to share our story with others. We learn that it is okay to not be okay because we see the people around us, those we love, during the times in their life when they are decidedly not ok and watch them make it through to the other side intact.

On social media we often fail to see this kind of honesty. Whether it’s an Instagram influencer or a classmate from high school, we all feel the pressure to look perfect. And because we are privy to such a skewed personal narrative, we miss out on witnessing the beautiful sequence of events that transpire when we witness each other’s struggles. It is here we see how unbelievably awful life can be, how capable we are of persevering and overcoming, and just how much of our time can be spent feeling like we are living in chaos.
This kind of upheaval is a requirement for change and growth. Period. Chaos theory tells us that when you work to change a system, you push it out of its previously stable state. When that occurs, it then begins to oscillate between the old system and the new. The previous system must let go and fall apart for the new state to emerge. When we are in the middle of this it feels like nothing is ok or ever will be again.

“Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is thing’s don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen; room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.” - Pema Chodron

Our current obsession with the Marie Kondo brand- controlled, sanitized, and demanding it meet our insatiable need to be filled with joy is antithetical to personal and spiritual growth. Perhaps, we can’t get enough of it because it offers an illusion of safety or a measure of comfort in uncertain times, but it fails to prepare us adequately for the challenges we will face in life.
We spend our time and energy trying to manipulate and manage our circumstances instead of fostering our innate resilience and strengthening our ability to accept life as it is and not how we want it to be. We build valuable muscle memory each time we struggle and find ourselves on the other side, stronger for the experience. We learn to trust and have faith when we practice letting go in the moments when it feels impossible and everything in us screams for us to hold on tighter.

In some measure, the collateral damage from the digital age has been alienating us from the very thing that protects us in times of hardship and struggle. It is impossible to be connected to an image on a mobile phone and a status update cannot feed our soul’s need for belonging. That falls squarely in the province of the real world and in our real relationships. Those positive social interactions protect against stress and we are failing to access this brilliant evolutionary system when our attempts at bonding primarily occur via technology and social networking. At the end of the day, it is the bonds of love and connection that allow us to endure when things feel like they are falling apart.

So, how do we learn to feel okay not being okay? Cultivate relationships with people committed to living authentically and whole-heartedly. Find your family, those who know the intrinsic value of chaos and struggle on the road to reorganization and self-love. Connect, love deeply in the places that hurt. Reject the illusion of perfection everywhere you see it. Remind yourself to stop comparing your inside to everyone else’s outside.

 Be here now, invite the present moment into your life and make space for whatever may show up. Remember that the idea of beauty and perfection is only a construct, so give yourself permission to make your version big enough to include the parts of you that feel so exquisitely tender and vulnerable. Invite them to show up, then love them unconditionally and often. Learn to welcome not being okay because deep in your bones you know that it is here you will remember that you were ok all along.

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#BeYourStory

In an age of selfies, snapchat, Instagram and influencers it can be awfully hard for a girl to hang on to some genuine, authentic self-love. I mean we are bombarded in the media with images that are heavily edited, redacted, filtered, altered, or staged in such a way to make us buy in to the myth of perfection. Some idealized picture of who they think we should want to be. Honestly, if I see one more episode featuring the "unreal housewives" where none of the women have any wrinkles, put on display their unnaturally taut faces bearing the usual frozen, vacuous expressions, their Balayage perfected hair, pre-fab boobs and manicured nails I may just scream. For the love of God, women are getting silicone injections in their body at their neighborhood Jiffy Lube, risking their lives all for a Lululemon-Kardashian ass, it's like chasing unicorns and has come to epitomize much that is wrong in our world today.

How in the actual fuck did this become our new normal? Vaginal steaming, waist training, cupping, vaginal rejuvenation, breast implants, breast lifts? Really just leave the girls the hell alone. These magical, mystical life-giving beauties are a testament to the strength and the absolute amazingness of women. I have breastfed three children and let me tell you, those girls are tired and have earned the right to sag and droop a bit if they want.

Self-love starts here people. When I look in the mirror what is the message I am choosing to send to myself? Can I bravely tell my reflection that each new wrinkle was hard fought and well earned? Paid for by the countless sleepless nights spent rocking my newborn babies, the job insecurities, a sick parent, the unexpected and unimaginable heartbreak. Every crease, Every line has a story to tell about each of us and our beautiful, incredible and at times, anxiety ridden and grief laden lives. The reflection in the mirror is simply my story made visible to the world.

Maybe that is why we continue to create ever more cosmetic surgeries and procedures and we fund a billion dollar beauty business as we willingly hand over our money to any snake oil salesperson peddling perpetual youth. I don't know, perhaps it feels safer to try and deny and erase our history, refuse to accept the vulnerability that comes with being in these human bodies. Our aging process that is so clearly visible for all the world to see, forces us to face our own mortality square in the eye. And, as long as our magazines and social media stay preternaturally young and we continue to eradicate all evidence of aging and imperfection, we close the door on creating a conversation about deeper truths.

These bodies tell our stories with painstaking honesty and share with the whole world our lifetime of heartbreak, worry, loneliness, resilience, and joy. They bear witness to our lives and lovingly mark the passage of time. Every time we try to inject, cut, lift, laser, away our perceived imperfections, this translates into a missed opportunity to seek meaning in this crazy journey we are all on together. It is our collective insanity that compels us to addictively scroll our Facebook feed and compare our insides to others outsides or try create the perfect Instagram pic no matter the cost, and it diminishes each of us. It is the passage of time and the recognition of our own mortality that continually reminds us that our time here is fleeting and we should get busy making it matter. When our world begins to reflect media images of unretouched, imperfect, unapologetically beautiful humans we will learn to truly embrace diversity and begin to yearn for more than what is only skin deep. We learn that it is only our story that truly matters.

So today I announce to the world that I am claiming this for myself! Today I choose the unedited, unretouched, unfiltered story of my life. By letting go of this construct of beauty and perfection we open ourselves up to one another through our story and it is through our stories we find our deepest connections around our shared humanity. The many-colored threads that weave between us help us to touch something greater than ourselves, something divine, something undeniably true. For when this life comes to an end, as it will for us all, I don't want to look back on my life having spent far too many of my moments in search of the perfect peroxide blonde, an unnaturally smooth visage, an annoyingly pert bottom or a perfect pair of Hollywood inspired double DD's. I want to be able to say that I lived out loud, faced down my fears, loved with abandon, laughed often, felt deeply, practiced kindness, helped others and left this world a little better place for having been here. I want for you to look at me and in each new line see the story of my imperfect life. See the woman who struggled to learn how to own her story and at the end of the day wholeheartedly tried to create a life that meant something. A woman who defied all odds to embrace a new construct of beauty- one that whispered… it is time to #BeYourStory. Pass it on

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Everyone has a story…

I have had a long time to think about addiction and recovery from addiction, both in my own life and in my work with others. Over the years there are some memories that stand out, and one such memory was in 1991, I was early in my recovery and someone said something to me that has resonated with me, even all these years later. They said that stopping the addictive behavior was only a prerequisite to get to the actual work we must face on our recovery journey. At the time I was shocked and, to be honest, I really didn’t quite believe it. I mean surely if you stop the addictive behavior, your life would immediately fall into place and all the issues that previously plagued you would just effortlessly resolve. I suppose looking back my thought process was a magical blend of naivete and wishful thinking but, in my defense, I was absolutely desperate to find a concrete, black and white answer to my suffering so I could ferret out a quick solution and leave behind the lifetime of trauma I carried with me like a second skin. As you might have guessed, through the passage of time and the unpredictability of life, I found out rather quickly that what lay neglected and buried had not only fueled my addiction but was what I had been running from and desperately needing to find the courage to face.
You know addiction has often reminded me of the great and powerful Wizard from the Wizard of Oz. At first, he appears frightening with all of his theatrics and his dramatic presence but as we dig deeper, we learn that beneath it all he is simply a frightened and powerless man trying to feel safe in an uncertain world. This is an apt metaphor for addiction. It appears so big and scary from the outside but when we can slow down and see what’s beneath the surface of the addiction… well let’s just say that somewhere in our suffering and vulnerability is where our real work begins. Now don’t get me wrong, addiction itself is a problem. You only need look at the news to see the staggering impact of how our addictions are wreaking havoc in our world. Overdose deaths, obesity, incarceration, and skyrocketing medical costs to name just a few. I mean addiction is a crazy making disease, recklessly spreading its chaos, disrupting and devastating lives, stealing the things we most value, that make our lives feel meaningful.
But you know what? Our addictions honestly did not start out that way. I think really it would be more accurate to say that our addictions initially served as a solution to an overwhelming problem and a means to provide comfort to an overwrought nervous system. Research bears this out. Decades of research into adverse childhood experiences reveal the close relationship between early trauma and adversity with later issues of addiction. Those brain changes from the early adversity set the stage by making us vulnerable to the siren song of addiction and the relief they always promise to provide but never do for long. I can still remember, all these years later how I felt after that first drink, how inexplicably the anxiety that had been so heavily anchored to my body for what felt like forever effortlessly slipped away and was replaced by a much longed for sense of well-being. Or maybe you can connect to the curious mix of both relief and enjoyment after eating way too much of that rich, decadent chocolate cake- how at the time it felt almost nurturing and later came to masquerade itself as self-care.
Addictions are all still highly stigmatized and demonized. No doubt, it is heartbreaking the damage it does not only to the person with the addiction but also to our families and everyone that touches our lives. But when I truly understood at a deep level that our addictive behaviors were an attempt to relieve incredible suffering and offer reprieve to a body that may have been locked in overdrive since childhood, only then I was able to see myself through the lens of compassion and let go of my deeply rooted habitual patterns of shaming myself. I could finally acknowledge that little girl who needed to be held, needed the co-regulatory support of a healthy caregiver and when that was not available looked for anything in its absence that would bring comfort, however inadequate.
It has been this understanding around the origins of my addiction and the willingness to stop punishing myself and instead, offer the comfort and support that I had been deprived that has allowed for growth and healing to take place. We must recognize that the shame and neglect the person struggling with addiction faces is often a heartbreaking replication of the original childhood wound. So, if you have someone in your life who is struggling with addiction, or perhaps you have been down this road yourself, please try to remember that the greatest expression of love we have to offer is to be exceedingly gentle and unceasingly kind. Above all we must never forget that we all have a story.
“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle” Socrates