All Comments By

If I feel empathy from a friend, a professional, a stranger, for my pain, it makes it lighter, magically, and less brutal. If a doctor is all business and no heart, I don't want them as my doctor. The fact of being seen, and acknowledged gives value to what can be a terribly difficult passage. Healing is a shared experience, as suffering can be as well. Self pity is not a pretty thing. It takes courage to suffer, love and time to heal.

"We suffer, other's suffer too. Seeing it with love and as a larger game plan , makes us more compassionate towards others as well as ourselves." "as a larger game plane..." This rings so true. That gives me room in the midst of a suffocating and grief-ridden presence.

It sounds wise and helpful, but there are some issues for me. I don't want to keep listening to the same level of complete breakdown with someone I've known now most of a year, who lost a son to police brutality, and breaks apart daily. She can't hear a child cry without falling apart and wanting to run over to soothe the tantrumming infant. She is tantrumming herself. She feels totally broken, as she says. I can't give her what she needs. So I go walking with her in the forest, and let the trees heal her. We go to hear music, so the music can soothe and inspire. I frankly don't have the desire to listen to her anguish, over and over and over again. I feel I need protection from her constant pain. We are having her over for dinner, so that at least there will be two of us to hold space and be present.

Our depth of pain can release into the flower of love through deep connection, and shared joyful moments. What a beautiful piece of prose. Thank you.

Beautifully written. I agree, our hearts are supple by nature. Not brittle and closed. The way we are accepted or not by family, classmates, bosses and bullies can put walls around our shame of not being what others want us to be. When we find a gentle way to walk through and find ourselves, the heartbreaking events that always arise can be processed, as our suffering is open to the grace of ourselves and our openheartedness to Life.