All of my pain is a spider

Meeting pain like it's a scared animal

Dear friends, if you didn’t read my post last week, I announced that I am going to be co-leading a 3-day workshop in Telluride next month. If you want to learn more about it and sign up, please read last week’s post here.

All of my pain is a spider
I've learned not to crush
with the heel of my shoe
but to guide with a page
of my journal
into an empty glass
asking questions about its life,
its purpose, as i walk
careful out to the garden
and rest it down on the earth.
My pain, how happy it is
to leave me whenever
I treat it kind

-Andrea Gibson

I read this poem recently by

Andrea Gibson

, who I consider one of the most prolific, tender, and loving voices of our time. What a gift they are!

It honestly makes me tear up every time I read it. I have chronically tried to avoid pain for most of my life (OF COURSE!!! How human of me!!!), and I can cognitively know it never works. I have had all the data to show me that, and from lived experience, I know that it has never worked. AND STILL, there is a deep part of me that wants to escape the pain in my body, the pain in my mind, the pain of this world, the pain that is being inflicted on immigrants, Palestinians, the queer community, animals, our earth (to name just a few of the things that break my heart at the moment).

I have felt overcome with grief, sadness, and heartbreak. I see myself wanting to escape with books, my phone, and TV - anything to not feel the pain.

Hillary and I, when I was in Vancouver to co-lead the Invitation of Pain with her. Can you see how puffy and red my eyes are? So many tears.

When I was visiting my beautiful friend Dr. Hillary McBride recently, I basically cried for two days straight. On the first night I got to her home, we sat on her couch and caught up. It is amazing what happens when you are with a deeply safe person who sees you and loves you. As an over-the-top sensitive, tender, and empathic person, I am realizing that I have had a lot of protective walls around my heart to often just get through a day. I do not trust people easily, and I do not let very many people into the inner workings of my heart.

Because my heart feels so completely safe with Hillary, I felt walls come down and some incredibly raw, vulnerable parts of me showed up to be witnessed, held, and loved. I shared parts that I have carried shame about and fear around, and my beautiful friend met me there. Asked questions without judgment and just loved me. It was so cathartic, holy, and deeply vulnerable.

I saw this poem the next week, and it instantly made me think of Hillary and how well she loves and holds. What I also know to be true is that she is a mirror to me of how I get to also love, hold, and meet my own pain.

On some level, I have felt like I could not handle this pain because the grief and hurt feels so big. I think I have unconsciously thought it would drown me if I let myself feel the depths of this pain.

I think perimenopause is also so lovingly giving more access to feeling this pain because it keeps coming right up to the surface and won’t let me ignore it. These parts of me want to be witnessed, held, and loved with curiosity, just like my beautiful friend modeled to me. I want my body to feel safe with me. To trust that I will take care of her, be with her, and listen to her. I know that this is slow and gentle work and my body is so deserving of all my care.

I keep coming back to this poem. The hurt is calling me inward to gently and lovingly meet it. To validate it, to remind it that it gets to be here. It is telling me a story of what I care about. Where I have been wounded, what is longing to be embraced and welcomed. I have known this for a long time and have gotten to practice it too, and yet there are so many more deeply aching parts in me to meet and witness.

When we meet our grief and pain with tenderness and compassion, it softens and it moves. What we judge, we are stuck with, and boy oh boy have I judged and criticized myself in this life! So here is to meeting these parts with the care, compassion, and tenderness with which I treat a scared, hurting animal. The truth is, when we do that, it is of service to the world!

Nothing about these acts are self-indulgent, it is actually so, so kind! Because when we meet our own pain this way, it gives us so much more compassion to meet others' pain with the same level of care and compassion. And that is what we need more of in this world! Less othering, more kindness and love.

What parts in you are needing to be held and cared for? My hope for you is that you get to meet yourself where it hurts with so much care and compassion. You are so deserving of that sweet friend. We all are. And maybe, just maybe, if we all gave ourselves a little more self-compassion and care, this world would become a bit more loving and compassionate place to be.

I love you, and all of you is welcome here, Ruthie