Protecting Our Children From Suffering

"Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground."

-Oscar Wilde

     The other night I had a dream that I was parked on a city street, helping my three daughters into the car.  As we walked around the car, opening doors, I looked up and saw that there was a young man on top of the skyscraper above us, about to jump off.  I saw fear in my children's eyes, so I tried to rush them into the car...but I was too late.  The man jumped, and within seconds we heard a horrible groan, a gruesome splat, and I turned around to see his body, exploded into pieces, covering the sidewalk.  His bottom half had separated from his top half, his guts had been strewn around him, and his skin lay there limp and empty like a broken balloon.  I turned around again to see my beautiful daughters standing there staring, their faces frozen in shock.  I stared into their faces, knowing that I could never take away what they had just witnessed.  There was nothing I could do to protect them from experience.  I once again began to rush them into the car, so that we could leave this horrible sight...but I knew that it would be with them forever.

     More and more, when faced with the sufferings of others, I find myself speechless.  My own child, who is weeping because her first boyfriend broke up with her, a four year old who weeps because she knows her mom will hit her when they get home, a woman who was repeatedly raped by her uncle as a young child, a man coming out of many years in prison, who is terrified that there is no place for him in the world.  I open my ears and my heart, and let them in-I nod and listen and hold and hug, I do what I can to facilitate healing, but I am often left speechless.  Yes, I can offer advice and inspiration, yes I can relate to each one of them with my own stories of suffering, but there comes a point in witnessing where the only thing you can offer is love.  

    While holding a weeping child, while taking in the pain of others that I cannot take away, I want to weep as well.  I want to protect each person from heartbreak, holding them in a cocoon of comfort, bringing them up from the depths.  I want to get angry and find retribution for their broken hearts.  I want to make things better.  But that is exactly what I cannot do.  I cannot go to the depths with any of these people, and there is nothing I can say that will take away the pain.  I do what I can as an advocate, and then I step back into the role of mother.   If nothing else, I can listen to them and love them.  I look into their eyes and acknowledge their pain, with compassion.   This is possibly the most difficult part of being a parent.  To hold, to listen and to love, without expectation or need for control.  To witness our children experiencing life, without the need to protect them from it.

     Yes, we protect our children from violent images and language.  Yes, we protect them from the influence of our own cruelty and sickness.  We protect them from damage in the home, the family and in relationship, in the hopes that they will grow up with peaceful hearts.  Limiting what our children are exposed to in our own homes is an important part of keeping them safe and bringing them up right, but we must do this with knowledge that in the blink of an eye, they will be responsible adults, living in a world full of experience.  Allowing them to embrace the light and the darkness of life is not the same as teaching them that violence is ok.

     The instinctual reaction I felt in my dream, to shield my children from experience, is a natural one.  It is natural for humans to want to cushion themselves, and especially their children, from the pain of breaking, and the mystery of truth.  But without that pain, without that breaking, without the transformative experiences that the world has to offer us, how far into our own depths will we be able to go?  If we turn our personal suffering into blame, how will we know what to claim as our own?  If we deny discomforts instead of digesting them, then how will we last when we are truly tormented?  Pain is one of the many experiences that reminds us that we are in fact alive.  Pain is the feeling that often moves us into places we never would have gone, filling us with holes that we can then fill with gold.  As in the ancient art philosophy of Wabi-sabi, we take what is damaged or imperfect and make it extraordinarily beautiful.  Pain, if viewed as essential, is just another wave in the ocean that will soften us, sculpt us and bring us into a fuller self.  Pain is not the end of all things, nor the beginning of forever.  It is simply the journey into the belly of the whale, where we search for treasures that will help us continue on.  

     Beyond protecting others from injustice, it is not our role in life to change suffering.  If we try, we will make ourselves crazy, and we will teach those we love that feeling hurt, getting our hearts broken, and living the human experience are unnecessary and bad.  But if we bear witness to their suffering, holding them as they weep, loving them as they scream and giving them the fullness of our attention, we can help them understand that they are not alone.  We cannot take away or change the trials of the human journey, but we can help each other endure inevitable cracks in the flow of life and heart, just by saying, "I am here.  I hear you.  You will find a way out of this, and it will be beautiful."

"To drink of life is to drink of the miracle

and of the things that break."

-Mark Nepo

www.RNoelle.com

    

Demons, Patterns and Change

     "The inward battle-against our mind, our wounds, and the residues of the past-is more terrible than the outward battle."

-Swami Sivananda

     There is a part of me that I don't know what to do with.  It's ugly, mean, closed down and scared-like a shadow on my shoulder when I've been triggered.  Like a demon, whispering in my ear.  It thinks horrible thoughts and says terrible things.  It makes the nice side of me cower and run.  It hates people and situations, events and even life with a vengeance, and it wants to make everyone around me miserable.  When it's not rearing its ugly head, I think maybe it's gone away, and I live happily, like it never existed.  If I could, I would avoid all situations that bring this part of me to life.  After all, the history of my life is made up of running from pain, so why not?  But that's not an option anymore, because what triggers me most is partnership.  It is not an option for me to run anymore, to blame others anymore and to shut others out.  It's not an option to be hurtful and destructive, to be pushed and prodded by anger and fear.  I find myself in a panic, wedged between the need for intimacy and growth and the dread of what it means to open up and to let someone in.  Relationship, intimacy and trust, three of the most beautiful things in the world are what bring out the worst of the worst in me.

     There are moments when my life flashes before me and I can see every pattern I have repeated.  In those moments, I can also see that it is deeply ingrained in me to repeat that pattern again.  Everything inside me, especially the demon on my shoulder, is telling me that repeating the pattern would be better and more comfortable, because that's all I know.  There are moments when my life, my parent's lives, my grandparent's lives, and the lives of all my ancestors seem to taunt me into believing that these aspects of myself are too deep to change.  My mind becomes jumbled in questions, scanning my past, scanning myself, looking for answers.  Was I born this way?  Was it my family?  Was it my decisions?  Was it my partners?  In truth, all of these things make up who I am, and so all of these things have brought me to this moment of questioning.  But if I had one person or one event to blame my problems on, would that make a difference?  No.  I would still be here-faced with the demon inside, and faced with the desperation for something different.  Whatever the reason for my anger and fear, whoever was a part of instilling it in my psyche, it is my responsibility to move beyond it.  It is my duty to change.

     Even after years of examining this side of myself, I am living in limbo.  One insight at a time, I gain understanding.  One day at a time I see more clearly what my patterns are.  Layer by layer I move through what's holding me back and making me unhappy.  I let go, I pray, I exercise, I meditate.  I talk to friends, I ask advice.  I talk to therapists and I talk to my husband.  I am realizing that hiding my demons never makes them shrink or disappear.  Although exposing the ugly side of myself is the last thing in the world I want to do, I know that I need to talk about it to get it out.  If I don't talk about the way my demons are making me feel, then they will live and breed in my heart, talking about all the ways in which they will burst out some day.  In the holding in and the stuffing of resentment, in the denial of seemingly silly fears, in the pushing away of closeness and love, I only ever made myself less of a person.

     So I start with a commitment not to bottle things up.  My demons don't like this-they want to stay inside my heart and my head, running my life.  I take a deep breath and consciously relax, consciously accept life just the way it is...and then I hear a nagging voice say, "Stay tense.  Stay on guard.  Anger is necessary.  Fear is protecting you.  Never trust anyone."  Sometimes I listen to that voice and hold on to unhappiness.  Sometimes I don't.  It is always my choice.  Every day when I wake up, I choose to continue seeking the peace that I have not yet found, and moment by moment I make decisions that may not be easy, but that I know are better for me and for my family.  The paradox is that all the while, as I live on the faith that one day things will change, things are already changing.  Maybe I will be angry and sad forever, maybe I will be triggered at every level of intimacy that I hit-there is no way for me to know.  I am moving blindly forward, out of pattern, out of comfort.  I have ceased asking "why do I have these problems?" and turned my focus instead to making better decisions in tough moments, having intentions for a better life and envisioning the kind of person I would like to be.

     Our fears may differ, but our lashing out is the same.  Like wild animals, we hiss or hide, run or fight, pretending that we can control our fears by controlling our environment.  Our anger may be triggered by different circumstances, but its affect is the same.  Whether it happens in a lifetime or in a day, a closed heart will either implode or explode when the demons surface, causing destruction within and without.  Something, at some point will push each of us against a wall and give us an option to change.  Every one of us is faced with moments that make us look within and ask, 'Is the pain of repetition finally worse than the pain of growth?"

"Suffering makes an instrument of each of us,

so that standing naked, holes and all, 

the unseen vitalities can be heard

through our simplified lives."

-Mark Nepo

www.RNoelle.com