Love sorrow. She is yours now, and you must
take care of what has been
given. Brush her hair, help her
into her little coat, hold her hand,
especially when crossing a street. For, think,
what if you should lose her? Then you would be
sorrow yourself; her drawn face, her sleeplessness
would be yours. Take care, touch
her forehead that she feel herself not so
utterly alone. And smile, that she does not
altogether forget the world before the lesson.
Have patience in abundance. And do not
ever lie or ever leave her even for a moment
by herself, which is to say, possibly, again,
abandoned. She is strange, mute, difficult,
sometimes unmanageable but, remember, she is a child.
And amazing things can happen. And you may see,
as the two of you go
walking together in the morning light, how
little by little she relaxes; she looks about her;
she beginsto grow.
Before I was old enough to resolve the judgmental, self- blaming beliefs that caused my pain, I had no concept of true peace. I found numbness to be normal and familiar. A seemingly painless place, numbness kept all my suffering away but it also prevented me from experiencing all feelings, including happiness. I’d heard it said that we don’t miss what we’ve never had, but peace and joy were so far removed from my consciousness that I didn’t have a clue that it was possible for me to experience those beautiful emotions.
When we don’t have the tools to face our pain, we numb out. There are many ways to do this: through psychological dissociation and activities such as eating disorders, drugs, alcohol, self-mutilation and thrill seeking; through excessive work, sex, exercise, shopping, gambling or hoarding; through anti-social behaviors like stealing, cheating, lying, fighting or abusing; or by becoming abused, accident-prone or repeated