Sometimes I wonder ...

... if what we call "depression" is a lifelong coagulation of grief, of losses and their effects, traumas and their aftermaths ... and a deprivation of loving touch.

I wonder if we're mistaken in our culture's emphasis on the tip of the iceberg -- the tip of the brainberg -- in our insistence on treating, primarily, the cortical and cognitive expressions of depression and trauma. Are we missing something? I think so. The label "mental illness" -- at least insofar as depression and trauma are concerned -- will get us nowhere because "mental" is nowhere. What we call "mind" or refer to as "mental" is a process, not a product. We can't lay our hand on the mind or its movements like we can lay a hand on a table, a cat, or our own skin ...

And it's there, on our skin, where the magic can happen. The magic? Yes. 

Touch is our touchstone, our built-in miracle, our best medicine, and the one we're least likely to use.

A few days ago, one of my dear friends came to visit. We've known one another for over 26 years; we've witnessed one another's deepest shadows. She's gentle and kind and she insists on my goodness, as I do hers. I trust her enough to ask her to touch me.

During our visit, I asked her to lay down in my bed with me to share a "spoon." She lay down beside me and rounded her body to mine. We were quiet ... and eventually both of us dozed off.  We lay for maybe an hour, and when I awoke, I felt it: the warming, the full-body sense that everything in me was touched. Boundered. Contained and present. Expanded within. Softened. I felt whole. The all-through-me warmth lasted throughout the rest of the evening, and I curled around myself at bedtime, remembering. I thought, "I slept with my friend." What a gift.

"I slept with someone." -- What error usually lies in those words! "I slept with somone" usually means, "I had sex with someone." That's about as sleepless as it gets! How'd we come to equate the acrobatics of sex with sleeping?

There are people in the world who are practicing what's known as "cuddle therapy." They're on to something. We are immersed in touch during our gestation ... and we scream for that heat, that pulse, that purest of presence as soon as we're born.

Freud, too, was on to something when he mused that we all want to return to our mother's womb. We can't, of course ... but we yearn for that containment for the rest of our lives ... for that feeling of being completely embraced, warmed, rhythmed in sync with a beloved pulse.

A popular saying goes like this: "We need four hugs per day for survival; eight hugs for maintenance, and twelve to thrive."

Popular science points us to what occurs when we are deprived of touch. I'll never forget learning about Harry Harlow's rhesus monkeys: infants taken from their mothers and caged in metal wire with only a tower of more wire to cling to. The luckier monkeys got a tower encased by a towel ... and they fared a little better than the ones who only had wire. Cold metal, harsh edges. The babies with only metal to touch became utterly lost, despondent, broken in being. We could call them psychotic -- out of touch with reality.

Out of touch with reality. Our first, our most formative reality, is touch. We know that we exist, that we matter -- that we are matter -- when we touch and are touched in safe sanctuary. the word matter actually derives from mater, which is Latin for mother. There's no bonding agent like our own skin moulded to another's. No other medicine, no other intervention, can calm our autonomic nervous system like this. Our presence rebounds ... our brains become quiet ... our jittering slows, then comes to rest.

No pill can calm us like this; no cognitive practices; no talk. We don't need to talk when we touch. We need only to breathe and receive ... the reciprocation is natural. The brain signals safe ... and we melt.

I have a friend whose primary devotional path is Tibetan Buddhism. He once told me, during a meal we were sharing, that "we have all been one another's mothers." I froze. What he said struck me to the marrow as right. My first thought in response was, "...then we have all been one another's children." Imagine what our world, our societies, our relations might be like if we all understood this. We are all one another's mothers and children. How might our attitude about touch shift if this were so? Might we be more open to hugs, to soothing hands laid across our shoulders, to sitting close enough to one another so that the outsides of our thighs nestled together? How many more twosomes of all kinds might we see holding hands or linking arms as they walk along? How easy might it be for us to ask someone we love, someone we feel viscerally safe with, for a cuddle? How might our practices of medicine and psychotherapy change if practitioners could initiate more than only diagnostic touches? Bessel van der Kolk, one of our world's great trauma sages, wrote in his recent book, The Body Keeps the Score, that "the most natural way that we humans calm down our distress is by being touched, hugged, and rocked. This helps with excessive arousal and makes us feel intact, safe, protected, and in charge. Touch [is] the most elementary tool that we have to calm down..."

I mention mothers and children ... and I include men in the mix. Men can be mothering. It's all in the approach, the intention, the heart that wants to nourish another.

I had a friend who lived out of town. He'd come to stay with me for a weekend, and he'd wear my pink flannel jammies to bed. We'd tuck in together and spoon. We'd giggle; we'd wiggle. We both felt utterly safe. Kids on a sleepover.

He's gone now ... been dead for over seven years. As I mourned him, I'd lean over myself and curl into the memory of his lean little body moulded with mine. I'd keen for him. There are days now when I keen for the ones I love who are still in the world, for my cuddle-companions. Three  come to mind ... all women who are single, as I am. I've bedded down with each of them -- for cuddles. We've held on, belly to backside, under duvets and blankets; we've melted into deep rest, our breaths and pulses slowing and merging. We hold one another sometimes, like mothers hold their children.

I admit that I could pass much of each day in this sanctuary. I was born two months premature in the late 1950s, when mothers and preemies were not allowed to touch, to bond. There were no "kangaroo holds" back then. I was gravely distressed at birth, not breathing, and went into cardiac arrest three times in my first three days. I was incubated in isolation for three months. Every hand that touched me was paradoxically both invasive and life-saving. Tubes, needles, procedures, interventions. No cuddles; no breast to smoosh into; no skin to meld with. I've hungered my whole life for deep, quiet touch. I trained as a somatic psychotherapist; I touched the people who came to me for care. My dearest mentors touched me, contained me, molded my body to theirs and held on. Two held me through storms of rage; one would press her palms to my temples when I felt myself dissociating from presence. Another wrapped her body around mine when I cried like that bereft infant I once was.

I once had a mate -- a husband. We touched constantly, with deep affection. We cuddled; we spooned. We'd lay in a tangle of limbs and blankets, often with a cat (or two or three) mushed into the mix. Sometimes one of us woud say to the other, "Let's go to bed" ... and we meant simply that. Let's go to bed and nestle in. Let's snooze; let's warm one another to the core. We'd fall into sleep ... all boundaries softened into purest ease and trust. We once held each other while showering, belly to belly, in quietude under the warm water, utterly still and simply breathing ... and the sense of cherishment I felt nearly buckled my knees.

It's so easy to reach out and touch another ... and it's what we tend to fear the most. What might it mean if I lay a hand on your arm, your back, your leg, your face? What might I want? What might you? Our bodies respond in totality to touch ... Sometimes, erotic and sexual feelings arise. They're simply part of the whole. It's what we do with those feelings that matters. We can breathe into those sensations, and disperse them into an expanded warmth. We don't have to do anything with them, or about them.

I sustain myself on the alone-days with memories of those I've melded with, melted into, held and been held by. Sometimes I lie down in my bed and lay a hand over my heart, and I reach deep for the solace of skin-to-skin recall. If I'm in bed, one of my cats crawls under the covers with me, and the other likes to lie on my chest, kneading my neck, gazing into my eyes and purring up a storm right into my heart. I read somewhere that humans, in contact with beloved animals, release twice the amount of oxytocin, "the love chemical," throughout the body than we do if we're in touch with a beloved human. I know this for sure: my cats keep me alive.

I admit to this bone-deep loneliness because I sense that we all share it to some degree. If you live with beloved humans, and especially someone you can cuddle with, you are blessed beyond measure. On every night that you can bed down with someone you are deeply bonded with, you are given Life's supreme gift.

"We can do no great things, only small things with great love." ~ A realization

Mother Teresa originally spoke these words, and today I thought of them ... with a tweak.

I went to church this morning, and was washed with music. "O Holy Night" performed by our worship band -- singers, a cellist, a vibraphonist, and a guitarist. Gorgeous. I stuttered to sing through the tears that were arising after our pastor's sermon -- he spoke of the 'Holy Night,' in part, as the dark night of the soul ... as the longing we can feel, especially during the Christmas season, for presence, love, mercy.

After the service, my bestie asked me if I'd like to share lunch with her. I had to say no. Brain-injury wham-o. Sideswiped by all the stimulation; a nasty surprise. Dizziness, nausea, slurred speech, inability to participate in conversation and to think of responses when people spoke to me; stammering utterances and staggering balance ... and a need for sleep.

Mother Teresa's words struck me after I got home ... and could begin to discern what was happening in my brain. The last word of her quote -- love -- began to change to other words: Mindfulness. Awareness. Kindness. Mercy for our human condition. 

I've pretty much accepted that I can do only small things now. Sometimes I can do no things for a while. I need to sleep in quietude at these times; need to not read, write, be with other people, engage in any stimulating activity ... even when I want to. I need to say Yes only to rest.

I've calmed myself with the wordplay; reminded myself that in this moment, for this while, the saying is true that I can do no great things, only small things with great ... rest.

I can do no great things, only small things with great mercy for my present human condition. 

For right now. For the next while. Until the staggering nausea and dizziness pass; until I've laid down with my cats and allowed myself some rest.

For now.

This, I realize, is an act of great love.

I've done this one small thing ... and so to bed. With love.

Stay steps ... one step at a time.

"Step aside from it," I thought this morning. "Step aside, just a little. One step; just one step."

One step away from whatever ails and hounds you. One step towards LIFE. One step is a stay. One breath is a stay.

One step is a choice. So often, if we have been ill or injured for a long time, we feel stuck ... like an inverted November sky that refuses to move. But above that mass of grey is the sun; beyond the mass is clarity. Beneath the mass, inside your own body, is an open atmosphere: your breath. One breath is a step. One breath is a stay. One...breath. One...breath...and another. One breath at a time. Sometimes I lie down on my bed, laying one hand over my heart and another over my solar plexus. I breathe. Inbreath: "One..." Outbreath: "...breath." My body begins to warm, to pulse. Sometimes I do this to remind myself to stay; sometimes I do it because my body forgets to breathe. My autonomic nervous system has been kiboshed since I was born, and many of the most basic regulatory functions and systems are out of whack -- one being breathing. I have to remind myself to breathe several times a day. Breathe ... Stay ... Breathe ... Stay.

My dear physician, a few years ago, referred to the form my depression takes as "brainstem depression" (also known as anaclitic depression). It's been with me since infancy ... and I have to tend to the absolute basics: body temperature, breath, appetite, movement. "One step at a time" keeps me alive. "One stay at a time" reminds -- re-minds -- me to stay alive ... one step at a time away from shutdown, from paralysis, from the terrible force within my own brain that compels me to leave.

One step is a shift. One step is an act. One step is volition -- will -- moving you in another direction.

A single step. Sometimes a single step for me means that I wash one dish. It can mean that I run a hand along my cat's silken back, or smush my face into his belly, murmuring his name. It can mean grabbing one of my holy books and reading, for dear life, a poem whose beauty latches me to Life. Sometimes it means allowing myself to weep. It can be prayer -- simply a Help ... Are you there? Touch me; move me ... please. Give me a reason to stay. Often, the response from life is so simple: Eat. Nuzzle your cats. Give yourself music. Pick up the phone. Skype someone. Weep. Count your blessings, one at a time, slowly. Count them again. Know you are loved! Know it ... know it. You are still here because you have been loved. You are still here because you have loved. Tuck yourself into bed and turn on the warming blanket that your cousin gave you last Christmas. Grab a pillow; grab the teddy bear you've had forever whose nose and one eye have been repaired and replaced by someone who's loved you. Grab on. 

We are not asked to take big steps or small steps, but we are asked

to make every step a step of faith.

(The Bible, Romans 4:12)

One step ... one song. Here is one of my stay-songs:

One step ... one poem:

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

(Rainer Maria Rilke)

Give Life your hand. 

Stay, dear heart. 

Musings on mercy

Art: Lisa Ballard, "Mercy and Me"

I keep arriving here: at the warm, open palm of mercy. A wise man once gave me a directive that I've not heard before or since ... one that got under my skin and into the center of my brain: "To thine own self be merciful."

What a potent hit to the head of the existential nail! Is anything we can do more imperative? If we can't live in our own skin in a state of truce (at the very least), how can we live with one another?

No wonder mercy can be such a visceral challenge. As a principle, mercy is often overlaid with religious overtones -- seen as a saintly state that few of us can attain for more than an instant at a time, if at all. But an instant is enough ... and it flares like a sun, warming us to and from our core. We are saints in that instant, in that choice. We are grains of pure goodness when we reach out or in with unabashed kindness.

Is our capacity for mercy intrinsic to our makeup? Are we wired to salve, rather than to savage ourselves and other beings? (Are we wired to do both? We can fire up into fight or flight in an instant ... and then there is a state called flow ... We do flow when we reach out in gentleness ... )

Mercy makes me sweat. To thine own self be merciful ... I dare you. I hear this invitation, this challenge to look long and deep into every being I encounter -- and into a mirror ... Mercy calls us to look beneath apparent appearances, into the depth of a life ...

Sometimes I think that mercy is the opposite of madness. Mercy is lucid ... like the noon sun without the burn. Sees all; denies nothing. Sees into, within, and through. Eyes the soul, and the pupils soften and expand. Bestows warmth; suffuses with light.

I wonder about mercy in relation wtih kindness, compassion, altruism ... and I hone in on what makes mercy mercy.

It's the quietude ... that warm, open palm. Whenever I imagine and recall my own experiences of mercy, I know touch. Skin meeting skin with loving intent ... and we soften. The entire body sighs ... We are safe; we surrender.

A warm, open palm ... a belly, a cheek, a shoulder ... a hug, a spoon, a palm spooning a face ... a nuzzle, a snuffle; breath warming the skin. A laying on, a gentling ... and rest.

Mercy reaches and receives the core ... and warms us there.

Mercy says, Been there, done that, lived it -- without cynicism. And then, with tendresse, I dare you to be kind ... to yourself. Like this. 

Art: Lisa Ballard, "Whisperer"

Thank you, Lisa, for the beauty you create ... 

Stay, dear heart.

Two days ago, I posted a sudden thought to an online forum that I participate in: "Today, I realize, is what I'm calling a 'stay day.' I just invented this term while cooking some broccoli and garlic. Made myself arise from the 'despair chair' (where I can get, and remain, stuck and sinking...). Looked at my two beloved cats and thought, 'Stay alive for them.' Then more stays arrived: 'Stay nourished ... Stay hydrated ... Stay on your feet ... Stay in the kitchen and cook ... Stay in touch with someone -- anyone ... Stay in tune with your music (James Taylor, Cat Stevens, etc.) ...' So. Today's a 'stay day.' One breath at a time."

Stay here ... stay now. It's a mantra that I recite when desperation urges escape. Stay here ... stay now. Stay. 

Stays are fasteners; stays bind something with something else. 

There are stays ... and there are mainstays. They're the stays that challenge us to remain in the world no matter how urgently we feel driven to leave it. I suspect that our mainstays revolve around our relations; mine certainly do. My mainstays are my cats, my cherished friends and family, the memory of my honoured ancestors and mentors ... and the young ones in my life who light up and run to me whenever we meet. I don't have children of my own, but these little ones may as well be -- It takes a village, after all, and how does my choice to stay influence their souls? How might my presence help them to stay in the world? We are irrevokably bound by every bond we create with other beings ... and eventually death will arrive in one form or another ... but our choice to remain alive helps to ensure that someone else will also choose to stay. Our love is a tangible force; our choice to be is a source of sustenance to someone -- we don't always know whom, but the force of our choice is a link in a chain, a hand reaching out, a voice urging presence, a pull toward the heart. 

There was a huge response to the "stay" post. Amazing how something so simple can galvanize other people to stay, too ... Major depression, for some reason, lures us to leave the world ... I wonder if it's the fundamental exhaustion and loss of vitality of this illness that is so deadly to our remaining present. There's a mystery at the core of major depression that began to reveal itself to me when I was sixteen and found an article written by psychologist John Welwood, called "Depression as a Loss of Heart." I'd not, up to that moment, related my own experience to depression; I just thought I was another lazy, useless teenager who was constantly being berated for being ... lazy, useless, and irresponsible; sleeping in too much and sleeping into the afternoon, sluffing through the days like so many teens do (Now we understand more about how much havoc the hormonal changes of adolescence cause to the entire person -- including that persistent need for sleep, sleep, and more sleep...).

Now I understand the persistent loss of vitality as a chief marker of major depression. Andrew Solomon, who wrote The Noonday Demon, has said that "the opposite of depression is not happiness, but vitality." YES! -- everything in me cried when I heard him speak those words. He nailed the core symptom of depression! Here's a link to his TED Talk, "Depression: The Secret We Share": 

Now, two days later, one of my forum-friends told me that the members of a support group for bereaved parents have adopted the stay-practice! How beautiful that one little idea, popping up from my own choice to stay for my cats, has been taken up by others. There's another stay for me ... and now, for so many more! Depression, as Andrew Solomon says, is a secret that we share ... and stays are a sacred practice that we can share too. I imagine hands reaching out and grasping one another ... taking hold ... fingers interlacing ... warmth seeping from palm to palm ... the musculature of bondedness squeezing an invitation from pulse to pulse ... 

The stays that my online friends shared range the gamut of goodness and relation. Here are some of them (and a few more of my own) ... 

Housecleaning (!)

One's children and grandchildren

Husbands, wives, beloveds

Colour and art

Creative acts like knitting and sewing

Beloved animals

Kayaking and canoeing

Being needed

Laughter, humour, jokes

Prayer

Playing a musical instrument

Sunshine

God

Cookies (!)

Best friends

Siblings

Cousins

The scents of love

Skills and gifts shared in the world

Helping others

Honouring those whose pain left them so bereft that they couldn't stay

Literature and poetry

The knowledge of death -- being alive is so precious

Reader ... what are your stays?

Stay, dear heart. Fasten to love. Hold on. 

Softened Fawn (for a friend in depression)

My last post was a poem, Fawn in the Grass, which offered a question as its coda:

What will we do,

oh my hands,

with this dear

in the grass?

No sooner had I posted the piece when I found this photo:

"What will we do, oh my hands...?"

We will soften. Soften our hands, our thoughts, our hearts. We will soften ourselves into sanctuary by offering one another -- and ourselves! -- what this young woman offers the fawn: essential safety, sustenance, and mercy. Look at the fawn's throat ... It's melted into the woman's shoulder. The little creature is at ease, at rest. Eyes, ears are softly alert ... fearless.

Dear friend, you told me recently that you fear the maw of depression may be claiming you. We share this wound in common; we understand one another. I am holding you in constant presence and prayer like this woman holds the fawn. I want to tell you that Spring will return, and so will you. Your soul seems to be slipping, as on black ice, into despairing Winter, and the surprise of this has knocked you askew. I'm reaching for you, right now, and I'll keep reaching. In my mind, I'm holding you, dear fawn. 

There was a time when you and prayed together, holding hands. I felt mired in despair and loneliness; you prayed for "peace in every pore." I'm praying for you to be streamed through with peace ... flooded with Light. With Love.

If I've learned anything about what can sustain us through depression, it's that we must hold fast to what we know sustains us ... and know that we are being held by the Spirit of Sustenance Itself.  The very Force of life is holding us, breathing us, softening us. 

Can you hold yourself ... hold your own hand? Can you lay a hand over your heart and remember that what you long for is what you have already known? Can you remember that Love is sustaining you right now, even if your heart feels like a black hole? You are being held: you have reminded me of this truth again and again ... and I am returning this gift to you.

You are being held ... However you know Love, It's holding you.  

(Photo credit: unknown) 

We hold to sustain (Three stories)

~ I woke, in the ambulance, and there was only her. Her face above me, like a sun that eyes could stand, and she stroked my hand as she had once stroked my hand the first time I’d met her.

“I love you,” she said.

And I knew the point of love right then.

The point of love was to help you survive. 

The point was also to forget meaning. To stop looking and start living. The meaning was to hold the hand of someone you cared about and to live inside the present … The ever-moving, ever-changing present. And the present was fickle. It could only be caught by letting go.

So I let go.

I let go of everything in the universe.

Everything, except her hand.

~ from The Humans, by Matt Haig … Matt who also wrote a piece called Reasons To Stay Alive (We all need reminders now and then, don’t we?)

~ Peter A. Levine, one of the world’s sages of healing from trauma — a true artist of what I call traumorphosis — writes in his book, In An Unspoken Voice, of being hit by a car while he was crossing a street. In an instant, he went from strolling to a friend’s birthday celebration to being flattened on asphalt, paralyzed and unable to breathe. What was his first saving grace? A pedestrian who quietly sat down beside him and identified herself as a doctor, asking Peter (while paramedics were assessing his injuries) how she could help. 

“Please just stay with me,” Peter told her … and she held his hand and his eyes with such tender composure that he began to tremble with tears and a first shudder of release from shock. Emotion set in … presence. “Her outreach and physical touch,” he writes, “provide a source of orientation.” Her softening gaze, and the scent of her perfume, further allowed a “sense of stabilization and relief.” Most of all, Peter knew that he was not alone. 

~ Please just stay with me …This is so often all that we need. A few months ago, I was at a birthday party, sitting at a round table with seven friends, sharing a meal. Since my brain injury last summer, to be with more than one other person can overwhelm my capacity to track sensation with my eyes, ears, and skin. Seven folks, passing food and happily gabbing, was too much. I sensed a leave-taking: a numbing around my head and a blurring of sight. Panic, setting in. I stood up, left the table, and walked into my friend’s living room. Sat on the couch and wrapped myself in a blanket, laying a hand on my solar plexus, telling myself to breathe. 

"Stay here … Stay now."

The host of our party, being a mother of a child who has autism, understands sensory overwhelm and how to soften it. She sat beside me, asked me what was happening, and with my permission, drew my head to her chest, right over her heart. My right ear lay over the rhythm of life; she covered my left with her hand. She tucked us both into the blanket and breathed deep. She stayed with me … and stayed until I could orient myself enough to look around, notice where I was, and begin to move again. I sat up, and two more friends joined us. Each friend held one of my hands, and one laid a presencing hand on my thigh. We shared gazes and quiet conversation — checking-in questions and simple, soothing talk. Eventually we all returned to the table, and dessert was served …

We hold to sustain … to soothe and to soften … to guide one another home.  

(Photo: “Hands of Love” … artist unknown. My thanks to you.)

"I can't do it!" and the birth of a blog

“Cradle your life … and save it. Cradle your life in the hands of your heart.”

So said my friend, a long time ago. So said I, to myself, last night.

So said I, when all I could hear was “I can’t.” So said I, when I picked up the phone and dialled, and surrendered to the sound of a beloved voice. A friend whose mercy resounded in the marrow of me. 

This blog will be mercy for our marrow … an invitation to soften into the sanctuary of our own goodness. 

Traumorphosis: transforming the aftermaths of traumatic injury into stories that save and salve us. Softening our way into the goodness that we are, no matter what has happened to us. 

Softening shame, fear, secrecy. Re-minding. 

As one of my friends recently told me, “Change the channel!” Grabbing the remote; disengaging the autopilot. Seeking what softens.

Today, I soften “I can’t” into the knowledge that I will pass through it into can … into will.

A recent can’t was about going to church. I couldn’t do it that day. I had to honour the No that resounded; the no to driving a car, to being in the company of several other people, to being able to absorb sight, sound, and complex stimuli. Last summer, my brain was injured in a fall, and one of its persistent effects has been to render the ordinary as overwhelming, the mere as sheer. Sometimes, to take a shower can fell me for an hour. Sometimes my ability to write by hand degenerates into illegibility, or I can’t follow the steps needed to make a meal. The sound of a ringing phone can pierce my ear like a blade, or I lose the ability to form a sentence halfway through a thought. I teeter on my feet and crash into walls, and my hands lose their ability to hold onto things. Sometimes my senses can’t absorb the simple presence of another human being.

One of the gentle disciplines I apply is to discern every day — sometimes from moment to moment — where my abilities lie on the can – can’t continuum; is the can’t rooted in fear or on a realistic assessment of what’s possible right now? What can I do when a glitch appears as insurmountable opportunity? When I find myself unable to spell a word — “insurmountable” — and it takes four attempts, plus a peek at an online dictionary, to get it right?

I can pause … and breathe … and notice. 

I can act to soften the impact of panic; I can stand up, plant my feet on the good earth, and gaze out my window at the sky, which is ceaselessly open, spacious, and moving. “Movement is life,” said Moshe Feldenkrais, one of the world’s great teachers of somatic (body-based) re-education. Movement is life: move those feet, those hands, those eyes. Move beyond the glitch. Move the mind into curiosity, the body into mastery. Spell out that word. Take a breath … and another. Lay down the fear; pick up the mercy and apply it. Write, write, write out the word; make the opportunity surmountable. 

I’ve hidden in plain sight for so long … and a relentless pressure whorls within me to emerge from secrecy and shame, to make my story sacred by sharing it, by blending it with others, to add one more weave to the fabric of I can. The tipping point into revelation? My dear friend’s voice, reminding me that in my vulnerability is my calling … and a video I watched this morning. A brief story shared by a man who felled himself over a bridge, and lived to tell the tale. 

Albert Camus once wrote, “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.” Today I think of invincible Spring. My neighbourhood’s dotted with green.

Oliver Wendell Holmes — who was a doctor, among other things — wrote, “Expression is the one fundamental sacrament.” I added a coda: “… and love is the one fundamental expression.” If I reach, reach, reach into the wellspring of mercy that is my good heart, I locate love that softens the glitches, the terror, the panic. Words do arise.

“Physician, heal thyself.” I will, and I do, with the one fundamental expression that never fails. Love, in a form perfectly suited to this moment. 

Right now, it’s these words, this story, this truth. Softening comes through this passage into invincible Spring … this refinement of every can’t into a can.