I love you, I am listening.

I did a meditation recently and it was exactly the right thing at the right time.

My husband and I are going through a period of flux and transition right now and it’s tough to be in the middle of so much change and uncertainty. 
But the more I look and ask around, the more I realize, we aren’t the only ones.
Mid to late forties is a tough stage of life.
As a collective we are amoungst strange and shitty times.
Aging parents who ought to not live independently anymore, parents dealing with teenagers raging in their daily struggles, death, fertility battles, divorces, the financial strain of these times, war…I mean the list goes on and on.
Everyone is doing their best.
And as much as we want to be there for each other and see each other through these strange times, most of us are already too busy juggling.

Deep breath.

I love you, I am listening.
This is the meditation that saved me.
It was an invitation to be still and just tune into myself.
I love you, I am listening.
It was an invitation to my heart, a holding of space for it to share what it’s been carrying.  
It was powerful.
I felt allowed to grieve the things that I am actually grieving.
I felt the weight of how deeply some things have cut me, or how tender some healed bruising still feels.
I heard the worries I keep stifling, the things that scare the shit out of me, and the things I hope I dodge.
I love you, I am listening.
I felt known, understood and held, by my self, 
by myself.
It was freeing to honour my heart by holding it in precious compassion and empathy.
No outside influences, no external pressure or judgement, just precious listening and allowance.

I forget the ways the world stops listening sometimes,
And the necessity of hearing our own voice amoungst everyone else’s;
of understanding ourselves even when the world cannot.

We don’t have quick fixes for another person’s pain. Period.
But still, we try.
It’s not out of the realm of potential to think we can save each other.
We live in a culture of social media experts and influencers.
Everyone has an opinion.
Someone has a quick fix.
We hear of remedies and potions.
We share stories of a friend of a friend that went through that too. 
We believe we’ve lived enough life to offer the lessons we’ve internalized. 
When people can’t find the right words, we become accustomed to filling in those gaps with our own.
When people share their wounds we want so badly for them to feel good again, we rationalize or justify the things that hurt them to minimize their impact.
We take sides and villainize bad guys to make what was “supposed” to be good, good again.
In this culture of accessibility with everything at our fingertips, we’ve convinced ourselves that happiness is too.
We mean well, but people remain unwell.

But there is healing is being loved, heard and understood.
Sometimes all we need is someone to let us.
I’ve been met recently with a lot of justification, well intentioned advice, labelling, minimization, warnings, apprehension or dismissiveness.
At the same time,
I have friends who held space for me to share.
I have family who cancelled her morning meeting to take my SOS call.
I have friends who silently nodded in understanding while I cried and released.
I have friends who came around me, lay hands on me and prayed.
I have friends who let me spill my guts over wine and a ride home.
What a gift of love we can give each other in these turbulent times.

I don’t know what’s best for you,
and I know life feels unkind sometimes.
But I can tell you, I love you and I am listening. <3