How the light gets in

What to say when everything I want to say touches a nerve? What to say when I want to refer to the deep, dark well I’ve been in for the past six months in order to talk about the ways I’m climbing out of it? I don’t want to whine or sound unstable, and I keep coming to this blank page week after week and stumbling. I am stumbling because I usually sit down to write and allow whatever is true for me at that moment to bubble up to the surface. These past few weeks there is a truth that really wants to be released and I keep pushing it down.

Despite my every protective instinct to the contrary, I’m going to share some of this truth with you today. It makes me feel raw and whiny and small, and I have a feeling I won’t be able to write again until I stop fighting this and let it out. So, deep breath, here I go.

I just lived through the darkest, hardest period of my life. There were points I barely hung on to my sanity and the only thing that saved me was the lucky happenstance that no more shit went down in that particular moment. I had to commit every day to radical patience, determination, and an unwillingness to surrender. I am changed because of these past six months, and there were lots of days I wasn’t sure when or if I’d make it back to myself.

Well. About a month ago things began to get significantly better, and two weeks ago it was as though the sun burst through the clouds. Life became instantly recognizable again, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that within 24 hours of that metaphorical sky clearing, dormant parts of me woke right up. I felt more alive than I had been able to feel. I was so much more myself, so quickly, it startled me. I had thought for sure it was going to take some therapy to re-awaken these parts of me, but whatever I had been needing to suppress to get through bounced right back up to the surface.

Something I wrote but never shared before the sun broke through the clouds was about the numbness of the trauma and overwhelm I was experiencing. I wrote:

“I am unable to connect in the ways I usually find so easy. I mentally tally the amount of love and attention I have in me to give at this moment and I portion it out accordingly. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt I had a limit before. I’m not sure I have a limit now, I just know I may suddenly be called upon to give more than ever before - may be called to do that day after day - and I will never refuse that call. So I refuse others that I used to welcome.

Out in the world I am colder. I am incapable of faking it if someone asks ‘how are you?’ I am quieter and I feel assaulted by crowds. I calculate the emotional cost of every event and usually choose not to pay it.”

So many people held me with so much love during this time, and they probably will never understand how important that was because I couldn’t respond in any meaningful way. But lord, all the gentle kindness from people in all areas of my life - from my closest family members to my kids’ teachers, my colleagues, neighbours and friends. Often the unspoken space, with no questions, no comments and no expectations, was the most important thing people gave me. I felt and appreciated that grace.

I am crying as I write about these things. I have been overwhelmed and emotionally exhausted for months, and now the tears come from gratitude and also the ability to finally let down my guard and let it out. I am happy that the tears are coming - good luck trying to stop them, in fact - because I pushed down and bottled up so much that needs to come out.

The tears also point to an opening that has been created in me. I have been rent open more violently than I would wish upon my worst enemy. It was painful in ways I didn’t know existed. It is as though something ripped apart my seams, which was terrifying and destabilizing, but also means that now a very beautiful song or a very true sentence in a book can slip in and get me right at the core. If my usual armour were intact I don’t know if I’d be feeling all that I am feeling.

It reminds me of Leonard Cohen’s famous lyric:

“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in”

I know things are better in the light. This is me holding up the scary bits so that they can feel the sun’s warmth; no perfect offering here, just human truth and vulnerability.

I am ready for the light.

xo

Shannon