It’s all part of this human journey

I have been feeling the darkness that is part of life lately. It descends and drapes over me, feels familiar. I am learning to acknowledge and let it be.

 I think that the temptation to run from darkness is strong within us, that it can frighten us with its depth and heaviness, that we can become afraid that we may never find our way out. 

Aging seems to bring this on more frequently these days, at least for me. I am acutely aware of the swift passage of time, of mortality’s call approaching ever closer, of the ending of things. I feel the losses all around me. I have lost family, friends, those who held pieces of my past that no one else ever will. Former roles and self-definitions are gone. A sense of the coming future is gone, with the ever-growing reality of an expiration date.

What has been happening to our country and the world provokes even more grief within me. Loss of things that I somehow did not think could be lost finds me in despair and wandering around in circles in my own mind and spirit. There is new trauma added every day. I have no answers for any of this, just deep grief. 

I wake up in the middle of the night with thoughts about all of this with the feelings washing over me. I have been working to breathe into this, to have faith that I will come through it yet again, reminding myself that I have come through it before. But sometimes I wonder if this time will be different. 

I am very grateful for life and for still being here. Part of that gift for me is to try and experience all that is going on within me, to honor it all as part of this journey. 

I see my body changing, new pains appearing, and I cope as best as I can. I am never sure what to try and ask my doctor about, and what is simply part of this path of aging, this path of mortality, this walk toward our inevitable death. 

I see that patterns that I have struggled with in my life have never really left me. I embark on new adventures, try to learn new things, try to engage and participate in life as much as I can, try to honor that I am still here. And yet, issues that I thought that I had worked through are still within me. I am beginning to realize that these are in my core, that they have been with me for as long as I can remember, that they are hard-wired. I finally realize that for me, I will not suddenly become free from them (as part of me had fantasized that I would once I worked through it all). No, they are part of me. They have helped form who I am. They have been my internal voices of caution that took a harsh tone to try and stop any further pain.

But life has pain. That comes with the admission ticket. We all have it, our own version, our own story, our own battles, our own hero or heroine’s journey with its tasks and lessons.

Some of my own personal battles

I have never been confident, have easily given away my power to anyone I thought was somehow better than I was, who I thought knew more than me, had more rights than I did. I learned this attitude toward myself very early. I say that not to blame, but to understand how this has been built into my core. 

I immediately can take blame for things. I can feel less than others around me. I can compare myself and be tempted to hide, thinking I may fail because I am not adequate in whatever cruel measurement I may be using at the time. It feels like being swallowed by a river of mud, pulling me down into the dark depths. 

So, now I try and say to myself …let me learn about these depths, since they seem to be clamoring for my attention. I marvel at others who do not have the issues or fear that I bring with me to almost everything. I know that they have their own battles, as do we all. But I still marvel at their confidence, their assuredness, their apparent comfort with and belief in themselves. 

Being exposed has felt dangerous for me in the past, and it is a hard fight to change the pattern of living from that history and fear. 

And yet, as I approach what is closer to the end of my time on this earth, I wonder if I might be able to let go of responding automatically to the fears and harsh voices within, if I might add a voice of self-advocacy (even if it’s very shaky) to the chorus within, if I might really try to live more fully and expose more of who I am, if I might try to believe in myself, even if forced and feeling unnatural, if I might take that leap into whatever unknown that I am facing with a bit more belief that I can do this. Dare I believe that I have the right to try, that I am not less than, that I am ok, that I have a right to this precious life. Yes, I have made mistakes and have regrets, but that this doesn’t make me a total failure. Can I finally learn that forgiveness can also apply to myself?

Could this be one of the major lessons?

Maybe this is the ultimate lesson..to learn self acceptance, to realize that the journey is not to get rid of faults and issues, but to admit them, accept them and learn to work differently with them, to learn patience and kindness toward myself, to learn that I will be leaving with a lot of what I came in here with. Maybe I can accept that I will not have mastered it all. that this life has not been a test that I either pass or fail, but rather an experience to be learned from, to be lived, to be embraced in both its light and darkness. I can embrace my own light and darkness. I can learn to let go (more) of the regrets and should-haves and could-haves. Dare I allow myself to love who I am, faults and all. I can begin to see that coming full circle to who you have always been is ok, that you don’t have to figure it all out by the end. In fact, the end can bring more questions than ever. Perhaps we learn to be comfortable in the land of I-don’t-know, and realize that this not-knowing is part of the journey, part of the task, to learn to live with this all, but to live none-the-less, to claim our right to be here fully with all of our faults, lumps, and bumps.

It’s time to tell ourselves that we deserve to feel love, especially from and toward ourselves, so that we can let our final words be Thank you for the bittersweet beauty of it all. Thank you.