Love, if it is not pain… | A Healing Progress Report
My thoughts are so much softer lately…
My thoughts feel softer lately. They’re missing the jagged edges they’ve always seemed to hold. If you’ve read much of my writing, you’ll know that for most of my life, I’ve experienced a sense of having a cold, raw, weeping hole in my chest. This year, the wound seems to have grown over in some sort of way… Not like a scab, but like a patch of moss in the sunlight has gently enveloped it, protecting it from the cold, harsh winds and attracting in small forms of life, catching the rays of sunshine and giving nourishing drops of dew a place to rest.
Backstory: I can’t show you this healing without first showing you the wound.
I remember feeling consumed by that cold, empty wound years ago, as if it was all there was to me as a person. I remember the way the wind (cruel, incessant self-critical thoughts) inside of me blew so painfully through that empty hole, day and night. It was freezing in my heart – I felt weak through every part of my being, and even in the 104 degree Idaho summer heat, I was always cold. Something in me screamed into the hollow space and clawed at the air blowing through me.
When I think of it now, I picture a wraith – a beast desperate for a hug that would never end and for warmth. She was pleading for the space to be filled with a warm body and endless flow of gentle attention. In reality, that looked like an anxious, needy woman desperate for someone to smother and receive constant validation from. Cringe, cringe, cringe.
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I’ve been trying to heal this wound and be a less-sad person for years.
It hasn’t felt quite that desperate or raw these past few years and the screaming has stopped, but the starving chilliness has still been there, and often at a sign of rejection, the screaming would start again… As I looked in the mirror toward the end of my last relationship, I knew there was more to me than the hole and the screaming wraith inside of it, but I didn’t think I was ever going to experience life without that coldness or that desperate, hungry woman inside of me.
Those thoughts shape-shifted quite a bit within just a few days of being in a loving home full of gentle, truly kind women. The healing was natural and the change in me was so strong that even revisiting toxic habits and reaching out to people best left in my past wasn’t enough to put me back in the state of mind I’d been in before.
This healing phase feels different than past ones.
There have been moments where that hole in my chest felt warm for a moment and I thought, “I’m better! It’s healed! I’m okay!!” only to experience it torn wide open again within a week or two… And because of that, moments where I noticed myself feeling held and happy had a bittersweet tinge to them — much like the feeling of finding out I was pregnant again after three miscarriages. I didn’t want to have that hopeless feeling sour the joy, but it did, you know?
Healing is happening over time. Maybe it has been happening all this time.
This time, the healing doesn’t feel fragile and temporary. The raw, weeping wound didn’t magically get better over the course of a single conversation or two or three therapy sessions. It wasn’t a few sunny days in the garden and a long walk on the beach that did it, either.
No longer rushed — only invited, appreciated, and nurtured.
It was ugly stuff, hard stuff, slow and uncomfortable stuff, I think, that grew around the hole in my chest and gently sprouted into a blanket of love and worthiness and witnessing and presence that never seems to leave me now.
I don’t know if therapy is just really moving mountains within me lately, if lessons I’ve been trying to learn just finally clicked, if the pain of this last relationship and the crash into a new rock bottom was enough to shatter through walls around old beliefs and give me the courage and fire to make a real change, or if I’ve simply grown up enough that time and distance are allowing old wounds to surface, resolve, and close up in ways they couldn’t do before…
Maybe it’s all of these things. Maybe it’s the new friendships I’ve been cultivating and enveloped in since deciding to get myself out of the toxic relationship and recognizing that I was capable of and ready for a much more wholesome, loving, and healthy connection with the human beings all around me.
Embracing nuance and duality…
I’ve been becoming more present with things as they are in the moment rather than only poking at what I wish they would be or why they aren’t a different way.
Whatever has changed, I love it and I’m finding so much joy nurturing and playing alongside it. It doesn’t feel like it will disappear at the drop of a hat.
Something else is changing too:
The relationships I’ve leaned into throughout this process – the people who have held me and held space for me, who have fed me and driven me places, who have shared their stories with me and listened to mine, who have offered graciousness and laughter where they heard judgment or fear from me — none of them feel like they’re just going to vanish.
I feel differently about the people in my life now.
I feel curious about them, excited for opportunities to explore a new space or idea even if I don’t expect we’ll see 100% eye-to-eye… I’m not afraid to be wrong or different or to disagree entirely with the people in my life now. I feel like… I am enough, I can just breathe, and when someone expresses a boundary or disagrees with me, it no longer stings like rejection. It feels like an honor, a joy, an inspiration!
There are friendships and relationships and bridges I burned in past attempts to be present for my own emotions… There were times I made mistakes in the past when I tried setting boundaries and communicating my needs and taking responsibility for the way I allowed people to treat me. As I’ve become less harsh and critical with myself, those black-and-white, permanent, all-or-nothing reactions have become less appealing and conflict hasn’t felt so urgent.
In these reflections, I’ve found myself reaching out to a select few people I once shoved out, out, out. Some of the outreach has met with realization that the person really isn’t a good one to have in my life. Some of it has been met with silence, and I try not to fill the gap with my assumptions and simply feel happy for the person who touched my life and glad that they are living in a way that allows them to have boundaries and not open up conversations and relationships that don’t feel right for them right now. Some of the outreach has been met with joyous reconnection and beautiful growth and development.
This healing is messy and exhausting… but my mission to invite in and spend more time with joy, playfulness, and peace is feeling very much alive!
My mission to learn what love is, specifically if it is not pain or jealousy or enabling or politeness, is changing my whole life.
One takeaway I have already: love is friendship.
None of this change came all at once or happened overnight. It has been unfolding for months (…years? Decades, even…) and it’s not finished.
This healing approached slowly, one opportunity at a time, always a gentle invitation I could accept or decline, and I’ve grown to know it in stages as I’ve loved and fed it over time. This new way of being in and with myself feels like befriending a skittish stray cat. Cats like that can really hurt you if you frighten them and it’s not easy to earn their trust, but if you respect their boundaries and make appropriate gestures of kindness toward them over time, they might grow into a daily visitor and beloved companion. Developing this healing relationship with myself has felt like that. My new friendships have felt like that, too. It’s not the fast-paced rollercoaster of instant connection I’m used to… and I think I like that.
It’s a delight getting to share the experience with you here in my blog, and I hope that my sharing it gives you some healing and joy in your own life.
Until next time, and with so much love from the Oregon Coast,
Vera Lee Bird
