Sit With Your Sorrow, Wait as It Reveals the Lessons It Offers

Image by Kira from Pixabay

“What’s for you won’t go by you” is an old Scots’ phrase that my gran used to repeat often. It always resonated for me, and so I know not to ever regret decisions I’ve made in life because, one way or another, what is meant to be will be.

As I headed back to my adopted land with my children from a busy, month long trip to reconnect with family and friends in the land of my birth, I was thinking that - first and foremost - I must come home to myself. In reconnecting with others I found aspects of me there, and felt sated where I found them.

But it also feels like parts of me are still missing, I cannot say what they are, but I will only find them when alone. I need to reconnect with me, and my life in New Zealand allows for that, in many ways it is a simpler life and closer to nature.

Meanwhile there is the familiar grief, encompassing the usual feelings of returning from a long awaited vacation, but also more than that. There is a nagging thought “Why did I move quite so far from all that I knew and those that I loved all those years ago?”

It’s not that I regret moving from the place I was born, and it’s that not that I don’t love the place I’ve moved to, just that those worlds are quite so far from each other. As Helen Keller said “What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, for all that we love deeply becomes a part of us”.

In perfect timing – and by coincidence as I was reading text from an unrelated email - I saw the words “It is too late to alter this circumstance, you must move on. Worrying is useless since you can't alter anything”. There was the truth I needed to hear, the one that put the ache in my heart into context.

Of course it won’t be true forever, but right now it is, and I trust that that this means it also serves a purpose beyond providing stability for the children. There will be ways, likely many ways, in which being where I am right now serves me. What that helped me do though was face “what is” instead of resisting it, and wishing I could change something I can’t.

But I am not going to bypass my feelings, I feel sorrow, of that there is no doubt. And I feel gratitude for the grieving process because that means there is something wonderful I miss, and that means there was – and still is – a lot of love for the people and land of my birth.

Henry David Thoreau said “Never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it ‘til it comes to have a separate and integral interest”. So I shall sit with my feelings as if I’m sitting with someone of great interest, and I shall open up to what they might actually be pointing to beyond that which may seem obvious.

What I’m searching for is a new perspective they might have to offer, or a seed of some new thought that will help me in my journey ahead. As if to affirm my process I received an email about spiritual bypassing this morning and Danielle LaPorte said:

“Spiritual bypassing is when you put a spiritual spin on a negative to avoid uncomfortable feelings. Before you find the gift in the pain, you have to face the pain in the gift”.

What that will reveal I have yet to discover. I will intentionally journal about it, and set aside time to ponder and process it, until I feel it is done and I have integrated the decision I made with the fabric of me.

In the not-too-distant past I did this with a bad relationship and, by not just diving on into another relationship, I learned the joy and benefits of being on my own for a while. I leaned about the unhealthy thought and behaviour patterns I’d been playing out time and again in attracting unhealthy relationships. I sat with my pain, I honoured it and I learned about boundaries, secure attachment, self love and authentic communication.

Instead of looking for people, things, circumstances outside of myself to take away my pain, I looked upon it as a teacher and learned the lessons it had to share. As a result, my life and particularly my primary relationship, is so much richer and healthier for having done so. 

Where is there sorrow in your life that you haven’t really dealt with? In what ways might that be affecting you? Is it time to get curious, sit down with the pain and see what lessons it has to offer, and the ways it might enhance the quality of your life in doing so?

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Mankind’s Great Summons: Turn Your Pain Into Medicine and Heal the World, Reconnect With Loved Ones to Gain Some Perspective on Life, The Inevitable Pain of Returning to Love After Years of Abandoning Yourself and Pain as a Powerful Catalyst for Self Awareness and Growth.  To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.