What remains

Yesterday, while running a therapy group, a young male high school student in an oversized hoodie asked, “Why do we wake up already feeling sad sometimes?”

His question struck me hard.

We met in that moment. Fully seeing one another.

I held him with my eyes. Our faces softened. The weight of the pain he’s been carrying in his heart was palpable.

There was a sorrow-filled, beautiful acknowledgment in the bravery and vulnerability of his question. A velvety, wounded rawness.

I know this pain.

Sometimes when I wring my hair after a shower, I touch her tenderly and say, “Gentle. Today I will be gentle with you.”

Sometimes when I turn off a light, I bow a little and say, “Thank you, light, rest now.”

Sometimes, when I bleed heavily and am curled over in pain on the bathroom floor, I wonder what could have been and am reminded of what will never be.

And for a moment, I release grief and offer gratitude.

Sometimes when I water my plants, I hold their tiny bulbs in my hand and say, “You’re doing great, my darlings,” as I watch them struggle and blossom and bloom and stretch towards the sun as they find themselves and the newness of their own journey, their own path, their own breath.

And the ones who don’t make it, I bury next to their mothers in the shared soil.

I lower my head. “Thank you. And I’m sorry.”

Oh, how we hold both the blossoming tenderness of possibility and the depths of sorrow and bury them over and over again deep down in our own ancient bones.

So much lives within us.

Without hope, there would be no despair.

I see you. I am you. I feel you.

Thank you. And I’m sorry.