Because I Allowed Myself to Stay with Feeling

I found out recently that a friend lost a very close family member unexpectedly. My first feeling was like a punch to the gut, caught off guard by the depth of my empathy and sadness for my friend and her family.

And because I allowed myself to stay with that feeling, more came –

allowing myself to connect more with my friend’s energy over the miles, feeling the shock and numbness and anger and disbelief. Imagining the wave of details that present themselves after a death.

And because I allowed myself to stay with that feeling, more came –

reliving my own moments of the minutiae of death. The decisions to make. The people to call. The lengthy to-do lists. Ironing. Organizing food in the refrigerator. Deciding who will drive when and where.

And because I allowed myself to stay with that feeling, more came –

how the one year anniversary of my dad’s passing is rounding the corner, and how that feels simultaneously like the longest and shortest amount of time in the world. How it sometimes feels like he’s been gone forever and like he’s not gone at all. How, as a friend recently told me she sees it, a part of him landed in my heart, more fully expressed than ever before.

And because I allowed myself to stay with that feeling, more came –

first fear, of losing more people. That I couldn’t withstand it. And then trust, that this is what we do: we love each other as best we can, for as long as we can. And then we just keep going.

And because I allowed myself to stay with that feeling, more came –

that I can trust yoga because it’s the process that allows me to stay here, to dig in, to dive deep, to want desperately to look away but to look back and in anyway. That it’s all worth it — that the hard work is what leads to the beauty.

And because I allowed myself to stay with that feeling, more came –

that loss has taught me to be more fully me. That my creativity and love and abundance and presence has increased exponentially this past (almost) year. That it’s okay to take the good with the less good; things are rarely only one or the other.

And because I allowed myself to stay with that feeling, more came –

loving my friend through her journey, sharing the advice a friend gave me: “It’s going to be terrible,” giving myself permission to repeat this process of feeling again and again and again and again.

And because I allowed myself to stay with that feeling, more came –

of release and relief, of the knowledge that love and feeling allows me to do both everything and nothing for my friend and myself. And that that’s enough.

For EE