This morning, my eyes opened and I looked with delight\u00a0at the time on the clock: 8:04 am. For the first time in months, maybe even years, I have been getting seven to eight hours sleep a night. What a relief, when a few years back, I was lucky to sneak in five or six with a work schedule of 12 or more revolutions around the clock. That led to several serious health crises. Even as recently as a few weeks ago, I would be wide awake in the wee hours. I attributed it to being an empath and picking up on all of the chaotic energies on the planet. I had become a repository for the pain and struggle of the people around me as they faced illness and injury, loss of loved ones and financial changes. How can anyone with a heart and mind not be impacted by world events on top of it? Gun violence, bigotry, murder on mass scale, rape, abuse, environmental devastation, addiction, unspeakable loss impacting people on a daily basis. I wonder how those on the receiving end of such acts can function. As a therapist, I have witnessed off the charts resilience among my clients. As a friend, I have listened to stories of atrocities committed and I am honored to know these souls and see\u00a0what they have transcended.<\/p>\n
I kept attempting to push it away and bury it in hustle and bustle. Blessedly, I have my writing skills to get me through the darker times; a candle for me to light my own way. As I am typing these words, the mid morning rain is providing a counter point for emphasis, washing away the sticky humidity that I know awaits beyond my door. I can allow the tears that represented my own inner water works to cleanse me as well. Alone and in the presence of supportive friends, I have let them flow. There was a time when I would refrain from crying, since I wondered if the torrents of tears\u00a0\u00a0would ever stop. Of course, they did. They always do. I also denied that I had normal and messy human emotions, subsumed in the service of keepin’ on keepin’ on. After all, how could I hold everyone else together if I was falling apart? What I discovered, paradoxically, is that if I am fully human; strong and vulnerable, I am more reliable and capable.<\/p>\n