Sitting under the cedar tree after three days of atmospheric rain in silence and solitude, I celebrate. A bird sings in my throat. Despite yet another storm, love has found me, and threaded her way gently through the dawn and into my body.
Even though I can't remember this most days, love is stubborn and persistently true.
Daily, something is lost, left behind, or changed. Something threatens security, rubs against a grain, or rises from a pit in the belly, a defence as old as time. Sometimes I wonder when my being first conceived its protector. And yet, love persists, waiting to catch a fallen leaf. To carry our weight.
I have learned this from silence. Love sits beside denial and refusal. Peace beside tempestuous water. In resistance and negotiation, comparison and blame, in the endlessly unsettled. Real joy includes agony. A swell of bliss and wellbeing can be tainted by withdrawal, a downswing. A regulating energy deciding how close we can get to the fire of infinite love without being singed. How much we can risk. Even so, love persists. The two are inside me, and cannot hear one another speak unless I ask them to.
The silence allows me to clearly see this hidden dynamic. In seeing clearly, I can navigate with tenderness and skill. Even if just for a moment, I can invite the protected within me to sit in the peace of our body. I can teach my system new ways of being. I can reach down and pour into the most resistant parts of me, the love I am finally learning to trust. My entire being can be taught to believe in this love. I can ask, I can become. A whole flame shoots through me.
It is not through dramatic surrender that we heal, but through quiet moments of allowing two forces to communicate with each other. The part of us that holds back and the part that longs to live openly- they are expressions of the same river. When I sit in silence long enough to hear them both, I realize they've always spoken the same language: survival, belonging, love. Rather than forcing our way past the guards, we invite them to rest in the shade with us. Did you see that black bellied bird and its white wings? Slowly and steadily, even the most vigilant among us may learn to trust the warmth of belonging.
For my paying subscribers, I have shared a video which explores this process in greater detail - a short story a to help us navigate tenderly.
