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Saturday 20th March, 2010
Almost 40 years ago when I was four years old, my sister Claudia left this life after suffering a heart attack. She was only 12.
The pain and the heartache and the emptiness that ensued is not something that needs to be elaborated on here. The purpose of this is not to re-live the pain but to move through it and heal it. And pain can only be healed by moving through it, not through avoidance. I have watched my parents carry that pain unable to discuss their feelings let alone mention her name, without experiencing heartache. I have seen the effects of it on my mother in particular who has never allowed herself to cry for my sister. Her explanation for this was that I was so young and she could not let me see her cry. Yet 40 years on, she is still unable to release the tears she has kept imprisoned within the walls of her heart.
Grief is a natural process, yet there was nothing “natural” in how my parents dealt with it and I must state, that there is absolutely no judgment in my saying this.
Last night I decided to share photos of my sister with family and friends via a social networking site. At first I resisted sensing that it would cause pain to those who knew her and evoke pity in those who have known me, and the effects her passing has had on my life. Despite my initial resistance, I went ahead with my plan. As I edited the photos and for the first time “really’ looked at them, the ache in my heart was overwhelming. But it took me completely by surprise that for the first time in my life, I did not cry.
And then I received a message that changed my life completely. A family member wrote to me expressing his sorrow for the pain I still carry in my heart and reassuring me that she is still with me. As I started to reply to his message I felt that having evoked that sadness in him by putting the photos up in the first place, I had a responsibility to heal it and give him peace.
My intention was to heal it within him; I did not realize at the time that what I was in fact doing was healing it within myself.
As I wrote I forced myself to confront that pain head on and I could only do so by turning my attention inwards and focusing it entirely on that tightening sensation that gripped my heart and threatened to crush it completely. The moment I had avoided for so long had finally arrived and it astounded me to recognize that the fear that had stopped me from doing this time and time again was just not there. As I felt the sensation fully, I was able to identify it and what I discovered was not what I had expected. What I expected was pain but what I found was love, a profoundly intense and overwhelming love. As I focused further on what I was feeling it only intensified and as it intensified my heart felt like it was filling beyond its capacity to the point where it would burst. At that very moment I felt an intense pain, and in that instant I was healed. I suddenly realized that it was not the pain of losing her that I was carrying, but the pain of withholding so much love for so many years. My heart was brimming with love, a love that had no outlet. And to withhold love is painful.
I suddenly understood so much of my suffering but am now seeing it with a healed sense of perception. I had always felt that a part of me had died when she did, but I was wrong, for the truth is, that part of me was only crippled by my lack of understanding and at any point I could have let the pain go had I only been willing to face the feeling that I had defined as pain. Love is energy and suppressed energy can only lead to dis-ease. When we lose someone, the love we have for them does not leave with them, there is no hole in the heart, the love continues to flow, that is, if we allow it to. We think our heart is broken at the loss, but our heart feels broken because we are denying it the ability to do what it is meant to do, and that is to love.
On those rare occasions when we are willing to open our hearts to someone, we do so tentatively and fearfully as we have defined our hearts as fragile and weak. We fear being hurt, we fear that if we love, then we may again lose the object of our love and the thought of more heartache is unbearable. We do not realize that our heart aches because it yearns to give love freely with no limitations.
Almost 40 years ago when I was four years old, my sister Claudia left this life after suffering a heart attack. She was only 12.
The pain and the heartache and the emptiness that ensued is not something that needs to be elaborated on here. The purpose of this is not to re-live the pain but to move through it and heal it. And pain can only be healed by moving through it, not through avoidance. I have watched my parents carry that pain unable to discuss their feelings let alone mention her name, without experiencing heartache. I have seen the effects of it on my mother in particular who has never allowed herself to cry for my sister. Her explanation for this was that I was so young and she could not let me see her cry. Yet 40 years on, she is still unable to release the tears she has kept imprisoned within the walls of her heart.
Grief is a natural process, yet there was nothing “natural” in how my parents dealt with it and I must state, that there is absolutely no judgment in my saying this.
Last night I decided to share photos of my sister with family and friends via a social networking site. At first I resisted sensing that it would cause pain to those who knew her and evoke pity in those who have known me, and the effects her passing has had on my life. Despite my initial resistance, I went ahead with my plan. As I edited the photos and for the first time “really’ looked at them, the ache in my heart was overwhelming. But it took me completely by surprise that for the first time in my life, I did not cry.
And then I received a message that changed my life completely. A family member wrote to me expressing his sorrow for the pain I still carry in my heart and reassuring me that she is still with me. As I started to reply to his message I felt that having evoked that sadness in him by putting the photos up in the first place, I had a responsibility to heal it and give him peace.
My intention was to heal it within him; I did not realize at the time that what I was in fact doing was healing it within myself.
As I wrote I forced myself to confront that pain head on and I could only do so by turning my attention inwards and focusing it entirely on that tightening sensation that gripped my heart and threatened to crush it completely. The moment I had avoided for so long had finally arrived and it astounded me to recognize that the fear that had stopped me from doing this time and time again was just not there. As I felt the sensation fully, I was able to identify it and what I discovered was not what I had expected. What I expected was pain but what I found was love, a profoundly intense and overwhelming love. As I focused further on what I was feeling it only intensified and as it intensified my heart felt like it was filling beyond its capacity to the point where it would burst. At that very moment I felt an intense pain, and in that instant I was healed. I suddenly realized that it was not the pain of losing her that I was carrying, but the pain of withholding so much love for so many years. My heart was brimming with love, a love that had no outlet. And to withhold love is painful.
I suddenly understood so much of my suffering but am now seeing it with a healed sense of perception. I had always felt that a part of me had died when she did, but I was wrong, for the truth is, that part of me was only crippled by my lack of understanding and at any point I could have let the pain go had I only been willing to face the feeling that I had defined as pain. Love is energy and suppressed energy can only lead to dis-ease. When we lose someone, the love we have for them does not leave with them, there is no hole in the heart, the love continues to flow, that is, if we allow it to. We think our heart is broken at the loss, but our heart feels broken because we are denying it the ability to do what it is meant to do, and that is to love.
On those rare occasions when we are willing to open our hearts to someone, we do so tentatively and fearfully as we have defined our hearts as fragile and weak. We fear being hurt, we fear that if we love, then we may again lose the object of our love and the thought of more heartache is unbearable. We do not realize that our heart aches because it yearns to give love freely with no limitations.
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