Tag: depression

Redefining everything

/ Lanae / 2 Comments Featured

I’ve been feeling like my words have all been coming for me recently, echoing back at me … both reproachfully and hopefully!

All the various deep intentions I challenged myself to practice and to be …

Being mindful, practicing deep listening

Being an includer, practicing radical inclusion

To nurture belongingness for those who have felt a sense of not belonging

Being peace

Being stillness, being a healing presence

Choosing abundance

Living these words has felt painfully hard recently, feeling like I was failing to live my spiritual practices. And yet these words, these intentions have still anchored me …

In mid-October, I gave a reflection at my church home about choosing abundance and gratitude. How I learned to choose abundance, abandon the myth of scarcity, the one that said that there wasn’t enough and I would never be enough or have enough. How I’d spent years in poverty-thinking and I was done with that …

But even though I passionately declared myself done with it, I guess it wasn’t done with me!  I found myself mired, struggling to remember abundance or to have the strength to choose it, day upon day. And I felt like such a fraud … teaching what I was struggling to do/be!

And what I wrote recently about coming to see my life-mission as being peace, being stillness, being a healing presence? Certainly, there’s truth there, regarding that as a calling, but how it was presently showing up in my spirit?? Mmm, not so much maybe! Even when I published the post, I was thinking, my dear girl, this won’t ring right  … because right now, your energy, your spirit doesn’t match these words!

I certainly wasn’t feeling like I was a healing presence, because I definitely didn’t feel still or serene within. I was aching, hurting, grieving, feeling lonely, unsupported, burdened, overwhelmed.

It’s not been an easy year by any stretch … yes, there has been much blessing, but a profound collection of losses, and an accumulation of layers of grief and sorrow.
The specters of depression sprang up … anger, fear, shame, despair, loneliness. Self-pity, resentment. Seeds I didn’t want, didn’t want to water. They made it difficult for me to remember abundance, to choose it … and they’ve caused me to begin redefining what choosing abundance looks like, in different circumstances. How does one draw abundance from dark emotions? It’s a (lonely) labor of love!
And I’ve tried, oh, I’ve tried to remember abundance in this hard, valley season … if it was hard to choose it, at least to remember it! To remember the gift of belovedness.
I’ve tried to nurture my spiritual practices, and let them nurture me. I’ve tried to rest in this posture, difficult as it is (more of my words that came back to me).

In all of that, I think the theme of this year has become redefining! Redefining – and refining.

Redefining myself, redefining my spirituality/spiritual practice, redefining my intentions and expectations. Redefining abundance and what choosing abundance looks like.

Redefining even the act of defining things, learning to let go of my need to define things!

Redefining everything …

There was the divorce … and learning to live life as a single, working mom (while continuing grad school!). And I’ll not sugarcoat it – it’s been hard and deeply overwhelming. Yes, sometimes such a triumphant feeling to realize what I can do and what I can handle, but also – overwhelming!
And yet, so many big decisions to make on my own and so many responsibilities and obligations (like, managing finances alone!), and so much uncertainty, and so much on my plate …  and so little time!
The busyness and fullness of my life – on one hand, satisfying, and yet on the other, feeling like it robbed me of friendship and connection time.
A cold and searing loneliness confronted me.
And the voice of poverty told me that I didn’t have enough support, care, love, affirmation …. but oh, how it told untruths! I do know that, because the voice of abundance brought again to my heart the many beautiful things that dear friends have done for me, big and small:

  •                 the friend who got a family photography session gifted to me
  •                 the friend who organized a clothing drive for my children at the beginning of the school year (and the generous response to that)
  •                 the long phone conversations with one friend
  •                 the friend who sat with me as I cried in shock after losing my job earlier in the year
  •                 the friends who have picked up my son from middle school several times when I was working
  •                 the kind, loving words here and there that have added up to a sweet bouquet

Too, there was also the felt weight of withdrawal in some long-time friendships (from my past church), heavier in my heart as silences made the sense of emotional distancing more tangible. This weight has lightened, though.

Redefining friendships, connection, sisterhood, community … learning what my village looks like. It might not look like what someone else’s looks like, or the ideas that society and social media have given me, but it doesn’t need to! If I open my heart, if I see with different eyes, if I look right next to me, it’s there … you’re there! Friendships, community, sisterhood – they are for me just as they need to be for me for this season. And are enough, if I let them be!

And then there was my first girlfriend experience, and then a break-up. To be clear, it was a special experience, rich in many ways! I’m thankful for what I learned from her and the relationship, but the break-up really rocked me.

Redefining love-relationship needs and desires … learning to be content unpartnered, for now.

Then, I lost one job – but found another, one that has been good for me in so many ways. Loss = gain.

Redefining my professional value and competence. 

Hopes humbled and dreams deferred …  A niche that I had had the idea that I might fill, but became clear didn’t belong to me. Some dreams and passions that I had to say goodbye to, at least in the form I had envisioned them.

It turned out to be a long, hard goodbye, and it’s been hard to find the hellos that follow the goodbyes. Even though I know about letting go gracefully of that which is not meant for me, and that letting go of old possibilities opens up new opportunities, I still felt the deep sting of loss, all the way into my core.

And it shook me, badly, unexpectedly. It stirred up resentments and fears that surprised me with their presence and power. I think it showed the depth of my attachment to those expectations and ideas, too.

(So much for learning to practice non-attachment! This quote comes to mind: The mark of a moderate woman is freedom from her own ideas. Alas, I am not (yet) a moderate woman, then! But it’s a life goal!)

I’d made the mistake of attaching my identity to my idea of what my role, my calling was. I’d tied my sense of belongingness to it. So, I felt unmoored  … another loss, another grief. One I didn’t really receive with grace or gratitude, I tell you!

Redefining calling, role, identity. And – letting go of the need to be defined by them.

So yes, the last while, loneliness and grief have been familiar companions.  So familiar I simply decided to befriend them and make peace with them. (I think that’s how you draw what abundance and healing there is to draw from them, anyway!)

I know that this is the holiday time, the season of joy to the world and peace on earth, and it’s not festive to speak of loneliness and grief and sorrow – but these are also a part of the holiday experience for many, because they’re a part of the human experience.

Redefining the value and reality of grief and loneliness.

Don’t get me wrong, I do know joy still, I know there’s a place of joy deep in the center of my being; I know there’s light within! There’s still stillness …

Redefining ideas and expectations about being stillness, being peace, being a healing presence.

I have learned and am learning still that I need not judge myself for not always knowing equanimity and stillness. There’s no need to define myself by the presence or absence of any emotion or experience. I’m human – part of being human is feeling deep pain, experiencing grief, sorrow, loneliness, dark emotions. As I’ve written before (more words that keep coming back for me!) sorrow is a sacred part of belovedness. So is grief. So is loneliness.

Redefining my whole emotional experience.

Redefining my journey, my story.

Redefining everything …  refining everything. Being refined.

Further and deeper, learning to let some things be undefined … learning to let the journey and the experience be as it is, in this moment, this season!

 

 

Finding the gift of belovedness: sharing my story

/ Lanae / 4 Comments

As I sifted through possibilities, contemplating what next to write, one seed-thought kept returning … compelling me. The ‘right words’ making themselves known in their ‘right time’.

I feel that sense of ‘rightness’ now, though this may be a more difficult or sober thing to read about, and you may wonder at first, where is the echo of belovedness in this?! But there will be echoes of belovedness, I assure you! For belovedness is my life-theme, a thread I now see woven widely throughout the fabric of creation …

This is a story from when I didn’t believe I was beloved, nor knew that I could live in Belovedness. This is also the story of how and why I came to view myself, my life, everyone, everything, through the lens of belovedness … how belovedness has redeemed the story that came before.

The semi-colon has become a very powerful image of a life continued, continuing. My semi-colon is belovedness, the story following the semi-colon is belovedness … but now I can look back at the story before the semi-colon with the eyes and the heart of belovedness, also.

What preceded my semi-colon?

Years of chronic depression, a baseline feeling of vague disquiet often like a dark cloud on the horizon of an otherwise blue sky. Intermittently there arose intense, acute storms, sometimes situational, sometimes appearing to arrive with seemingly no external provocation …

A spirit-crushing inner certainty of myself as a completely disordered person, mentally and spiritually defective ….

A coexisting certainty my cross was to bear that disorderedness, that defectiveness, with all the grace and strength possible, all the days of my life …

A broken sense of self. A broken sense of belovedness too, leading all too often into an existential despair … many dark nights of the soul.

A deep-rooted, soul-sapping sense of non-belovedness. I believed some did love me, but I did not feel lovable, divinely lovable or beloved. I did not know my belovedness, nor that Belovedness already knew me in an infinitely intimate way …

Five years ago – it seems like another lifetime ago – I descended into a severely debilitating period of deep depression, months-long, eternity-long, with multiple suicide attempts. Many factors were at play, too many to count here. Intensifying my downward spiral was a severe reaction to powerful psychiatric medication prescribed for what was later determined a misdiagnosis. The physical and mental side effects left me more incapacitated than depression on its own ever had. A shambling shell of a person, whose body and brain had gone haywire … my inability to care for my children, my keen awareness of my diminished intellectual ability, my profound sense of non-belovedness, damaged relationships, all excruciating.

I was convinced I was too dangerously impaired to live … yet it wasn’t that I wanted so much to die. I wanted to be free. Free from the chilling dread constantly washing over me, free from the defective mind and character I believed I had … free, safe, whole.

So, in the summer of 2011, I tried to escape this life multiple times, multiple ways. Specifics need no detailing here, but this I want to share …

The time I was sitting in my dark closet, feeling both afraid of the pain of death and the pain of life. The time I felt, strangely, some certainty that if I crossed over, there would be no judgment, only the wrapping of cosmic arms around me, my hell, my suffering vanished. An echo of belovedness; the presence of Belovedness … it was with me already, yet I knew it not, and thought it only waited beyond this life.

I believe now that Belovedness saved me. Even though I left that closet and the ever-present dread rolled in like a tsunami and washed it into oblivion – until an indescribable spiritual experience three years ago this month in which I finally knew the indwelling presence of Belovedness in the deepest fibers of my body, mind, soul. My broken self, my broken sense of belovedness and of my belovedness – knit together, made whole.

Oh, I’m still emotionally intense, passionate, I feel the suffering in the world more deeply, I mourn, I weep for it. Yet, I’m grounded now in a grateful, mindful joy. Miracles happen!

And when I look back on those endless days and months, all the brokenness, the brutal moments, the pain and the shame of the wounds I received and the wounds I gave … I see all redeemed in the light and presence of belovedness. The ‘me’ who experienced them is healed and whole, in the light of belovedness … this is the gift that I gave, give, to my past and present self. Reconciliation.

I am grateful for the brokenness and the suffering, not because they themselves are good, but because I found good through them – blessing from them. I am grateful for my experiences of depression, even of being suicidal, not because they themselves were good, but because I drew good from them. They themselves were not the gifts, but many gifts I discovered within them … ultimately, the gift of belovedness. Liberation.

And now, I am with Belovedness, beloved always, in all ways. And this is my gift to you: You are beloved, always, in all ways. Whoever and wherever you are, you are beloved.

Belovedness is here; live in it! Find the gifts that may be for you in whatever is your brokenness and suffering; find the gift of belovedness there and embrace it.