Your Tenderness is Your Strength
How is your tender heart, dear one?
There is so much turmoil in our world, so much we might despair over. As we witness the sounds and images of a war-torn Ukraine amidst the many other issues that trouble our planet, anxiety, grief, fear, sorrow, anger, overwhelm, numbness all come flooding in.
“Tell me about despair, yours,
And I will tell you mine.”
~Mary Oliver
However you find yourself, you are not alone, dear heart. Whatever waves of feelings you are riding these days, know that your despair does not isolate you, rather it weaves you deeper into this common lived experience.
There is healing power when we witness and welcome our experience as it is. The world needs our tenderness.
Holding our despair in sacred community helps us to remember that we are not alone. Knowing that our lives are interconnected, our resilience comes from our ability to show up for one another, not only in our strength, but also in our vulnerability. To admit our heartbreak, to voice our struggle, to allow ourselves to be seen.
Our heartbreak can be the touchstone for deeper intimacy. Our grief is always a revelation of our love.
Can you sit with your despair and see its pulsing root of love? Can you trace the tendrils of anxiety back to the source of your longing, your hope, your desire?
And with whom might you share this messy gift of yours? What trusted friend might also offer up their own despair in conversation that you both might be witnessed in the light of love?
How might you take these feelings and put them in conversation with the land? What might the trees and ravens have to offer in response?
In a culture of individualism, we are taught to keep a stiff-upper-lip, bite the bullet, and keep our chin up. But this so called “strength” breeds separation not only from each other, but from the truth of our own experience.
Love asks us to weave ourselves into a web of belonging with the earth, with other tender-hearted human kin, and with the fullness of our being.
It is through our tenderness that we participate in a larger story, that we re-member ourselves home.
