Self - Soothing

Last Monday morning I woke-up knowing something was off. It didn’t take long before I realized it was me. I didn’t want to get out of bed. I didn’t want to face my morning workout. Ever since I had the stroke and lived through its long, difficult aftermath I have had bad days. In more recent years I have come to refer to these dark days as “grief days.” When I have one of these emotionally painful days everything gets more difficult, and I feel the weight that presses me to the Earth.

I had a lot of depression in my early life, but I found all of that disappeared when the stroke changed my life. Everything I knew changed, and depression became grief. Since then, in lieu of chronic pain, I’ve had chronic awareness, and that has resulted in me occasionally being overcome by grief. Monday was one of those mornings.

It was hard to get out of bed. I only aroused myself, because I had my Monday morning call with the members of what I call my WOW group. I didn’t know it, and this reveals how Lucky I am, but a miracle was on its way to me.

I had the good sense to be honest about my situation, to the old people who phoned in, for our volunteer conversation through the Senior Center Without Walls (SCWW). We have been talking with each other for nearly 2 years. I knew most of them were disabled too. I also know they are old like me, shut-ins too, people on the margin, looking for a little companionship to relieve the isolation most of us experience. I spoke to them about having a grief day, and assuming they had bad days too, asked them what they did to soothe themselves when it happened?

It was a stroke of genius, landing on this topic, because the conversation it stimulated was so poignant and touching, so profound and meaningful that I find myself moved to share some of it with you.  Remember, these are some of the most marginalized and neglected old folks that exist. They are in their 80’s and 90’s, and yet unknowingly they practice some of the purist coping mechanisms that we humans are capable of. For most of these old folks this was the first time they had ever talked about anything like this.

The conversation quickly turned to the issue of connecting with others or not. For many people, a bad day, defined differently by different people, led to withdrawal. For some it led to reaching out for contact. Other strategies emerged; these included food, chocolate, praying, reading the Bible, family, gratitude and humor. Not everyone could practice all of them. Some of the most poignant sharing came from those currently living on the edge and teetering from the heaviness of great uncertainty.

It was a good discussion about a significant difficulty. But, then it veered off and became a compelling, even inspiring conversation about self-love. One women spoke up, somewhat apologetically, and recounted a recent fall. She told of laying on the floor, checking herself out to see if any part of her was broken. She felt the wave of fear break over her. She managed on her own to get up, and go on with her life. What she wanted to share was what happened later. At some point, she stopped, and felt for herself, and began the most significant part of picking herself up. She spontaneously visualized herself laying on the floor, and extended to her broken fearful self, all the love and compassion she could find in herself. She reported that she had mobilized her own heart, and the love she had received from others, on the behalf of her own human-ness. The silence on the line indicated how much the group was affected by what she shared.  She reported holding herself, and captivated all of us.

This recounting can never capture the poignancy and vulnerability of that resonating moment, but it served to remind me, that I had known such a time in my own coming to terms with my fragility. Being human can sometimes be an ordeal — a loneliness so profound, a hardship unendurable, a blessing disguised as a difficulty — a challenge that obscures the opportunity. Her fall brought her heart home.

We all need to know, given this dark time we are living in, that there is always someone to love in the darkness. We all need to know, that the most heartbreaking and fearful circumstances, can mobilize what is best in us. Caring deeply and compassionately for oneself is the heart breaking open for Life, it is Creation carnate. She was apologetic — afraid she was revealing some selfishness — whereas we, the speechless listeners, only wished this kind of love was available to all of us.

It is. There was a time when Xan and I thought this capacity, self-compassion, was the hallmark indicator of elderhood. Since then we recognized that self-loving, of this kind, essentially differentiates the journey from a kind of arrival. Many of the old have discovered this is one of the gifts of aging. It is available to anyone, at any time, but it is those who have borne significant hardship, significant life, who are most likely to know of the effectiveness of self-love as a self-soothing capacity.