TRUTH, VULNERABILITY, INTEGRITY AND BLUE FUNKS!

Truth, like all the other processes in Grief . . . comes in layers.

QUESTIONS:

Integrity and vulnerability . . . which comes first?

Am I staying in truth if I tell my story with ommissions?

Why do these ommissions feel like gentle lies?

What are the qualities of personal integrity?

Why am I feeling embarrassment when looking into the mirror of vulnerability?

These questions are finding a place in my heart as the chaos in my mind is searching for answers. My mind remembers that the soul holds the answers and a simple ask of “Help Please” begins to unfurl clarity.

My dilemma arose in the time from my last post to this one. I was on a happiness, joyful high in coming home from Memphis. I had been surrounded by friends, new and old met through heart-connections of a shared sorrow. I told OUR story, Matty’s and mine and the Love in the presentation room was palpable—the Love we have for our children and they for us; the Love for each other born of grief and tears and broken hearts, healing in the arms of compassion. The ache was nowhere to be found—unrealistic and ready to make itself known in the most cruel of ways. The crash hit hard.  Thrown to the curb by Grief, back to the days of when I lived in angst of hearing THAT question “How are you today?” And I peered at this new feeling of embarrassment, laughed at by guilt and shame, and asked “Why?”. And Why answered that my vulnerability in the past only felt as if it came easy because it rose from a heap of hurt that had nothing left to lose. Raw felt normal and vulnerable allowed my pain to release itself through the cracks in my heart, making space for healing that was blind as to where it needed to go.

And then a poem by Nayyirah Waheed beckoned to me:

}and if your gift is to make people. feel.

something. do not cover that in

apology. do not lie to accommodate

others’ fear of feeling.~

And I remembered the times when you, my heart friends, followers and readers of Voice of Grief wrote to me to let me know I was given a gift of putting into words what you were feeling and unable to express and how words, when leaned into, were a help in your own journeys.

And I asked myself again “What is Voice of Grief’s purpose?” And I feel Matty as these words are penned: “We are holding space for an opening to a conversation filled with hope for a new dawn in understanding grief . . . from the processing by the bereaved and from the lens of loved ones, friends, neighbors, co-workers, and passers-by standing on the periphery of grief . . . for those with a desire to run in, be with, help out and for those who can do nothing but simply run away”.

And I find courage from this memory and now see what it looks like in its infancy—unsteady on its feet, wondering how many starts, stops and falls will occur before it reaches its old height. And I answer that angst filled question: “Just for today I’d like to be honest and say that I am struggling even though you may rather hear I’m good. Please see me, feel my heart. I am seeing the joy and the ache from a different layer of healing and I need to make peace with this new perspective”.

What I do know is that healing happens in our story-sharing, when we weave what we’ve learned from our struggles, our spills, our rises and shines. When the weft and the warp of our experiences create a net so solid, secure and stable; it becomes able to hold the risks and rewards of speaking from a place of vulnerability. From a space of courage, opening the heart and releasing that which is honest and true; revealing that feelings of uncomfortable-ness touch an emotional freedom within that then casts out an invitation, an opportunity for other hearts to identify and connect with.

I am leaning into the wise words of a friend right now, a heart-connected sister Beth D’Angelo, until I am able to write the next chapter of my story. She is the creator of many things, one of which is her Grow Hope Project. In a recent conversation regarding storytelling, Beth shared insight into who she is. With her permission to share, I’d like to introduce you to Beth in her own words.

}I am a storyteller, a story collector as well as a secret keeper. I have been “privy” to the shadow side of human responses and have chosen the light side to live in. This duality makes it simple and deeply complex at the same time. Grow Hope was a silent message to me in February 2004. Sean’s accident was February 21. .  .  . I wrote two days later, “Grow Hope, Mom”. How does one connect that to today? A breath at a time. I have been asked to grow hope in another, by showing what it looks like to honor and let go of the details of tragedy. Ugh some days!! OMG in others! I want both!~

Here’s Beth D’Angelo’s story:

“On Becoming” 

Okay, I said it.
I don’t trust you.
I thought I did.
I leaned into the unknown, the uncertainty, the upside down-ness of it all.
I surrendered, studied how to live life on life’s terms – I fell, I got up, I spoke up and I did all this magnificently well despite what they thought.
I did what was asked of me.
I played small.  I played big.  I took risks and listened to wisdom.
I threw down the shields, the swords, and the falseness and I stood naked.
I showed my flaws, my wounds…I shut up, I spoke up, and choked down the urge to defend my position.
I never said anything against you.  I never felt you did anything “to me” but only “for” me.

I felt you beside me until….
Until I got exhausted from doing and trying.
I looked at those who say they are by my side;
I felt the eggshells that broke under my weight.
I looked the other way, practiced forgiveness, and what sprang up was a new bouquet of self-righteousness and judgement.  And I hated what I was holding.

I lost it today.
I broke.
I spoke from that brokenness – in the face of what should be gratitude.
I shared with another.
I chose to be real and to wail – to speak what needed to be released; that I am still expecting from others what they cannot give.
I thought if I played to the best of my ability to do, think, speak on the level that would bring favor in your eyes, that just maybe I’d get a reprieve….
I lost trust that I could care.
I don’t care anymore.

I lost it today.  I sobbed for myself.
I am afraid.
I don’t know what to do with what I am supposed to do.
I just don’t know what to do.

I spoke with a soul sister.
She suggested I step back and just rest in it.
She said that this is the slow process of accepting those things about myself.
That it doesn’t mean the things I don’t like about myself will go away, that I will accept the good and the bad – all of me.

This is the edge of what surrender looks like.
It is different from its’ shadow, “giving up”.
There is something rare, raw and vulnerable in surrendering.
This is not easy, nor is it comfortable and it is certainly not enjoyable.

So here I am.
The edge.
If I peer over too far, I feel something might push me…without my permission.
Without my permission-yes, I know that one.
The deepest, darkest, the greatest fear is in that bottom I cannot see.
That bottom justifies life’s bullshit with a sweetness that is intoxicating.
I feel it’s calling – the false, the lies and betrayal is in its voice…
That voice has become stronger, more fierce…..has taken up more space than it should; filling the crowded corners with overwhelming layers of not enough and all those should have been’s…..

But I have grown stronger as well.
I have turned my body to face the uncertainty-to see and feel and hear just what is calling my name and it isn’t down there-its up there-in the light, the breeze, on silent wings….
In the process of dropping falseness and masks; courage, resilience and hope held up their arms to ward off what wants to claim as theirs.

Theirs……
Yours……
I have outgrown what served so well for so long and this newness is not asking more of what I am-rather-it is asking me to be exactly what I am.
I thought I stopped caring and trusting-but I haven’t….
I have been involved in the unwrapping-the unfolding, the undoing of careful assembly work for decades….

It is not you that I don’t trust.
It is me.
I don’t know how to trust all that I know to be – the natural, authentic.. the me.
My imaginary fears are just as real as real is real.
And that makes no sense and all sense…..

I said it.
I don’t trust me.
to stand long-term in my vulnerability.  The “what if’s” are intent on tangling me up.
It has nothing to do with you.
It has everything to do with me….
I take that back, God.  I do trust you – I am just scared that I will fall and be lost.
That I will be lost in the uncertainty and the belonging I yearn for and fight against.

However, I am willing to be willing to stay open; to learn what being off-balance feels like so I stand in that space that frightens me so.
I am willing to question with curiosity; to soften the details of my story; to lean into what is being offered as “life embellishments”.
Okay, I said it.
I am willing because….I am still standing…and this is one amazing reason to continue staying open and trusting the journey.

Written by Beth D’Angelo, 2018

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