Love and Suffering

As I follow my heart this week, I want to explore the relationship between love and suffering.

It has been a trying year of loss. Loss of people I love through death and loss of people through the natural process of relationships that change due to one or the other making shifts to move their life forward and the ripple effects from those decisions.

On Wednesday I said good-bye to Dr. Joanne Birhari. She has moved on. She has traveled to a different part of Canada and has taken on a new position which shifts her away from her private practice. I am excited to see her grow, live her values and benefit other people through her role as a mentor and teacher. At the same time, I grieve the loss of the long- standing relationship we had developed, and I will miss her. I am also holding gratitude for all the space she has held as a witness to my journey of healing. My struggles to move from self-hatred to love. To engage and risk sharing myself to the depths that I did with this woman bonded me in ways that have no words. To have someone open to witness the depts of my pain created a heart bond leading to doors opening to that journey of self-love. Experiencing being seen, heard, and treated like I matter and experiencing that I am lovable through this therapeutic relationship has given me the confidence to explore this outside the therapeutic relationship. I am really learning how much I am loved. That is still an ongoing exciting and scary journey!

I have faith that if Dr. Bihari has even 1% of the impact on others that she has had on me she will make a huge difference in their lives. So, imagine her having a much higher rate of impact. What beauty and love will be created in the world. Thank you, Dr. Bihari, and yes, I will miss you. Yet, I will forever hold you closely in my heart.

Love of self has been a painful journey and has had many faces over the years. These days it plays out in daily my mirror work. My WW (Weight Watcher's) journey and it also plays out in my texting as some folks persist on telling me I am lovable.

I am continuing my learning curve of love and recognizing that the more capacity I have to love myself the more capacity I have to hold space and love others.

Loving others comes with suffering. Being able to be present with my own suffering has been a process of nurturing self-compassion and kindness towards myself. Building my capacity to hold love, kindness, self-compassion has built my capacity to hold suffering.

I have been holding a lot of suffering over the past week. Holding space for people I Iove dearly as they have either said, are saying or are in that excruciating place of waiting to say goodbye to a loved one. My heart is wide open as I hold space for those I love and if a butterfly was to land on it I would experience excruciating pain.

What is the alternative? Indifference. I have lived a life of indifference to protect myself from the pain of suffering. I did not have the capacity to hold suffering just as I did not have the capacity to hold self-love. The path of indifference lead to a road of self-destruction and to the brink of my own death. The path to self-love, a very long, painful journey has opened my heart. I have been touched by so many people throughout my life who supported my journey to self-love. However, I was not always ready to receive. Their sending me that love was and is such a powerful force in my life. As I embrace myself I am taking in all that love!

I am on a beautiful, painful journey of living life through the lens of love. What a journey. My heart is full and overflowing with love. I am grateful for every moment of my suffering for it is a metric of how much I love and am loved.