By Renee Lewis Love
I cry often. Almost every day. Rivers of tears flow from the years of pain, frozen and stacked up brick by brick into parts of my heart, pushed into my hips and even corners of my brain. A million different moments pushed away but never lost, gosh why couldn’t I lose them, each one determined to thaw and be seen. One by one they flow through me asking to be felt. Asking to be honored. Asking for their depth to be acknowledged; a deep well of pain I willfully ignored. I was obstinate in my determination to block out the pain. I ran and ran, searching for relief and finding only temporary moments of suspension. Temporary moments of numbness, of distraction, reaching instead for artificial emotions. Years of living off of artificial emotions tied my stomach into a knot and my soul began to rot. Eventually I found myself in a state of constant self-torture that I couldn’t escape. My legs grew tired, thighs swelling in revolt, my knees buckling from the weight of the emotions I had stubbornly tried to block. There was no more room and I was becoming a living tomb, or maybe I had already been buried with decaying skeletons, my heart barely pumping, fueled by the artificial connections I forced through my veins every day in an unconscious attempt to convince myself I was living a good life.
The pain swirled in and through me like dark demons having their way with me, picking at my flesh and stabbing at my eyes until I could do nothing but lay on the floor in a ball crying. All I could do was cry. I didn’t even recognize the wails pouring from my throat. It had layers of pain that sounded like a newlywed couple who had just lost their baby, an avid runner who had just lost their legs, a child whose parent never returned. The more I cried, the more I cried, as the pain sitting on my chest held me down, rigid towers of grief came crashing down at once. I was losing my foundation, I was losing the hardness I faithfully relied on, I was losing the ‘me’ I had known my whole life.
The tears would not let up, the ache inside me sharp and steady. Excruciating minutes turned into hours as I pleaded with the pain. I pleaded and prayed the only prayer I knew at the time being a bargaining tool I desperately screamed out – please let the pain ease up, even if just for a second, vowing to never again try to escape my pain. I vowed to feel my pain, to allow sadness, regret, disappointment, grief, loss, and fear, anytime and anywhere.
The hard wails turned to soft sobs; piercing cold ice turning into droplets of salvation. The puddle of tears becoming a sort of baptismal and I intuitively touched my forehead to the ground in a form of respect for the magnitude of pain that had almost devoured me. I raised my forehead slightly and peered softly into the years of pain now reduced to liquid on the floor, and I caught my reflection. I shyly peered into my eyes and saw a small glimpse of what seemed like my soul. I was startled but captivated, now in a locked gaze with my essence and I saw a power I had never seen in my eyes before. Long-held, maybe even treasured, feelings of abandonment, loss, and worthlessness crumbled at the steely gaze staring back at me. I held my soul’s gaze as the tears slowly evaporated. When the last drop had returned to the ethers, I said goodbye and then fell into a deep stupor where Light Beings came to me in my dreams and began soothing my soul. I allowed myself to be soothed, too exhausted to fight or make sense of what was happening. It seemed like all of God’s Angels, Mother Mary, Mother Earth, Goddess Maia, and the Sun God had come to heal my soul.
When I woke up I wasn’t sure if any of it had been real but I did not feel the usual heaviness and deterioration of my body. My hips weren’t as swollen, my knees seemed like they could carry me again and my brain felt less cluttered. I noticed after a few weeks my brain had even stopped offering me ways of escape in the form of easy distractions. I seemed to no longer be enjoying the stories I would make up about myself, about life and about other people. Having had a small taste, my soul yearned for truth. I desired my full salvation.
My salvation kept coming, crying turning into a daily practice and becoming more natural, a few moments of release for a lifetime of internal freedom. Sometimes I would be washing dishes or folding clothes or doing something else ordinary and out of nowhere I would feel a block of stone cold emotions from long ago starting to melt, finding its way out, its path cleared by all the crying I had done up until that point.
As I continued to allow pain to flow through me, there was an eventual expansion inside me, a space for Me, an acceptance of Me.
I find the more I allow, the richer my expansion. The extent to which I allow myself to feel pain becomes the extent to which I am able to feel love and joy. It only gets deeper and more rewarding.
I continue to cry often. I cry out the daily losses and disappointments. The regrets. The failures. I cry for the ‘child me’ who was not allowed to cry. Sometimes the people I’m connected to in spirit get bogged down by the pain they will not release and I ask God to allow me to take a piece of their pain. Sometimes I am given the gift of Service to others and I am allowed to cry out their pain if it is mine to do. I cry for my ancestors who did not have the luxury of expressing their pain, placing their pain in small segments of DNA so that I could cry it out at the preappointed time. They guaranteed my lineage; I try to give them the gift of internal freedom for future generations. I cry for my parents who survived unimaginable hardships and injustices so that I may have opportunities they never had. May I do what little shadow work that has been placed before me now so that future generations can do even greater works and experience even deeper connections of love and joy for the overall good of humanity and our blessed Earth Mother.
I cry in gratitude, grateful for each and every torch bearer before me who took one little step through the dark tunnel of pain to find their peace.
I cry in truth, I cry in forgiveness, I cry in the sweetness of love.
I cry often.
SWL 