A client asked me that this week: “Does it get better?”
I think the question has two answers: yes, and no.
First the good news: when we do the work that presents itself to us, YES, it does get better.
It gets better when we process our backlog of trauma.
It gets better when we shed our shame, our judgment, our self-hatred.
It gets better when we lean into self-compassion, lovingkindess, and genuine self-care.
It gets better when we listen to ourselves and hear what’s okay and what’s not okay with us.
It gets better when we create healthy boundaries based on that listening and insight.
It gets better when we allow others to do their own emotional work.
It gets better when we get enough sleep, eat good food, do our yoga, take our meds as needed.
It gets better when we breathe.
It gets better when we join genuine, caring community capable of acceptance and attachment.
It gets better in so many ways when we grow into the fullness of our own true selves.
Here’s the bad news: there is no amount of personal work, prayer, or good juju that’s going to protect us from the shit that happens here on earth.
So in a lot of ways, NO. It doesn’t get better. It just keeps going.
Kids get cancer.
Partners refuse to do their work, flake out, and leave us.
Car wrecks and tornadoes and wild fires and climate change happen.
We carry our loss and pain with us. There are holes that can never be filled.
We learn, over and over and over again, that we have so little control.
We feel how much that sucks.
All I can tell you is this: the work that I did to try to make things better has stood me in good stead this last year. I’m glad I was in a good personal place when my daughter died.
I needed to be shed of shame and judgment and self-hatred when that happened.
I needed to be grounded in self-compassion and lovingkindness and breathing and yoga and loving community when that went down.
Because, like I’d been saying to my kids for a few years: “No matter what happens, we’ll get through it together.”
And that is true. “Together” is the thing that gets me up every day, even on the days I think I can’t get up ever again. “Together” is what gets me there.
But the first connection to build and nurture, the first “together” is our own, within ourselves, the still and quiet assurance that original goodness is real and true.
We are people worth knowing, worth loving, worth nurturing.
Worthy of compassion. Worthy of care.
We breathe in that truth, like the first breath of creation, take it on as the bedrock of ourselves.
That gift of Love gives me the strength and courage to bear everything that cannot be made better.
Pisgah National Forest, October 2018 (photo: Katrina Ryder)