On this journey of life I am going to be sad sometimes. Sometimes sadness or regret is there and sometimes I run a monlogue of things I should have done which I just didnt do at the time for important reasons and then I get full of regret and sadness especially if they led to lost connections with important people in my life and heart. Today I just sat down put my hand on my heart and asked myself to accept it all in to my heart and ask it what it had to teach me.
This kind of time, too is when I need part of the serenity prayer : praying for the courage to accept the things I cannot change, one of which is the past.
I am reading a good little book on anxiety and stress busters at the moment and the author reminds us in it (as do so many other mental health writers) that anxiety is usually about the past or the future, that is, unless a python is staring us in the face about to bite us, which is probably metpahorically how it feels when old traumas from the past come back to haunt us in the present or via triggers. In this case we can switch our attention to the breath if the threat is not real (if it is, really we should just get the heck out of there!) and breathe to achieve a sense of calm, lengthening the letting go exhalation after each in breath by 2 seconds (from 2 to 10 seconds) And we can also focus on doing something physically, mindfully in the present in an attempt to leave our rumination behind.
But there are also times we just need to be with our body or listen to our heart and acknowledge to ourselves how we are feeling gently, do some work to feel and then release the feelings. Part of a mid life depression may involve just this kind of self exploration to see where past pain or conditioning or mistakes stole some of our life from us or prevented us from living it fully.
Then there is situational sadness and anxiety that may trigger past pain. Today I had cause for some worry and anxiety as last Thursday one of my dearest nephews had a major operation to remove swelling from his brain which was impinging on his spinal cord. He had been recovering slowly but I got a text about 5 pm last night to say he had to be taken to emergency as his pain had gotten severe.
Some of you my remember from my blog that my older sister had a massive cerebral bleed at the age of 34 and this trauma had massive repercussions. My head was running swings and roundabouts last night and I was calmed my a loving call from his brother who was maintaining an attitude of positivity but by this morning I was worrying again and feeling a lot of sadness and self blame I had not yet been able to get up there to visit him. Sadness of the tragic way my older sister’s life ended is not with me all the time, but some regret that I could not find the strength to live far away when she was ill and alive at times does, as I lost a lot of years.
I need to accept that too, when I left the UK back in 2001 to come home I left a lovely job with a beautiful group of women that I loved and a life I cherished living on the edge of the meadows of Granchester in Cambridge. The sadness is not always with me, at times I forget but at times it rears it head up, that and the sadness over the bike accident that ruined my second attempt to go back there to live (after my husband and I separated).
Today it was there again with all the associated memories and that is when I just decided for today I had to accept that I was feeling sadness and regret. If anything this sadness and regret teaches me I have to nourish my own life and go towards the kind of life that makes me happy, not sacrificing it for others all the time. Its a necesssary sadness to grow depth, insight and wisdom.
So often people in our lives grow impatient with these kind of sadnesses and regrets we can have but they should not judge or tell us to get over them. Some losses leave big scars, some difficult choices we made cannot be changed, nor our unlived life got back. But we can and do need to find ways to enjoy the present moment if we can, bringing and living all our losse forward in such a way as they teach us to value life and make healthier choices. Sometimes the present moment is sad. It doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with us, just that we are fallible, vulnerable human beings, not impenetrable Gods.
Emerging From The Dark Night 