After a great loss, how do you know when you have healed enough to open your heart again to the world around you? ...This is a good question and one I have been asked from time to time. I have even asked myself this question.
I never really know if I am ready to open up to the world again. Eventually, I just do. After the flood of tears, explosive anger, paralyzing numbness, and deadening apathy have subsided, I go out again and embrace life. I am changed, and the "me" I can offer is also changed... yet I am still open to what life has to offer and still willing to give the best of myself. Am I healed enough to begin a new relationship, a new career, a new anything? Who knows... it does not matter, because what is enough for me may not be enough for you. So if I tell you "yes, I am," and try to define it... you still may not "get it," because your needs for healing will be different than mine. What matters is that I begin again and remain open to life. Healing takes time, and for some wounds, it can take a lifetime. But I can't let the wounds kill me nor keep me from living new joys. Just like life, healing is a journey. And just like love, it should grow in time. If I wait until I feel I am completely ready/recovered/healed before I venture out into life or love... If I wait until everything in my life is perfectly set and ready the way I think it should be - I will never feel ready to do any major, worthwhile thing! So I take the risk and do it anyway. No regrets. I only regret what I never tried out of fear. Being the editor/writer/artist/semi-perfectionist that I am... I am the queen of beginning projects that take forever to finish. But it is important for me to sometimes just dive in and say, "here I am - let's go - let's do this!" If it comes out crappy, so be it. I tried, and I will try again... hopefully better results will come out of my honest efforts. There will be lessons learned and relearned. Then I can look back with wonder at how I ever did the thing nobody thought I could do, the things even I didn't think I could do. So my answer to the question of "how do you know you have healed enough, after a great loss, to open your heart again to the world around you" is not so simple, and yet it IS simple. I don't know if I'm healed enough, I choose to open my heart again anyway. It's in living... saying yes to life... loving... that's how I heal. *** Cynthia M. Lamb People will disappoint you in life... Have you heard the saying "Cry a river, build a bridge, get over it?"
The bridge you build will help others cross over from sorrow to joy, from pain to peace. My tears once formed an ocean. I had to build a bridge so long I am still crossing it. #lightsjourney |