Sitting in the dark, waiting

(This post contains a reference to my living children.)

One barrier to connection is our instinct to fix rather than to be with someone experiencing something hard. This is the same instinct that we have to “at least” or to “but” someone’s experience; to search for and name something positive in the face of difficulty, which can work to belittle or even deny the experience altogether. Even (or maybe even more so) when the experience is my own, I feel tempted to obscure or to neaten the hard emotions that accompany the darkness with a dose of optimism. Afraid, perhaps, that I will lose myself, I begin to feel restless, anxious, irritable, as I fight a battle within, tempted to push those negative emotions back to the darkness from which they came.

Though well-intended, this practice creates a roadblock to self-reflection and to connection; it signals what is preferable, acceptable, good, even, and what is not. It ignores the cause of the feelings, and in doing so, denies a foundation for meaningful connection: self-compassion. To practice self-compassion means to accept our whole, broken selves or, according to self-compassion researcher Kristin Neff, to “honor and accept [our] humanness.” Neff explains “[s]elf-compassion also requires taking a balanced approach to our negative emotions so that feelings are neither suppressed nor exaggerated,” a practice she calls “mindfulness,” one element of self-compassion. According to Neff, “Mindfulness is a non-judgmental, receptive mind state in which one observes thoughts and feelings as they are, without trying to suppress or deny them. We cannot ignore our pain and feel compassion for it at the same time.”

To be mindful to our own the negative emotions is similar to another phrase that I have carried (and that has carried me through) this past week: what writer and photographer, Teju Cole, describes as “sitting together in the dark, waiting for something to happen.” This act – to sit, to wait, in the face of something hard – is counter-cultural. It asks us to be; it says that this is enough, that being together in difficulty is an act, a radical act, of love for the other person that says, I am here with you now, I see you.

Last week was a hard one. As I shared in a previous post I have started a daily practice of writing about a joy or delight, but last week, on the fourth anniversary of my daughter’s death, I felt conflicted. I wanted the day to be beautiful, to honor and to celebrate my daughter, and yet I felt sad; instead of walking with these emotions together, the light and the darkness, I turned on myself, rocking between the two, leaving me feeling frustrated, restless, and irritable. I realized that it was only when I accepted that both could be, that I could love my daughter, find beauty in the day and still be sad and angry, could I find a path forward.

Here, I share my reflection from that day with you: my (ongoing) work of self-compassion, of “sitting [with myself] in the dark, waiting for something to happen.” I share this with you, unfinished, in the hope that it may provide you with comfort, leave to be compassionate with yourself, so that you may remain open to what you and others may carry today:

Today, the fourth anniversary of my daughter’s death, does not feel a day for delights. But I feel, too, a longing for the day to be a “good” day, a day to honor and love and remember, a day where I feel joy (and delight) for her, as an offering of gratitude for her life and for the living that I inherited after her death. A good death day; it sums up the progression of my day, and perhaps, this sharing of the both/ and, that it has been a day of sorrowful joy or joyful sorrow, is my delight. For it is honest and open, it embraces me (and the rest of humankind) in our brokenness, and I delight in the loving comfort of this space (and, in the spirit of both/ and, wish there was no need for it to exist or for me to know it).

It snowed yesterday, but today, it has melted and is sunny, though not warm. My husband and I got into a tiff about a “good morning” (or lack thereof), both of us saying with restless anger “today of all days” (yes, today of all days), as I held my younger daughter who said “It’s okay, Mama” and my son rocked in his bouncer, content, my eldest being, of course, absent from this feud. After, instead of practicing yoga as I had intended, I wandered outside and began to cut away at last year’s growth in our prairie garden, now dead, looking for the new life underneath. In my underwear, slippers, and a long-sleeve t-shirt that said “Bah Humbug,” I worked. (Not that I didn’t give a thought to what the neighbors might think, I just didn’t care. Not today, of all days. And, upon further reflection, I believe I needed to be contrary, which itself, is, perhaps, predictable and common. Or is it open and honest?) 

The pile of last year’s growth became taller and taller – of asters and ironweed, palm sedges and prairie dropseed, beebalm and fountain grass – so that it lined the back of the garden, uncovering promising bits of green throughout, which looked nothing like the mature, death growth I had cut away. After, instead of showering, I washed the dirt from underneath my fingernails, threw on a well-worn nursing tank and some tights, and cared for and played with my living children. Both were fussy today, crying in alternate bursts of tears, and I felt like joining their song. Instead, I consoled them, thinking both that I wanted nothing more than to curl up in a ball on my bed for the rest of the day/ and that in caring for them, I was caring for her, caring for all my children together today. (April 16, 2020)