Possibilities in Brokenness and Suffering
"Usually, they find that the place of suffering--the place where we are broken in spirit, when accepted and embraced, is also a place of peace and possibility. Our sufferings do not magically end; instead, we are able to wisely alchemically recycle them. They become abundant waste that we use to make new growth possible...Learning to embrace our suffering is one of the gifts offered by the spiritual life and practice."
~bell hooks
I am re-reading bell hooks’ All About Love. A native of my current hometown, Hopkinsville, Kentucky, I still marvel at hooks’ easy to read prose and yet profound wisdom she carries in few words.
She reminds us, as the Bible does, of the vast possibilities for us amidst our sufferings. We are sometimes at our most raw, yet most potential for transformation, when we are at our most brokenness.
Storytellers and Experts on trauma echo this sentiment. It is the premise behind “post-traumatic growth” and the ways in which survivors of the Holocaust have gone on to become amazing teachers and writers and do astounding reconciliation work in Anti-Semitic sentiments and propaganda.
When we are broken, we are vulnerable, we are humbled. We are oh-so very human. We often times gain deeper sentiment and compassion for others in their loss and grief and trauma. We humanize others—if we allow the pain and suffering to crack us open, shatter us, and to allow it all to come forth, changed…rather than try to cover it up, shield our brokenness from others.
It is painful.
Indeed.
I can attest to that.
But this process also is reminiscent of the process of the chrysalis—if we can just hang on, and make it through that painful and slow transformation process, something beautiful and entirely different will emerge. The caterpillar, replaced, becomes the butterfly.
Sometimes I buy this. And I hold onto that hope.
In my darker Enneagram Four moments, it all seems like bull-arky.
But—I go back to it—what choice do I have?
But I’ve seen it and read it in others stories and experiences.
I do know that amazing human moments of love and tenderness and solidarity have arisen from my family’s tragic stories, as I have learned how to hold space for another’s grief or loss, a student’s parental or sibling suicide.
As a schoolmate’s mother once told me, after my brother’s death, “you know more loss than most people twice your age.”
And she is probably right. Statistically. Not everyone.
What I do with it all is to allow the whole shitstorm to build more humility and compassion and resilience within me…to look for, recognize and hold space for other people’s trauma and brokenness, especially when they arise our family of origin, kin we did not choose.
I listen. I hold space. I practice just "being” with people who have recently experienced loss. This is what I offer friends, colleagues, students. And the world.
Most importantly, perhaps, my biggest transformation and point of growth as of late is also holding this space and “being” with myself.