Stay Open

Shutting down and shutting out is a common reaction to disappointment, sadness and fear. When our hope and vulnerability are met with rebuff -- anything from an unreturned phone call to the death of a loved one -- it's easy to withdraw, to lick our wounds, to draw heavy curtains around our hearts. We turn away from our own tenderness, afraid to re-expose soft skin. We harden, our anger settling into muscle and bone like midwinter ice, our vitality and creativity frozen. We lose ourselves and each other, again and again.

To stay open, or even to return to a state of openness, in the wake of loss is a profoundly courageous endeavor. And it is a lifelong commitment, as we experience degrees of loss on a daily basis. But the more we practice staying open, the more we transform our old habit of shutting down. The habit of staying open requires mindfulness and dedication, but if we allow ourselves to feel the loss of "what dies inside us while we live," we are set upon the cracked-open path, keeping us close to grief and fierce joy alike.

-- Mara Applebaum, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, February 7, 2008