Loose Leaf Notes

All roads eventually lead to my primal pain, not for the purpose of causing me more misery, but for the opportunity to heal it.
My husband and I spent five days in a family shared condo in Aspen for his brother’s wedding. Of those five days, I became emotional, for some reason or another, nearly every day. Although I’m not generally a person who cries easily, I was moved to tears during the wedding ceremony and then again at the John Denver Memorial Sanctuary. On my last day in the city, while visiting an art gallery, it was a still-life painting of peaches by William Martin that brought me to tears. Beauty, sadness, and happiness are all understandable reasons that a person might be brought to tears. But wait. There is more…
Whenever I’m traveling, and I’m out of my comfort zone of daily routines and surroundings for an extended period of time, my sensitivities eventually surface. I’m easily worn out by a hectic pace or by extended interactions with others. When that happens, my feelings can be easily hurt. I may feel self-conscious or even abandoned.
In this case, a boundary was crossed that caused me distress. After expressing my distress to the individual involved, I thought I had moved on, but soon found myself thinking about the incident and then dwelling on it.
On the fifth day, we moved out of the condo and headed for the Maroon Bells Recreation Park to camp. We awoke in a beautiful natural setting, and during my morning meditation, my distress resurfaced. This time I was able to recognize that my over-reaction was less about the recent incident at hand and more a re-stimulation of an older and deeper distress. Seeing the bigger picture and connecting the dots was helpful, but it didn’t relieve my distress right away. In fact, I felt stuck for what seemed like a long time. (In reality it was only about an hour.) I resisted the urge to fall into old coping patterns of withdrawing and/or subtly punishing those around me. But I didn’t know exactly what to replace those patterns with.
I talked to my husband about what was going on. Of course, it helps that he’s a counselor and is aware that feelings aren’t right or wrong. He knows, as I do, that they are signposts to follow that can lead to the roots of our discomforts and compulsions. Eventually, I was able to shift into a place of compassion instead of blame. When this happened, I felt a sense of relief.
Understanding brought yet a few more tears.