I’m sorry.

I’m sorry for telling you to chill out. For suggesting that you be less angsty. For offering the strategy of just focusing on the positive. I’m sorry for telling you that you don’t have to be so uptight. I’m sorry for telling you how grateful you should be, and that so many others are so much worse off. I’m sorry for trying to rush you through your healing, through your grief. You know. You know because you’ve tried all of those things and more. And then you internalized them, and they became another way you were failing, another thing to beat yourself up about.

I know it hurts. I know you know how uncomfortable it is to face your struggles. You know how much easier it is, for a while, to put on a happy face and not focus so much on the suffering, the shadow. You would prefer to smile, too.

It is in facing your suffering that you’ve learned a secret that your body won’t let you forget. Your body, in its infinite and generous wisdom, your body who communicates with you constantly and only gets louder the more you ignore it. Your body, with it’s mysterious and miraculous nervous system and that feeling that happens in your gut when you’re not being true to yourself, and how your neck locks up for days when you’re letting the outside world run the show, and how over time that manifests into a big hunk of cancer cells, your body knows. Your body knows that in order to be truly happy, in order to hit me with that smile that knocks my socks off because it’s so full of light and joy and unfettered, unarmored love… in order to get to that smile, you have to face the suffering. You don’t get one without the other. It is by turning toward the suffering, by making more space for it, by honoring it as a divine teacher, and by developing the resilience to face its existence, that it alchemizes it into something unspeakably beautiful.

So I will wait with you. I will sit with you, and I will hold your suffering as sacred. I will learn from you to hold my suffering as sacred, too. I will learn from you to listen to my body. To not try to rush it through its grief. And then, without any pretending or pretense, and with deep authenticity and joy, maybe we will both smile. And oh my god if one smile like that knocks my socks off, just wait until we see what we can do with two.