Are you broken?
or do the cracks just let in the light?
Hello Dear Friend,
How are you this week? Before I go into this week’s burble I just wanted to thank all of you who reached out to check on me after last week’s letter. I also wanted to say thank you to everyone who filled out the survey, your responses have helped me clarify a few ideas I had running around my mind.
I will also apologize as you will be receiving two emails from me today, this one, your usual Sunday Letter, and the monthly Tarot reading, as oh my gosh it is August already tomorrow. How did that happen? Although as I sit writing this it is blowing a hooley out there and looking decidedly autumnal. The lack of rainfall here is causing the leaves to turn brown and drop, strange days indeed.
But enough of my wittering on about nonsense, let’s get down to the topic which kept popping up this week.
Are you Broken?
When we do anything slightly strenuous, like going to the allotment, Jo always jokes that she has ‘broken’ me. Sometimes I am broken when we get back, my stubborn streak not allowing me to give up doing things until I am practically on my knees. I am beginning to live with my condition, and I am much better at recognising when I have pushed too far, or too hard. But there are times when I still do too much.
And I break, physically at least.
But I wanted to write to you this week about breaking mentally.
We, all of us I am sure, hold on to things too strongly - guilt, anger, hurt, grief. Holding on seems like the right thing to do, clutching those emotions close to our hearts, burying them deeply. It seems like the only thing to do. They are safe there.
Safe until we are ready to face them.
Safe if we are never able to face them.
Sadly, I know from experience, we can only hold on to so much for so long. There comes a time when those things, those emotions which we feel protect us by being buried, will bubble to the surface and explode out of us with little or no warning.
I did this. I held on to so much trauma, pain, and emotion, for so long, that I imploded. Less than a year after I moved in with Jo, I suffered a major nervous breakdown. I always joke and say it was because she gave me a safe harbour, somewhere to be myself, somewhere with no expectations.
A space to finally be me. All I had been carrying around with me spilt out in great big messy heaps of emotion. God bless Jo, I am sure she wondered what on earth she had gotten mixed up with, but we weathered that storm and many that have followed in its wake. This year we celebrate 22 years of being a couple, and I have never felt more supported and seen.
But I am wandering off the point slightly. The thing with the messy explosions of feelings, baggage and emotions, is that they leave cracks behind. Not cracks you can always see, or touch, although you can sometimes feel the rawness in your heart and soul.
These cracks are important. Like the Japanese tradition of Kintsugi, the art of mending broken pottery with a lacquer mixed with or dusted with gold, silver or platinum. This practice treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise
This highlights the damage, it lets the light in, it lets the love in, and it lets forgiveness in. Without the cracks all would be dark, so don’t be afraid of the messiness of emotions, embrace them, and allow yourself to feel every inch. Celebrate the damage, and the wounds, they are signs of a life lived, not a life spent hiding away, afraid of all the pain we could feel.
The grief which is bubbling to the surface for me at the moment is proof I once loved someone so deeply that the hole they left has never been filled. Not to say I have never loved anyone else, but every connection we make is unique and has its own flavour. Family, Lovers, Friends, there is love in all of these relationships, each different, but each just as valuable, each leaving us vulnerable to pain if we lose them. But pain, emotional or otherwise is part of the human condition, it proves we have lived.
How does the joke go? I if didn’t hurt when I woke up I would think I was dead…
Things catching my eye this week:
A story popped out at me about a couple of chaps who have been taking a photo booth photo of themselves every 5 years. What is special about that I hear you ask? Well, they have just taken their fiftieth-anniversary photo. They took the first one in Woolworths in Lincoln when they were ten years old. They are now both 60, what a wonderful record of their friendship. You can read more about the story of Keith and Martin at the link below, or click here
This week, my brother and his family are coming to visit, I haven’t seen them for almost 3 years, what with you know what going on. I think his boys will have grown like weeds, and I am really looking forward to catching up with them all. So who knows what topic will catch my eye for next week’s letter.
Until next time, as ever, may your angels and guides watch over you and protect you until we meet again.
Love and Light,
Tracy
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Links:
Martin and Keith - a friendship in Photographs
Anything in bold and underlined is a link to the relevant article or web page. None are affiliate links, just things I hope to benefit you, or people whom I admire and have worked with in the past.