sitting

“I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it”

- Oriah Mountain Dreamer

So, I've actually had this quote sitting in my drafts box for 2 years now, waiting I guess for the perfect moment to share. I guess that moment has arrived. Because aside from the obvious physical pain I am being called upon to "sit with" and endure lately (and can't do much about), there has also been some rather personal emotional pain gnawing away at my heart.

And I am having to learn to sit with it. Just sit. This quote keeps coming to my mind and kind of mulling around with me and asking me to sit and feel the pain without moving from it. It's hard. It's kind of like what I've read about meditating, where you might feel the urge to scratch something that itches, almost irresistibly, on your back perhaps, just right there where you know you could reach it, and . . . you just observe the itch, feel it's itchiness, and you let it itch, and not move to scratch it.

Sit with pain, and not move to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.

Can you?

Can I?