challenges of loving

When I know your total acceptance then I can show you my softest, most penetrable, delicate, beautiful, and vulnerable self.

~ Joseph Zinker

And what of the courage that is needed to own these delicate and vulnerable places? The space may be held, the foundation upon which an integrated person of profound self appreciation, self love, and self knowledge is established, the stage is set externally, the invitation has been released… and then comes the totally individualized, self-contained moment of choice. Do I release this hidden soft and tender part of my being — this wounded, fragmented, repressed and rejected expression of who I am out into the world? Must I own it? Must I confront the fact that this is me — is a part of me? And will this special other hate this part of me as much as I do? Will they acknowledge the grasp it has on me, the contraction it ignites within me? I know their total acceptance — and it is that I am scared to look at my own soft, penetrable, delicate and vulnerable states — I don’t find them beautiful and I’m conflicted by the fact that another does. And so I pull away — pushing another away.

And as I spiral into my fears, into my old habits, into my contractions, into my fear, into my pain, into my discomfort… I notice what’s there. I allow myself to feel that which naturally arises. I allow those icky feelings to stay, rather than pushing them back down into the dungeons of my psyche. And when I come up for breath, I remind myself:

I am supported for all of who I am and I support myself being all that I AM.