{"id":220,"date":"2010-11-17T18:46:39","date_gmt":"2010-11-17T13:46:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.katrinakenison.com\/2010\/11\/17\/stop\/"},"modified":"2010-11-17T18:46:39","modified_gmt":"2010-11-17T13:46:39","slug":"stop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/stop\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cStop\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/span><\/span>It was unfamiliar, the strong, clear inner voice that spoke so sternly to me yesterday morning as I woke up from the first good night\u2019s sleep I\u2019ve had in weeks.<\/p>\n

And the words surprised me.\u00a0 \u201cStop.\u00a0 Just stop.\u201d<\/p>\n

I lay quietly in bed for a while, letting the instruction sink in.<\/p>\n

Grief is still new territory.\u00a0 Well-meaning friends ask, daily, \u201cHow are you?\u201d and I pause, tongue-tied, unsure how to respond.\u00a0 How can I explain that, though life is apparently back to \u201cnormal,\u201d no place quite looks like itself?\u00a0 Everyday things feel strange, my own inner landscape foreign and fragile.\u00a0 My thoughts veer between scattered and obsessive, so that I can\u2019t trust my own heart — fine one moment, ambushed the next.\u00a0 What am I to make of emotions that are so misplaced and unpredictable that each day feels like its own new roller coaster ride, twisting and turning through an unpredictable course of peaks and plummets.\u00a0 I have no idea how I am.<\/p>\n

What I do know is that there is a hole right at the center of everything.\u00a0 And I\u2019ve been been circling around its rim like a dervish, trying in vain to fill that terrible, empty place.\u00a0 As if by reaching out to every single person in need, reconnecting with every old friend who\u2019s fallen out of touch, answering every email in my in-box,\u00a0 grabbing for dear life at every friendly hand extended in my direction, I might somehow manage to dispel the darkness and avert my attention from the void.<\/p>\n

This is my brain on Concern Overdrive: If I\u2019m busy and distracted enough, perhaps I can escape the sadness.\u00a0 If I\u2019m needed enough, and if I\u2019m helpful enough, perhaps I can strike a bargain with pain:\u00a0 give more and do more, in order to feel less.\u00a0 And if I can throw enough stuff into that dark chasm, perhaps it won\u2019t seem quite so deep anymore.\u00a0 So, I\u2019ve been keeping busy.\u00a0 I\u2019ve gone to yoga class and book group and out to lunch with friends.\u00a0 I\u2019ve hosted house guests and visited my mom and driven to see Jack on his birthday and baked bread and written sympathy notes and read friends\u2019 kids\u2019 college essays and put on dinner parties and taken walks and edited papers and written recommendations and read manuscripts and returned phone calls and donated money to good causes.\u00a0 It\u2019s all a bit of a blur. I wonder if I\u2019ve babbled, or acted weird, or been inadvertently rude.\u00a0 I honestly can\u2019t remember.\u00a0 Part of me has been visible, present, making an effort; but another part of me has been absent altogether, out to sea, riding the dark waves of sorrow and confusion.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sure where yesterday\u2019s firm voice came from, or even who it was that spoke the word \u201cstop\u201d to me with such conviction.\u00a0 But I was just awake enough to get the message. To struggle, to feel sad, to know loss — this is all part of life.\u00a0 And so I paid attention to that knowing voice, and today I remind myself to be quiet and still instead of frantic and preoccupied. It’s a challenge, to give this time of death and transformation its own mood and space. \u00a0And yet, I don\u2019t want to run from what is real.\u00a0 Not when my soul is urging me to turn inward and to settle into some peace with what is — this human mystery that is, after all, as natural as day and night, sun and moon,\u00a0 summer and winter.<\/p>\n

A couple of weeks ago my son Jack wrote me a note. Somehow, at the time, I managed to read his words without absorbing the simple wisdom he was trying to offer.\u00a0 \u201cFeeling sad isn’t a waste of time,\u201d my eighteen-year-old spiritual teacher suggested.\u00a0 \u201cYou shouldn’t try to distract yourself from the sadness, it\u2019s going to come out one way or another. And the longer it is before you start to feel it and process it the harder it will be.\u201d<\/p>\n

We learn, as Roethke observes, by going where we need to go.\u00a0 And sometimes, we learn by staying where we need to be.\u00a0 Right now, I sit at my kitchen table, watching the skies clear after a night and morning of driving rain.\u00a0 The clouds lift from the mountains like luminous shrouds, dissolving into light.<\/p>\n

As always, I find comfort in the view beyond my window, and in the pages of the books I love, the words of the poets, priests, and seekers who have journeyed through and survived their own dark nights of the soul.\u00a0 \u201cSorrow will remain faithful to itself,\u201d John O\u2019Donohue reminds us.<\/p>\n

\u201cMore than you, it knows its way<\/p>\n

And will find the right time<\/p>\n

To pull and pull the rope of grief<\/p>\n

Until that coiled hill of tears<\/p>\n

Has reduced to its last drop.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was unfamiliar, the strong, clear inner voice that spoke so sternly to me yesterday morning as I woke up from the first good night\u2019s sleep I\u2019ve had in weeks. And the words surprised me.\u00a0 \u201cStop.\u00a0 Just stop.\u201d I lay quietly in bed for a while, letting the instruction sink in. Grief is still new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,32,39,40,14],"tags":[201,209,245,295,378],"class_list":{"0":"post-220","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-grief","8":"category-healing","9":"category-midlife","10":"category-mindfulness","11":"category-soul-work","12":"tag-grief-2","13":"tag-healing-2","14":"tag-john-odonohue","15":"tag-mindfulness-2","16":"tag-slowing-down","17":"entry"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/10\/600x600.png?fit=600%2C600","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}