“In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning…” ―Viktor E. Frankl

I discovered something new about myself and maybe you can relate: I want healing to happen according to my timeline. I’m not talking about crazy, unrealistic expectations about escaping grief altogether, but I definitely have a desire to skip the long game when it comes to getting back to my whole, contended self. And for a few weeks now, I have been experiencing swells of sadness that are catching me by surprise.

As I mentioned about being an Enneagram Type 7, my natural tendency is to avoid pain at all costs. Instead of dealing with hurts, I want to run away…preferably to an island or to the snow. But through the years, I’ve learned that letting the pain in, feeling it, and letting it pass is actually less brutal than ignoring it for a time only to have it surface – usually more strongly and often unpredictably – later. Our feelings can be like volcanos. If we let the pressure build without release, it’s guaranteed to erupt at some point and has a greater risk of taking out everyone around us in the wake of its hot lava river. Just ask the people who used to live in Pompeii. I’ve been there and it isn’t pretty.

So back to time – I recently unearthed a deeply buried lie I had been holding onto: it’s that two years should be sufficient to heal from a divorce. Sure, I knew I was still uncovering and nursing battle scars from a difficult relationship, but I felt like I was doing the work of sitting shiva with my wounds, allowing the pain in so it could pass. But time is relative and healing moves along at an unpredictably slow pace. It turns out that I still need to grieve the loss of my marriage because, to put it simply, my heart is still broken.

I’ve been asking myself, “Why this fresh wave of sadness now?” I have felt an overwhelming sense of freedom and even gratitude since the end of my marriage. I am constantly aware and thankful that I have an adventure-filled, bountiful life overflowing with amazing people, so these emotions feel like a betrayal to my otherwise joyful self. The irony is that this place of abundance is actually the culprit. My soul feels at peace. I do feel content. And that has signaled to my subconscious that it’s finally safe to put down my emotional armor and accept the fact that my heart is engaging in its own version of a 12-step program.

If I’m being honest, I’m embarrassed to share all of this with you. That probably sounds strange because I’ve written some vulnerable things over the past few months, but it feels exposing in a new way because it’s something I am in the middle of now. Right now. Not something I wrote about months or years ago and have since healed from. Not a lesson learned that I can now turn into advice. Instead, it’s an experience that is shaping me even as I type these words with tears running down my cheeks.

But as with most things in this existence, there is purpose in the pain if you look for it. In therapy yesterday, a picture came to me during a round of EMDR: there were two streams running side by side, and both emptied into the same, serene lake. One stream was grief and the other was gratitude; the lake was the essence of who I am. If either stream was blocked or dammed up, the lake wouldn’t have been as full and picturesque. It represented the truth that this grief – at least in part – makes me who I am today. The suffering allows me to understand the depths of my spirit in new and powerful ways. And experiencing the heartache reminds me that I am living an unafraid life.

Today, beauty is born in the place where the two streams converge. Grief and gratitude.

So while time ticks on, I no longer have a schedule for healing. There is no alarm I can set to signal the end of my restoration. For now, I am simply welcoming the filling up by both streams, recognizing I wouldn’t be as wise, or my life as rich, without their slow and steady trickle.

[Photo: one of the beautiful lakes near San Martin de Los Andes in Patagonia]