Vulnerable, Episode 182
How finite everything is, including the time we will get to spend with any of our great loves. And how much we want to turn away from this, avoiding feeling too much of our love in an attempt to try and avoid the inevitable grief that will come with our losses. But to feel it all is one of the great gifts given to us as human beings. So how can we find a way to stay open, ready, and receptive in the midst of it all?
This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about what it might take to show up for our lives in all their beauty and all their losses, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify.
Our source this week is written for us by Lizzie.
Vulnerable
Connection and Death are not fair as things that go side by side.
The more I love the more there is to lose.
Of course I just want to not love, then there’s nothing to lose.
But then I look at your cheeks, and your lips and the creases behind your knees.
And there’s nothing else to do but sink my face into your neck and snuggle.
To the point where you’re annoyed with me.
To love and to need, and to know that it’s all in the context of temporary.
To feel and to laugh and to know it’s all going to end far too soon.
It’s too much for my all too human and clingy heart.
It will surely break. Be smashed to smithereens.
Maybe it needs to break each and every day in preparation for the grand break?
The one that will come when ‘the time’ is ‘that time’.
I fearfully withdraw and within minutes I’m back there again,
Asking to be loved, offering my love and planning how we can be together.
Salivating at the ordinary moments of loading the dishwasher while you talk to me.
Feeling my pulse race at the next time we can hug full body to body.
Even letting our knees touch, rubbing cheeks, knocking glasses. Messing each other’s hair up in celebration.
I know I could stay in that withdrawn, safe, small space too.
And protect myself against this tsunami of grief that’s sadness. This avalanche of love.
There’s too much at stake. Our hearts are too bare.
Our skin is too receptive. To be able to stay there, open, ready, receptive.
And yet, we’re here, in these bodies. The body holds us to this deal.
What else is there to do but love and be broken open by life, by love, by connectedness?
I’m done for.
So are you.
We all are.
There’s no way out.
From love.
— Lizzie Winn March 2021
Photo by Ashim D’Silva on Unsplash