Being cracked open
Being cracked open like an egg, is painful. It seems we get cracked open when great pain or a great challenge comes our way. It sure doesn’t feel good, at least at first, but often it is life’s way of deepening us and opening us up to new experiences that we may have been closed off too.
In my own life I had cracks and fissures start to form when I started having children and felt the deepest love, but also the deepest fear, and my walls started to crumble. I could do longer hide behind “having the answers” and thinking I was right about things. I knew I would fail my children in some ways- I couldn’t be the all perfect mother. The world seemed more frightening and dangerous. I was “cracked open” by my love for them, and became a much wiser, understanding person than I was before children.
I had a client who got cracked open by a love affair a few years ago. She had shut herself off from love because she did not think she was worthy enough, but then love found her, and her life changed. The relationship did not work out, but she became more willing to open herself to others and be vulnerable, which created more love opportunities to find her.
Illness can crack us open and experience life differently. I know for one of my sisters cancer was life changing in many ways and caused her to reevaluate many areas of her life which may not have happened if she did not become ill.
When the cracks come, our defenses come down and the way we made sense of the world before then no longer feels right, and we have to choose different touchstones and beliefs to carry us through the next part of the journey.
How have you been “cracked open” by life or love? Did you come through it changed? Was it worth the pain?
In my own life I had cracks and fissures start to form when I started having children and felt the deepest love, but also the deepest fear, and my walls started to crumble. I could do longer hide behind “having the answers” and thinking I was right about things. I knew I would fail my children in some ways- I couldn’t be the all perfect mother. The world seemed more frightening and dangerous. I was “cracked open” by my love for them, and became a much wiser, understanding person than I was before children.
I had a client who got cracked open by a love affair a few years ago. She had shut herself off from love because she did not think she was worthy enough, but then love found her, and her life changed. The relationship did not work out, but she became more willing to open herself to others and be vulnerable, which created more love opportunities to find her.
Illness can crack us open and experience life differently. I know for one of my sisters cancer was life changing in many ways and caused her to reevaluate many areas of her life which may not have happened if she did not become ill.
When the cracks come, our defenses come down and the way we made sense of the world before then no longer feels right, and we have to choose different touchstones and beliefs to carry us through the next part of the journey.
How have you been “cracked open” by life or love? Did you come through it changed? Was it worth the pain?
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