Mary O’Malley – There are lots of books, articles, videos, and blog posts about how to be kind to others. What we often forget is the person in the most need of your kindness is you. When you can meet yourself in your own heart, true kindness comes automatically. It is not something you have to learn. Yet, most of us do not know how to be kind to ourselves because we were conditioned to put ourselves out of our own hearts when we were very young.
I had an opportunity to bring kindness and spaciousness to myself during a very challenging day a couple of months ago while I was breaking down one of my son’s businesses. My son owned and managed two bars for many years, but while he was undergoing cancer treatments, he was unable to work for over a year and was ultimately forced to close his businesses.
When the day came to clear everything out of one of them, he was not well enough to take the lead, so I offered to do it. I knew I could not take on this monumental task alone, so I asked my community for help. A very young part of me felt she was asking for too much, but I reminded her that I am giving others a gift by asking for their help. I was amazed and incredibly grateful that so many people came to pitch in that day.
After an exhausting day, a friend drove me home. I asked her if she would stop at the post office so I could pick up some change of address forms for my son. I thought it would only take me a minute to quickly run in and grab a stack of forms, but when I entered the post office, I did not see the change of address forms anywhere. I had the choice to go and stand in line, which would mean making my friend wait, or I could go up to the counter and ask the clerk to tell me where the change of address forms were located. I chose the second option. The clerk said there were not any forms in the lobby, but that she would get me some as soon as she was done with her customer.
When the clerk finished, she went into the back room and was gone for what seemed like eternity. It must have been three or four minutes, and during that time, the storyteller in my mind began to say that everybody was upset with me because I cut in line, that I was a bother asking the clerk to find me address forms, and that I should have just waited in line like everybody else.
Very quickly, however, I became aware of the voice in my head and suddenly my heart opened. I could see clearly this very young part of me and I said to her, “It’s okay that you asked the clerk for address forms. You didn’t do anything wrong. You were just trying to do the best you can after a very intense and exhausting day.” As I gave her the space and kindness she so desperately needed, she calmed down and finally the clerk brought the address forms and I was on my way.
When I got home, I thought about a passage entitled ‘Our New Spirituality’ that Jeff Foster, author of The Deepest Acceptance, had posted on his Facebook page. It is a long, beautiful passage, but one part in particular came to mind as I reflected on my day: “In my humble view, the most ‘awake’ ones are the ones who have cultivated a deep, warm compassion within, a profound self-kindness, and who radiate that delicious empathy into the world. One foot in awareness, the other foot dancing and playing in the glorious mess of relative existence; courageous enough to receive both ecstasy and agony with the same kind of humility.”
I also thought about the video of Ondrea Levine talking about the last few years before her husband Stephen’s death. She said that while it was not easy, together they experienced so much love for each other and for the dying process because they kept their hearts open. The last thing she said in the video was “Treasure yourself.”
Bringing spaciousness and kindness to ourselves is not easy, especially amidst the great challenges of our lives, including illness, loss and death. We tend to judge ourselves for our vulnerabilities and see them as a weakness rather than simply our humanness.
Life is really, really hard sometimes, and during these challenging times, so often we abandon ourselves when we most need ourselves. It takes courage to be kind to yourself when fear, confusion, shame, pain, and deep despair arise. But as you discover how to meet yourself in kindness, you not only are being healed, you become a healing presence in the world. For as you learn how to live from your heart, discovering how to treasure yourself exactly as you are, you then radiate your own delicious empathy into the world.
SF Source Awakening August 2016
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