It is easy to fall down on your kneesFrom a long poem and wonderful book by Mary Oliver called The Leaf and The Cloud (2000, p. 48):It is easy to fall down on your knees
when the shining rain begins to happen.

It is easy to be thankful
for the bundles of wild roses
ledged along the dune.

Is is as easy as if you were yourself a flower in the field,
the rain tossing you and tossing you,

until you are that flower—
as torn as muddy as golden as that.

—-

I have always loved those lines and remembered them, if not exactly, but their essence in my heart.

Torn, muddy, and golden — all of it. All of it can exist together, and that includes the golden.

For some people healing from trauma or facing health problems or other hard challenges and things, some of the work is grappling with and often changing in one’s relationship to it all; honouring, facing, navigating and certainly not negating or minimizing the muddy and torn and all of its effects, (there are a lot of different facets to this); yet also somehow finding–or learning for the very first time–some golden. One small, terrifying, liberating, overwhelming, calming, risky step at a time.