On Difficult Emotions

how willingness saved my life

I am willing to feel this, I whispered into my morning meditation, pretending I was brave.

I was a new teacher in a poorly run inner-city middle school with a newly minted emergency credential. I hadn’t taken a single Education class or done my student teaching, yet I was in charge of these 7th-graders. My only experience was as a visiting poet in a high school within the juvenile justice system. I’d just realized that the parole officer in the room had been silently managing behavior when I’d thought I’d been doing it. I had only myself in public school, and I wasn’t enough. Worse still, my students deserved better.

  I pushed against them daily, trying to stop their unruly behavior and compel them to do the assignment. Every day, they pushed back, and every day, they won. But I couldn't quit. I had a mortgage, a young son, and adult responsibilities. I lived in a cloud of despair.

So, each morning at five, I laced up my shoes, offered my willingness, and walked into the sunrise at the nearby park. The swing-step, swing-step matched my mantra: I’m willing to feel this. The wound opened, and the psychological pus drained. Tears flowed. I could shower and go to work most mornings, but sometimes I picked up the phone instead. I can’t come in today. I’m sick

I was treading water in the middle of a huge Lake of Childhood Trauma, pleading for the water to drain. I didn’t want to swim, but no boats came. It was miles to the beach. I tried to stop thrashing. But how do I stop acting out? This was a life-and-death question. I didn’t want to hurt my students or my son. I didn’t want to repeat any more patterns. I wanted to be still and allow healing to take place rather than stick a new knife in an old wound. So, how do I stop?

Spiritual teachers told me there was no HOW to stopping. Just stop. There’s no way to do it, and no formula works. HOW was the wrong question. Simply see the truth. That’s it. Stop doing. Stop thinking. Just stop. Be still and let the feelings come up. Don’t touch them. Just witness. STOP.

Easy for you to say, I’d think. You don’t teach 7th grade.

I couldn’t even be still long enough to sit meditation. I began walking instead because the hornets in my head drove me out the door. I’d swing my arms and move my feet until a rhythm appeared. Then, I added the mantra: I’m willing to feel this.

Once offered, willingness cannot be taken back, which is a blessing that feels like a curse. Deflective behaviors no longer worked. There was no escape from feelings. Soon, anger gave way to grief. It rose like gorge in my throat and flowed through my eyes. I walked and walked, trails of toxic fumes pluming out behind me. By the time the sun came up, I fell into stillness. I survived that school year, became a better teacher, loved my kids, had good days and bad, and stayed for nearly twenty-five years. I don’t know when I became a good teacher, but it happened.

The process wasn’t about understanding. A mentor of mine used to say: Understanding is the booby prize. Yes, it does come, but it’s not the point. Peace is the point. Today, I would say joy is the point.

Until I was thirty, I acted out mindlessly, recreating the pain of my past with no insight, no resolution, no safety, no peace. It was the nightmare version of Groundhog Day.

Then, until I was sixty, I was actively healing. 

Sometimes, it was impossible to find the willingness. Sometimes, I threw up my hands, thrashed about, and made things worse. But a birth process had started, and there was no turning back. Contractions gripped me and then released. Once the labor of healing began, I could only surrender. And this labor was long and intense. But there were whole years between contractions where I could rest. When it started again, I’d walk with my mantra: I’m willing to feel this. 

Now, I am embarking on the next thirty years, which will require an even more radical willingness. I will have to let go of everyone and everything I love - probably one experience at a time. How will I do it? I have no idea.

When my friend Laura was dying of breast cancer, I got a glimpse into what was coming. Her house wasn’t hers anymore because she would never return to it. Her car wasn’t her car. She would never drive it again. Her closet might as well be empty; she would never wear anything but a hospital gown. Her whole life fit into a paper bag. 

And yet, in the end, she glowed. The beauty of what she had become—love—brought everyone who entered her room to stillness. Doctors and nurses just stopped. She pulled them out of their daily stories and into stillness with her. She was a powerful force of stopping—a guru. If you entered her gravitational pull, you stopped.

And so, the next phase begins. My parents are gone, and I’ve already lost a brother. The remaining siblings and I are in the on-deck circle now. Since there is no way to avoid the process, I will offer my willingness. I am willing to feel this. 

I can only trust that I will be safely delivered.