There are many things that can scare us in this life, but sometimes the biggest fears we have are created in our own minds. Have you ever geared up to have a conversation with someone for weeks or months, or even years? And every time you turn it over in your head, you think you can’t. You can’t get the words out because the pain will be too much; too much for you, or the other person. Maybe you play it out in your mind, looking for some way to become clear. What you’ll say, how you’ll say it, and what you hope they’ll say in response. Maybe you imagine the worst case scenarios, too. Meanwhile, you’re in a prison, time is going by, and your whole being is in agony. Pushing down the truth, whatever it is for you, is absolutely exhausting. Any painful conversation would be easier than the suffering we inflict upon ourselves when we just won’t face what we know in our hearts.
Shame is a strangler. There is no way you’re “supposed to be”; you can only be you, fully, the most beautiful, authentic version of yourself. Other people may have expectations and ways they like to think of you. If those expectations and ways go against the very grain of who you are, if it just isn’t working for you anymore, then the people closest to you will have to change their expectations, or not. But you can’t deny the deepest longing of your soul. You can’t fight your truth and expect to win. You can make yourself sick trying, though. Sometimes we long to make changes but tell ourselves we can’t or shouldn’t. We run down the list of all the things that might go wrong, instead of all the things that might go right. We ask ourselves who we are to consider shining. The real question is, who are we to consider not shining?
Fear can be debilitating, but we’ll all feel it, it’s perfectly natural. The more you open to it, the less hold it has over you. If you can acknowledge you’re afraid, you’ll find that releases the grip and you can breathe again, there’s space again. This is not an easy gig, this business of being human. We’re vulnerable and underneath the surface of our lives exist questions we’ll never be able to answer with absolute certainty until we exhale for the final time. It’s understandable that we want to cling to our plans and visions of how things should be. Presumably that, at least, is something we can control, but it isn’t, and we can’t. We are all evolving all the time, circumstances are shifting and changing all around us, and the reality of that groundlessness can be difficult to absorb. So we make our plans, and we feel afraid when they aren’t panning out the way we’d hoped. Now we have nothing to hold onto.
There are people who cling to their pain because that’s all they’ve got. Without it, they have no clear sense of who they’d be, or how life might feel. Something we know is often more appealing than something we don’t, even if what we know, hurts. But life isn’t something to get through with our fists clenched and our eyes shut tightly. It isn’t something to be endured in quiet despair. It can be both of those things when we don’t face ourselves and embrace what’s true for us, though. It’s isolating and suffocating. The only person who can let you out of a prison you’ve created in your mind, is you.
You may have fear of disappointing people, of not being what someone else wants you to be. The worst betrayal, though, is the betrayal of yourself. Too many people spend too much time and energy trying to be something other than who they are, as if what they are isn’t miraculous. When was the last time you ran into yourself at the grocery store, or on line at the movies, or at the park, or when you were traveling on the other side of the globe? You’ve never run into yourself anywhere, because you’ve never existed before, and you’ll never exist, exactly as you are, again. You have one shot in this life, in the body that you’re in, with the experiences you’ve had and the way you look at the world. One chance to sing your song and accept yourself and shine it out. It would be a shame if you let fear stop you. Feel it, and go there, anyway. Otherwise you rob the world of a gift it can never have any other way. You rob the world of the gift of you.
Sending you love,
Ally Hamilton
In order to open to something new, to completely throw yourself into it, generally you have to let go of something old. The something old might be an idea you’ve had about yourself, a relationship that’s ended but hasn’t ended completely, a way of being, a job you’ve had forever, or a role you’ve played for someone that just doesn’t feel right anymore. We human beings are complex, and sometimes we try to jump and hold on at the same time, and then we lament the fact that our arm really hurts, and wonder why we can’t fully land in the new adventure, but seem to be swinging in agony 
Embracing the vulnerability of being human isn’t always easy. Most of us want to feel some sense of stability and order while we’re on this spinning planet, in these bodies with their unknown expiration dates, loving people who also have a finite amount of time, so we make our plans, and we have our routines and habits, and we try to envision the path ahead. We imagine that we are in control, at least to some degree.
Everyone enjoys the sweet stuff in life: the love, the joy, the fun, the excitement, those times when life is giving us exactly what we’d hoped for, or more than we’d ever imagined. Nobody wants the tough stuff: the pain, loneliness, confusion, fear, shame, doubt, guilt, suffering, those times when life is taking from us more than we think we can bear. That seems perfectly logical, after all. Why would anyone want anything off the second list?
Some things in this life will just break your heart. The beautiful and extraordinary thing about the heart, though, is that when it breaks, it opens more if you let it; it expands. There are things that can bring us to our knees. Losing a loved one too soon, that’s at the top of the list. Going through a divorce, a breakup, any kind of rejection from a person who was once a lover and/or a friend. Being fired from a job. Being abandoned, neglected, discarded or betrayed. Dealing with someone who won’t or can’t communicate so you’re left to grope for the answers yourself, and have to learn the painful lesson that some things will never be explained, that the only closure you’ll get is acceptance.
Once when I was fourteen, I walked to the front of the room in my science class to hand in a paper, and I heard giggling. When I returned to my seat, this girl I had always liked leaned over and loudly whispered, “You can see your panties through your skirt. Nice flowers!” And then she and another girl I’d also thought was a friend, snickered. One of the guys in my class leaned forward from the row behind me and said, “Don’t worry about it, you’re looking good,” which only intensified my embarrassment. Shame is such a powerful, uncomfortable, debilitating feeling. It hits you in the gut and makes you feel wrong and bad and unworthy of love or kindness. I remember being annoyed with myself for blushing and making it obvious I was bothered. I wanted to be tough, to act like it didn’t phase me, to deny those girls the feeling that they had any power over me; things like that seem such a big deal when you’re fourteen. My heart was racing, and I was cursing myself for not having checked my reflection before walking out the door. I felt betrayed and confused by these girls I’d considered friends, who now seemed to be taking pleasure in humiliating me. Beyond that, I wanted the world to open and swallow me so I wouldn’t have to spend the rest of the day with people laughing because they could see through my skirt. I think about it now, as a grown woman, and shake my head. I wish I could go back to my teenage self in that room and say, this is so not a big deal, but it’s funny that it stands out, all these years later.
The best way to meet fear is to allow yourself to feel it. For many people, social situations are a nightmare. What to say? What to wear? What to do if you’re left in a corner and no one is talking to you? What to say or what not to say if someone is talking to you? Whether you’ll get that call, and how badly you’ll feel if you don’t. Public speaking, lots of people are terrified about that. There’s fear of intimacy, the risks required to tear down your carefully constructed walls. Fear you’ll never live a life that feels good to you, you’ll never reach your potential. Or the fear that you will, and then what? Fear of spiders, challenging conversations, hurting other people, rejection, dying alone. There are all kinds of things that might scare you.
I think it’s important to understand “hostile people” because you’re likely to run into them from time to time. Hostile people are deeply hurt; they didn’t just wake up one morning and think, “Life sucks and people suck, and you can’t trust anyone.” They didn’t decide they’d focus on every awful thing everyone else is doing or has done. They’re in a world of pain and they’re lashing out. That doesn’t make it easy to deal with if you’re on the receiving end of rage or distrust or judgment you don’t feel you deserve, but at least it makes it less personal, and somewhat understandable.
Sometimes we’re so attached to an idea, it blinds us. Maybe we’re in love with someone, and we so want them to be in love with us, we deny the nagging feeling that it doesn’t seem to be the case. We think if we chase, or hang in there, or show up exactly the way we think this person wants us to, then it will work out, then we’ll “have” them. We start to try to fit into some kind of mold. We obsess and doubt and worry about everything, and we lose ourselves.
Over the summer, my four year old daughter expressed an interest in ballet classes. I had mixed feelings about it. I started ballet when I was four, and I danced until I was sixteen. I have a lot of gratitude for the experience in many ways. Firstly, dancing got me out of my head and into my body, which I desperately needed. It taught me about discipline, perseverance and dedication. I worked my ass off and I loved it, but it also taught me some other things. When I went en pointe, I can’t explain what happened to my feet. I’d come home and unwrap them, and soak my bleeding toes, only to go back and do it all again the next day, and the next, and the one after that until my feet were raw. Eventually they toughened up, but in the meantime, I learned to override my body’s response to pain. Sometimes I’d dance for hours, even if I felt light-headed and weak and my feet were screaming at me. Eventually, when I was on the cusp of puberty, I learned that my body was something to fear. The older dancers in the company would warn us that we didn’t want to develop, and they never ate. I mean, truly, I never saw anyone eat anything. I saw a lot of cups of coffee, and a lot of cigarette smoking, and I grew to understand that being extremely thin was important. I learned that food was something to fear as well. So when my daughter asked to try ballet classes, all of that came up for me, because it took me years to unlearn a lot of that stuff.
If you have trauma in your past, you are not defective, you are not “marked” for life, you have not been shut out of any chance at happiness; you’re just as worthy of love and joy as anyone else. You may look around and think you’re the only person with serious pain in your past, or in your present, but I can assure you that isn’t so. I get emails from people every day who’ve been through things that would break your heart in two, or who find themselves in situations they’re desperate to flee.
No matter how much time you have to prepare (and sometimes you don’t get any), losing someone you love is a shock. It doesn’t seem possible that the earth can still be spinning, and somewhere, someone is at a cash register paying for floss, bread, and apples at a checkout aisle filled with magazine covers shouting about losing ten pounds, and the three best sexual positions you’ve never tried, because everything for us has stopped, and the absurdities of life are clearly in perspective for a moment. Death is the greatest, most permanent loss we face, and because we can’t know for sure what happens next, the grief can be devastating.
When it comes to a mental tailspin, few things drive us there faster than the feelings of being misunderstood, rejected, excluded, judged, or absolutely invisible. Sometimes we feel this way at the hands of someone with whom we were once close–an ex, an old friend we thought we’d always know, a family member. Other times it can be someone we’ve just met– a new romantic interest, someone at work, or, occasionally, a complete stranger. Whatever the source, it never feels good, but the more we value the opinion of the person rejecting us in one way or another, the more we suffer.
There’s not a single person you’ll encounter today who hasn’t had his or her heart broken, badly, except for young children (and sadly, not all children are exempt). No one would ask for pain. No one would wave it down and say, “Here, pick me! Cut me through to the core, go right for my jugular, so I can learn something, so I can understand despair, and open and soften and walk forward with more information about myself and other people.” And yet, that’s what pain does; it teaches us. Sometimes we would really give anything not to learn the lesson, but we don’t get to choose.
Sometimes you’re so full of gratitude you can feel your heart swell, and other times you’re so full of despair you can feel it breaking. The heart is amazing, pumping away for us through all of it, steady and there and just under the surface of everything. You could put your hand over your heart right now, and close your eyes and take just a moment to feel that, because it’s easy to forget what a gift it is just to breathe. Just to be alive, even if nothing makes sense right now.
Last night I had a nightmare. I don’t have them often, but when I do, they’re always variations on a theme. I’m in serious danger, or someone I love is in danger, and I’m trying to yell for help, but no sound comes out. I open my mouth, but where I want the scream to happen, there’s only a whisper and I realize I won’t make it. No one will come. Eventually, I wake up with the effort of trying to scream.
No lesson is ever wasted; you need what you need to grow, and you figure things out in your own time. You may have crashed into a brick wall, and you may have done it consciously, but sometimes we need the lesson more than once to fully get it, and be done with it. I can look back on my life and tell you with complete candor, there were some experiences I repeated (in different ways) like I was taking remedial dating. How to Pick People Who Will Break Your Heart 101, over and over again until I decided I really wanted to graduate from that class. Usually when you can spot a pattern, you can also locate a huge marker for a place where you still have healing to do.
Not everyone is able to love freely. Life can do funny things to people, and sometimes the damage is deep. This applies to all people, whether they’re family, friends, or romantic interests. When someone can’t or doesn’t love us the way we want them to, it’s very painful, but it’s part of life. If it’s a family member, a parent or a child or sibling, it can be brutal. It’s so hard to separate out what belongs to us, and what belongs to other people, to recognize that a person’s capacity to love is not a reflection on you. If your mom or dad couldn’t love you well due to their own limitations, the timing of your birth into their still-forming lives, or their own history with neglect, that’s a wound that will need 
Once when I was about twelve years old I saw a group of kids huddled around a bucket in a courtyard I was passing on my way home from school. Some of the kids were younger than I was, and a few were older, or at least bigger. Some of them were laughing, some were just staring, and a couple looked scared. The biggest one, a boy, was holding a broom upside down, and thrusting the end of it into the bucket over and over again. There was something squealing in the bucket, and I found myself walking over without thinking about it. Some of the smaller kids saw me coming and took off, but the boy with the broom had his back to me, and didn’t notice me until I was right up next to him, peering over the edge of the bucket at a small, white, terrified mouse. It was covered in some kind of powder that smelled like bleach. “What are you doing??!!” I asked him, shocked. He stared at me, and so did the other kids who were still there, frozen. “I don’t know, ” he finally mumbled. “We found this mouse and didn’t know what to do with it.” He looked horrified and embarrassed, but he said, “Fine, you take it,” which I did, bucket and all.
Directing your energy is one of the most powerful ways you can decide to be happy, and often, it really is a decision. If you’re grieving, if there are things happening in your life right now that are so painful you question your ability to get through the day, this does not apply to you. Short of those knifing losses we face sometimes, the ability to choose one thought over another is like a super-power we too frequently forget we have.
“If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.” ~Lao Tzu
So much of what we’re going to feel as human beings is uncomfortable. Longing, loneliness, rage, bitterness, resentment, insecurity, doubt, fear, shame, guilt, jealousy…none of these are comfortable, and we aren’t taught how to sit with these feelings, how to lean into them and breathe. For so many people, the impulse is to do something, to fix it, to push it down, to make it go away, but these are just natural sensations. That’s all loneliness is, it’s an uncomfortable sensation in your heart. It hurts, it aches, but it’s temporary and if you open to it you might also open to the understanding that you’re longing for connection. Maybe some part of you feels invisible or unworthy of love, and what you want more than anything is for someone to see you and know you and embrace you; that’s beautiful and understandable. Maybe there’s some healing that needs to happen within you before you can truly allow yourself to be vulnerable with someone else, but if you run out the door, or open that bottle of wine, or pick up the phone, or try to shop the feeling away you miss an opportunity to know yourself and not knowing yourself is the loneliest thing there is.
Few things in life are as uncomfortable as having to face your own fears, limiting beliefs about yourself or others, deepest desires if you aren’t living them already, and places where you feel trapped or paralyzed. Sometimes we find ourselves in situations of our own making, and we realize the only way out is through the raw and rough terrain of our darkest places. This is generally a very good thing, shedding light on whatever we’ve pushed down that his risen back up to bite us in the a$$, but I don’t know anyone who enjoys it or finds it comfortable. No one heads there willingly, you go because you realize you must if you want to start co-creating your life. A Jim Morrison quote comes to mind, “We fear violence less than our own feelings. Personal, private, solitary pain is more terrifying than what anyone else can inflict.” Many people run, deny, or numb out when they come up against it. Sometimes this takes the form of extreme busyness, or all-consuming relationships, shopping, eating or not eating, drinking or drugging or sleeping all day. Holding back the truth or denying reality is exhausting. It’s painful and it’s also pointless. Eventually, if you want to be at peace, you’re going to have to turn and face yourself.
Sometimes a memory will come flooding back to me, whole, detailed, out of nowhere. A fragrance on the breeze, or a song on the radio, or something my kids say as they look up at me, and wham, I’m transported back to a moment I haven’t thought about in years. Sometimes the feeling around the memory is sweet, and sometimes it’s painful, but either way I’m amazed by the experience. Where was I storing that, or has it been continuing on in some parallel universe this whole time? That me that stood on that corner that afternoon, walking one way when I could have walked another. Is part of me still on that corner? Is part of me still having that first kiss, with the sun flooding in through the window, and the shock of realizing that kissing means lips and tongues and a racing heart?
Whatever you feed will grow and strengthen. We all have pain to varying degrees, we’ve all suffered loss, despair, and disappointment. Some people have lived through abuse and neglect, and losses so knifing you have to wonder about the resiliency of the human heart, and how strong it is. It’s not a level playing field, and it is a sad reality that horrendous things happen to beautiful people all the time. Maybe you believe in karma, maybe you believe in chaos theory, maybe you don’t know what you believe. Regardless, I don’t know anyone who would argue that life is easy.
When I look back on my life so far, I’ll tell you what stands out for me: relationships. Relationships to people, and to the things that bring me joy. My parents, my grandmother, my aunt and uncle, and my amazing cousins. My first best friend and her family, and their cat, Muffin. My little brother who’s now taller than I am and has been making me proud since the moment I laid eyes on him. Girlfriends I’ve had since high school who are like sisters to me. My first crush. My first love. Every love I’ve ever had. Teachers who changed my life. People who’ve practiced with me for years and are now like family. The women in my life who are strong and compassionate, and there when there matters. My beloved dog, and most of all, my two incredible children. Life is about love. That’s the stuff, that’s the glue and the point. There’s the love that you give to all the people in your life, and the love you receive, and then there’s what you love. That thing that lights you up, whatever it may be (and maybe you haven’t discovered it yet), but that’s the joy in life, to share what you love. To the extent that you’re able to open your heart and follow your heart, and give and receive from your heart, you will love this life.
I moved into my house seven years ago. My dog was six at the time, and he’d seen me through heartbreaks and good times, and a move across the country, too. He was my best friend. He was the kind of dog who could turn people who weren’t dog lovers into friends, with one exception.
You cannot please everyone; if you must, go ahead and try, but when you’re done you’ll find you’ve gotten nothing for your troubles but exhaustion, despair, and resentment. People in your life may want all kinds of great stuff for you and from you, but no one else has to live your life. At the end of the day, when you’re looking in the mirror as you brush your teeth, you’re either staring at a friend or a stranger.
In the heat of conflict, so much can get lost in translation. When we feel attacked, wronged or misunderstood, it’s so hard to pause, breathe and listen, but if you think back to your angriest moments, underneath the rage there was pain. When people yell it’s because they don’t feel heard, seen or understood. Some part of them is crying out for recognition, for help.
If you’re like most people, you’ll have times in your life when you’re feeling really low; perhaps you’re having one of those times right now. There’s pain in this thing, whether your careful plans unfold the way you’d hoped, or they don’t. Sometimes we create a real mess with the choices we’ve made and other times life puts obstacles in our paths that feel insurmountable. It’s important to remember the temporary nature of all things, including your feelings. How you feel now is not how you’ll always feel. How things are now is not how they’ll always be.
There are so many people out there who feel trapped by their choices or their lack of action thus far. People who look at their lives and think, “Is this it? Is this all there is? Is this all I am, and all I’m going to do with my life?” People living in quiet desperation, feeling scared and small and unseen, and like it’s too late.
When we cling to the past, it’s because we have little faith that the future might be beautiful, that it might surprise us, or that we might surprise ourselves. Sometimes the present is so uncomfortable, we simply know of nothing else to do but try to travel backward in time. After all, what was back there is familiar, even if it was painful. The future is not something we can predict or control, so for many people the idea of opening to it is terrifying. There are many, many people who’d rather hold onto their rage, resentment or grief than to nothing at all.
I’d guess that most “real” chefs don’t work this way, but for me, I clean as I go when I’m cooking. Of course there will always be pots and pans at the end of the meal, and the dishes you eat on, but everything else I wash as I’m done. I’d just prefer to have less of a mess to clean later. I wouldn’t try to convince anyone else of that, maybe you like to make a huge mess in your kitchen because doing it any other way would disrupt your flow, but in life, it’s definitely the way to go.
Telling someone not to worry is as helpful as yelling at someone to relax, but the truth is, worrying is a waste of time and energy. It does no good whatsoever. You can worry as much as you like, but it won’t make money appear in your bank account, it won’t put food on your table, it won’t change another person’s mind or future actions, it won’t save anyone and it certainly won’t affect the weather. What it will do is rob you of the present moment, and give you a diminished or inflated sense of power. It can also make you sick, literally.
Nothing stays the same, not the house you grew up in, or your beloved dog, or your first crush. You aren’t the same you you were in high school, or even the same you you were last year and neither is anyone else. Do you have family or friends with kids you only see a couple of times a year? Aren’t you always astounded at how big they’ve gotten? We tend to try to keep things the way they are in our heads. This person exists this way in my mind. That guy I dated who broke my heart is a person who lacks compassion and doesn’t think about the effect of his actions on other people. Is that still true twenty years later? Maybe it is, and maybe there’s been incredible growth. My parents were this way or that way when I was growing up, and so now I’m like this. Are they still that way? Do you still need to be like this?
I think most people simply want to be happy, to live a life that feels good to them, to love and be loved, to find a purpose, to feel passionate about what they’re contributing, to feel that life has meaning. It took me a long time to understand that seeking happiness for myself was bound to make me miserable. Thinking of the world and of your life in particular with the mindset of, “How can I be happy? Why aren’t I happy? What do I need to do to get happy?” is like having blinders on. Seeking happiness for other people is a shortcut to all kinds of amazing stuff, like the feeling of being fulfilled, fired up, and full of gratitude. I think we all experience this to some degree. I’ve always been more excited to give someone a gift than I am to receive one. There’s something so awesome about creating or finding the perfect something to give someone and it’s even better if you get to be there when they open it. It’s a way of saying, “I see you. Your particular spark has not gone unnoticed. I know you. I know what will make you laugh or feel understood.” It’s beautiful to give that to someone. You could give a version of that to any stranger you encounter today just by being present. You could say hello, and how are you, and you could care, and you might just turn someone’s day around. Maybe more than that.
Yesterday I received an email from a woman who told me she’s never been in a relationship for longer than three months, and it’s because, “all men lie and cheat, or they leave.” I asked her how she came to that conclusion, and she said, “Because it’s true.” It turns out her dad left her mom for another woman when she was six, and then had several girlfriends while he carried on this relationship with the woman who eventually became her stepmother. Her mom also remarried, and her stepfather had a roving eye as well. She remembers her mom putting her in the back of the car one night to follow her step-dad and see if he was really going to a card game and she remembers her mom bawling as they watched her step-dad enter a house when a woman opened the door and let him in with an embrace. She said she can still locate that sick feeling in her stomach, just like she had as she held her crying mother in that car all those years ago. (I could write a whole post about the damage done to children when they’re forced to be in the parental role.)
There are really only a few things that cause us to suffer, but they definitely get the job done. One is clinging — there’s something or someone we desire, some particular set of circumstances, some way of thinking or being, and we simply refuse to let go. When we’re attached in any way, we’re setting ourselves up for pain. Attachment to other people (which is a by-product of being human) leads to suffering because we are all in process all the time. You can’t “peg” a person, or pin someone down, or own anybody. People will choose to be with you or they won’t. Human beings have an expiration date as well, so even if a person chooses to be with you, eventually they’ll leave you or you’ll leave them. Attachment leads to suffering, and with human beings there’s no way around it, nor do I suggest you try to find one unless you truly feel called to move to a cave. The joy in this life comes from connection, from uncovering your gifts and sharing them, from touch, from laughter, from being seen and heard and understood and cherished. I wish that for you. I hope your heart expands with so much love you have moments you think it might just burst. Otherwise, I really can’t say what the point would be. You will lose people you love and it will hurt beyond anything you can fathom, but there’s a beauty in having loved that way — that can’t be taken from you. You have a light and you’re meant to shine it with whatever time you’ve got, and attachment to an idea or a way of being leaves no room for anything else to unfold, to evolve, to open. You’ll keep growing and learning if you allow yourself to shift and change, to loosen your grip on the story. It’s natural to all of us. Stifling that is a form of death, of strangulation.
The more you open to the reality that you cannot rewrite your past and you cannot control or predict your future, the more your heart opens to the plight of being human. Inherently it’s a vulnerable undertaking and isn’t easy, especially if you’re trying to be kind, conscious and compassionate with yourself and everyone you encounter. Whatever has happened has shaped you, but it doesn’t have to define you or close you off to the possibility of joy. Whatever is coming is unknowable, but you can work on healing and knowing yourself, so the storms don’t knock you over when they come (some will no matter how much you prepare). You cannot know for certain what happens after this until you exhale for the final time. People will break your heart. Circumstances will break your heart. Let them. Hold all of that.
Human beings are social creatures, and we all want to feel a sense of connection. We come into this world needing someone to hold us, to feed us, to wrap us in something warm, to talk to us, nurture us and let us know we are not alone. (Not everyone gets those things, but we all arrive needing them.) The other night as I was tucking my six-year old into bed he said, “Is this a dream?” And I said, “Is what a dream, buddy?” He said, “This life, this whole thing, is it a dream?” And I thought about it for a second, because, really, what a question and I said, “If it is, it’s a great dream, because I get to be your mom,” and he laughed.