Gratitude Gives

I was the mentor and advocate for a young woman who was homeless, pregnant, jobless, and only 30-days sober. But I'm wondering who was helping who? She was faced with monumental challenges in every area of her life. And even though I've been academically trained to help her as a mental health counselor, honestly, even I don't know where to begin. Yet looking into her eyes, I saw myself. This is the heart of compassion-seeing your own humanity reflected in another's pain. I knew I couldn't solve all her problems but I determined to do my best to work a few miracles for her because someone had to love her with more than words. Words are cheap; words don't feed you, house you, or get you to your appointments on time. They are well-intended but useless. I didn't need to feel like a hero because friends, family and even strangers have selflessly given to me over the span of my lifetime-so many times in so many ways that I've lost count. I figured it was my time to give a little. When I looked into her empty eyes I saw all the times I came to dead-ends. I saw all the times I wished I'd had a big road sign to say: wrong turn,  time to turn around. I saw all the times I was disgusted with myself for letting myself and others down. When I was with her, I was seeing a younger, struggling version of me.

Gratitude happens in moments when we realize how much we've been given, and how many people have contributed to our success. Nobody's an island, which is why arrogance is such a disdainful quality. The CEO taking millions of dollars in salary is standing on the backs of workers making minimum wage. He may have gotten his position because of an education and good breeding, but he surely didn't arrive there alone. All of us, regardless of our fine qualities, had help along the way. If you can't recall the people who were there in key moments then you're not thinking hard enough. I think back to the time I lost my teen daughter to suicide and how many complete strangers reached out to me; how many poured out their sympathies and prayers. Knowing that others, even complete strangers, deeply cared is what kept me afloat. I survived on their borrowed faith when I wanted so badly to silently slip beneath the waves of grief. Their tender words and wisdom became my flotation device and their practical assistance became my life preserver. I stayed alive because of their belief in me. I can never repay all the compassionate people who have accepted me unconditionally, despite my jumbled and chaotic existence. What I can do is to reach my hand out when someone else is about to go under; it's the least I can do.

There's nothing uglier than a person without compassion, and there's no more breathtaking sight than a person who quietly practices it. The word mercy is synonymous with forgiveness; wiping the slate clean. Mercy means leniency; not being overly heavy-handed if you can help it. Mercy is gentle and shows tolerance and forbearance of others' failures. When we're laser-beam focused on our own worries, people around us don't even register on our radar. Key to tapping our innate tenderness is being aware of other's pain. If we are always concentrating on our own worries and gripes, there's no room for mercy in our hearts. The Christian tradition tells the story of Christ's birth, that there was no room in the Inn, no place for Christ to be born...nobody was willing to make room for him. Christ's birth showed us that mercy is only born in hearts that make room for tenderness, hearts that have been swept clean by the bristles and pain and a humbled existence. Your ability to shine with a quiet glow is dependent on how much compassion resides in your heart. Spiritual teachers of all traditions have advocated self-denial for a reason. Forgetting yourself is key to finding compassion and seeing other people.

I learned this lesson too late. My teen daughter's death was a poignant reminder of my relentlessly self-focused, "single-parent" mentality. I won the battle of being a bread-winner while I lost the war of being a tuned-in parent. I was so focused on my "duties" as a single mother, so consumed with making sure my teen was getting good grades, steering clear of drugs and unwanted pregnancy that I failed to consider what she was seeing. Did I bother to look through her eyes, or was I only seeing the world through the narrow lens of a stressed-out working mother, worn thin by her daughter's four year struggle with severe depression, a mother exhausted by never-ending power struggles? I was in survival mode, and so was she...until she couldn't see through my eyes anymore. That's the moment her flame went out, the moment she made the decision to say goodbye. It's imperative we all try hard to see though one another's eyes. I regret that I trusted my tired eyes. I should have realized I needed a different pair of glasses; I wasn't seeing her clearly anymore. The biggest lesson learned on the road to tenderness was how it only takes a second to watch everything turn to ashes. Sometimes we can't go back, we can't mend what's been broken; sometimes we don't get a second chance. It only takes a second to pull the pin out of a grenade, yet the mess and tears can echo for a lifetime. When we are consumed with our own wants and worries we lose sight of others. When the lonely heart breaks and no one sees, the next word may be goodbye.

If there's someone in your life that's asking more from you than you think you can give, remember: it only takes a minute to ask how they're feeling, what they're dealing with. Tenderness may require you to lay aside your own agenda for awhile; to extend a helping hand and to show some grace. Don't forget where you started, because the minute you do, you've lost the only perspective that means anything: how to be a human with a heart that beats and breaks for another. Just another lesson learned on the road to tenderness. 
  
Click here for all of Nina's books: http://www.amazon.com/Nina-Bingham/e/B008XEX2Z0

Turning Your Demons Into Art

In 2013, I would have assured you that my life was over. My beloved teen daughter had just committed suicide in the next room as I slept, and I awoke to a horrible nightmare that became my constant tortured reality. In my journal I wrote: "An atom bomb has been dropped, and I am melting in the blast." I had already been through enough in life; I was no stranger to suffering. My childhood was abusive and traumatizing as the result of an alcoholic and Bipolar father, and a single mother who insulated herself behind the veil of religion. I endured disabling clinical depression until I was in my 40s, had weathered a divorce, and thereafter had a string of unsuccessful relationships. The only thing that kept me going was my teen daughter, until without any notice, she walked out of my life forever. 

After her suicide, I was reduced to a heartsick, empty-handed, open wound, a shell-shocked mess. I became 80 pounds overweight; I started binge-eating to cope. Because I'd been trained as a mental health counselor, I was suffering from a double-dose of survivor's guilt and shame; this wasn't supposed to happen to educated people like me. When I tried returning to my counseling office, I was daily triggered by my client's problems. When they talked to me about depression, grief, and eating disorders, common topics in a counseling room, I'd wither inside; an eating disorder had triggered my daughter's depression, and the depression had caused her suicide. Professionally, I knew I was dead in the water, because my wounds were immense and were interfering with my client's treatment. After 10 years as a mental health professional, I closed my practice because it was the only ethical and sane choice to make. After that, I was adrift at sea. 

My grief was the immense, dark and endless as the sea I was lost in. For over a year I was engulfed in a private "dark night of the soul." I wandered the endless halls of my unraveling mind trying to make sense out of chaos, trying to find purpose in the pain. That first year I decided to write a book about my journey through grief; I thought maybe it would help somebody. Besides, I had to write to save myself from drowning. I'd been raised in the Christian faith and taught that every problem was a trial and test designed by God to perfect our characters; ultimately, the tests would forge us into better people. But this trauma wasn't making me into a better person. Instead, it had made me into a shame-riddled, insecure, phobic, unemployed person whose hair had turned grey overnight. It made me into an angry and demanding partner, and had unhinged my spirituality, leaching out every last bit of hope in a Higher Power. I reasoned that perhaps scientist-like aliens who were cruel, cold and calculating were controlling us all in a demonic experiment and we were just unfortunate and unwitting amoebas in their cosmic petri dish. In truth, the only demons were my own dark thoughts, and they stood taunting me, dutifully reminding me at every turn of what a big fat phony, failure I was. The confidence I'd always had was stripped away. The protective outer-skin of self-respect that every person needs and deserves, what keeps our self-esteem intact, was peeled away revealing a hyper-sensitive open wound that couldn't withstand reality.

I'd completely given up on the idea of a benevolent God and all this nonsense talk of God's love and mercy (where was the mercy in my life?). Not long after her suicide, I went for a "grief walk," and found myself chucking rocks at the sky in an open field. Cars whizzed by with incredulous looks at the dippy woman screaming obscenities and throwing rocks at...nothing. Yes, I was having a breakdown. Long overdue and it felt...wonderful. For the first time I was really telling the truth about how angry I was at God (or the aliens) or whoever was up there engineering this whole mess. I broke down in a heap and sat in the middle of the dusty field sobbing, my voice hoarse, my arms wobbly. I half expected a lightning bolt to strike me for the names I'd called God; in truth, I would have welcomed it, it would have put me out of my misery. But no lightning bolt was sent, and in the stillness of that moment which I now understand as sacred, I saw that I was going to go on living. For some unfathomable reason, I was meant to go on living, even though my reason for living had vanished. 

I stood, brushed the dust from my jeans, and started chuckling through the blur of tears. What a sight I was! And while on the outside I had gotten my jeans dirty, on the inside I felt squeaky clean, roomy, and new. The words of an old hymnal flooded me then. Perhaps some empathetic angels were singing the words: "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound..." and although I'd heard that song in church many times, the words sounded new; they made sense to me like they never had before. They meant that somehow, there was grace for me. Whatever I blamed myself for had all been erased. My daughter was free now, and she had wanted me to be free. I hummed the hymn as I wrapped my arms tightly around my shaky body, hugging myself as I stumbled home. It was a pivotal moment, because I gave myself permission to love myself again. 

I tell you this story of my undoing, and the beginning of my rebuilding, because we all have the ability to turn our demons into art. We can transform our pain into something useful, something meaningful, something helpful, something brave, and something beautiful. It will require one necessary ingredient: forgiveness. We must find a way to forgive ourselves and forgive each other for the ways we have all let each other down. The power to forgive only comes once we have stopped demanding that life be a certain way. Joy fires up the moment we abandon our unrealistically high expectations and fully accept the reality of our humanity. Embracing my humanity means that it's okay to admit when I'm human: I make mistakes, sometimes big, irrevocable mistakes. You are human, too-which means you will make mistakes, sometimes big, and irrevocable. And I'd venture to say that even the Universe has and will continue to make errors on occasion (hey, nobody's perfect). We will have to forgive the Universe, too. 

Turning your demons into art is the definition of bravery. Bravery doesn't mean being perfect. It means dusting yourself off after the storm is over, and rebuilding; that's the definition of bravery. Turning demons into art means forgiving yourself for mistakes of the past and believing in your potential-because that's all and everything you are: pure potential. Life is a do-over; a blackboard with a giant eraser with your name written on it, an empty slate eagerly awaiting your unique signature. The thing about demons is that they are more frightened of you than you are of them, because they know who you really are, you demon slayer, you. 

Click here for all of Nina's books: http://www.amazon.com/Nina-Bingham/e/B008XEX2Z0