Hurt enough to heal
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I live in Boulder, CO, just up the street from the King Sooper’s where 10 people were murdered on Monday. I was in the middle of writing a blog post about the Atlanta shootings and the many other ways in which the violence of our history in this country needs to be reckoned with when helicopters started whirring overhead and my many devices started buzzing with the news of an active shooter.
The store where it happened has been “my store” for over 20 years. It is the first place my children were allowed to go and hang out with their friends unsupervised. I have a lot more to say and suspect I will in the weeks to come, but this week I’ve been feeling the loss of full feeling as much as anything — wishing I could recover the anguish I felt when the Columbine shootings happened or the worry and outrage I felt after Newtown. I have been sad that my kids aren’t more sad, or surprised, or bewildered by it all.
As I have driven past the still-gated-and-guarded lot that has now become a makeshift memorial on one side and a media circus on the other I have wondered what might happen if we all felt less compelled to immediately do something and might, instead, just let ourselves feel our hurt all the way for a bit.
Could we allow ourselves to hurt enough to heal? That wondering gave rise to this poem:
Hurt enough to heal
There are moments, sometimes,
When my mind is still and my heart open
When, I wonder
Whether any of it
Matters at all
After all.
If, moment to moment,
Any meaning
We might make
Of any of it
Isn’t just
Another hiding place
From feeling
All the feelings
That make us fully alive;
Less likely, maybe
To have to contend
With it all again, again.
But, then
Fuck if I don’t feel
That all this
Waiting, hiding, seeking, striving
