Today I was speaking with a yoga student after class and during that conversation, almost like a soft breeze blowing through, a part of me shifted and the lens of perception through which I see the world was suddenly clearer. And this is how life goes, awake to it or not, but it’s always a gift when we ARE awake to these shifts. She was asking me about my son who, being born at 24 weeks, is and remains to this day a miracle to me. We were discussing, what appeared on the surface to be motherhood, but beneath was something much more profound taking place. As it was, she had been a nurse in the NICU where my son and I had spent the first four months of his life. As I shared with her the names of the people who I had come to know during that time and who had touched me with their presence, there was a part of me that broke open; the breaking itself being the medicine that heals. It was the medicine of that conversation quietly working on me; transforming me.
I recounted the nurses, doctors, moms, and even strangers who had been divinely orchestrated to be with me and my son during this fragile time. I then recounted even long after the conversation had ended all of the friends and family, near and far, who showed up for me and my son in those four months. And really how my heart was breaking then to feel so incredibly loved by people. The tapestry of that experience and the love woven into it by some who I didn’t even know; complete strangers who would have given me anything to relieve that kind of suffering. And in that conversation I was reminded. In the breeze of that moment I could see that experience clearly through the eyes of the soul. My heart was tender and bruised with love, feeling at the deepest core of my being the Truth that we are, by design, thirsty to give ourselves… to empty ourselves for another. That as a matter of fact, it requires far more effort to not give. And not only to not give, but to close ourselves off to receiving what is so desperately needed and what is so freely given.
To Give is to Receive. It’s that which is built into us that actually transforms us from the inside out. And it is that which is built into us that transforms us when we are open to receive. We in our togetherness experience the felt sense of our interconnectedness, our shared Being. And it’s in these moments when we are reminded of who we really are and the veil of separation is lifted. We are healed. We are healed from a conversation with a student or from the hand of a doctor at the bedside of our precious baby. We are transformed by what cannot be seen and yet through this transformation we are then able to see so clearly.
– Chrissy Leake
