Day 52
cure
One of the most frustrating aspects of parenting is seeing your child uncomfortable or in pain and not having the access, wisdom or ability to cure them. From their birth, they suffer in ways that you can not understand or fix, yet you hold on to this idea that you should be able to fix it and that if you just try a little harder, you will figure it out. Instead of learning to help them cope with their suffering, you instead get stuck in a rut of trying to cure the suffering.
In the last five years, I’ve been deepening my relationship with suffering. I am learning to allow suffering to exist, even attempting to make her my friend. I am hard pressed to come up with any real lesson of value that I didn’t learn through emotional, mental or physical stress and pain. So truly, if not a friend, suffering has been a good teacher.
It is relatively easy for me to stop looking for a cure for my own suffering—I supposed because it has been relatively minor, certainly not fatal, and because I have learned to learn from suffering. The suffering of others, especially those close to me however, is a completely different matter. The intense longing I have to find a cure for my kids, nieces, friends and family—for the depression and anxiety they suffer, for the discomfort of growing up, for the struggle to find their way in the world—it is intense. Yet, I know that suffering is their teacher as well. I suppose the bottom line is that I have not figured out how to learn from the hurt I experience witnessing their pain.
Ultimately, it is the ache for the cure that creates the most suffering for me. It is so difficult to sit with someone in pain and not try and fix it, yet this is where we find the deepest connection with each other. Again, vulnerability is the key; to open ourselves to each other’s suffering and hold each other—it is not a cure, but certainly if we learn to do this, we do not suffer alone.
