We were waiting for one of the members of the workshop to join us as she needed a personal moment to herself. My spirit, mind, body and heart were all still processing and integrating the weekends workshop and all that it entailed.
I sat on a wooden bench knowing that I was exactly where I needed to be in life. I was doing the exact work that I came here to do. I am being the exact person who I came here to be. In no way am I perfect, nor would I even want to be. With each imperfection I learn more about who I am and why I am here.
As we waited for our member to join, I started speaking. I started by telling the group how proud of them I was. How it takes courage to show up in a group setting and do incredibly deep and vulnerable work. How it takes courage to bare your soul and trust that the people around you will honor your pain and your vulnerability. I spoke about a blog post that I had written. It was about a moment in my life where I realized that life was bigger than I realized. I spoke about holding a young man's mechanical heart. The story went like this:
I was working with a patient who had a mechanical heart placed. Given the risk of the procedure they had left the mechanical heart on the outside of his body with the intention of doing a second procedure a couple of days later to place the mechanical heart inside of his body when he was stable enough. I was in his room getting him out of bed for the first time after surgery. He was sitting on the edge of the bed and I was moving lines and tubes to allow him to try standing, with my support obviously. I got everything situated, placed the mechanical heart in my hand and my other hand on a belt around his waist to ensure that he was safe when he tried standing. I looked him in the eyes and asked him if he was ready to try standing. His eyes looked over to my hand holding his new heart. His eyes darted back to mine.
“Be careful with that, don’t drop it” he said.
The gravity of what he was saying and what I was doing really hit me. He was trusting me to hold his heart and I was responsible for keeping his heart safe.
As I looked around the room at all of the beautiful faces with their open eyes and open hearts, I told them how proud of them I was. How they had each done this exact thing over the weekend. They all came to a container and allowed other people to hold their hearts. It isn’t easy to trust another to hold your heart and it isn’t easy to be the one earning the right to hold someone's heart. It takes courage. It takes strength. It takes personal power. It takes heart.
Working in a container will teach you different things about yourself. It is in community and in connection that we see new mirrors and have the opportunity to reflect in a very different way. If you haven’t worked in a container, if you haven’t handed someone your heart and asked them to be careful with it, I invite you to experience it because it will change you for forever.
