Holding the 10,000 Joys and Sorrows

For this blog I’m going to invoke some of the Greats—wise people and concepts I have leaned on for guidance.

Some years ago, when I was really suffering from the trials of early motherhood and chronic Lyme disease, I came across the Buddhist concept of having a heart so big it could hold the 10,000 Joys and 10,000 Sorrows.

For some reason, this “right-sized” my personal struggles. It made me feel they were temporary, not insurmountable, and that what I was feeling was the growing pains of expansion. It made me want to grow into the kind of person who could feel all my feelings, heal my body, face any challenges, and still live my life to the fullest capacity, with no holding back.

Acceptance: Loosely Holding It All

As we round out this September theme of Acceptance, I’d like to invite you into this place of loosely holding it all.

I invite you to accept your reality for what it is today, to accept the larger world as it is right now—knowing both will inevitably change.

I invite you to purposefully look around you and pull into your experience the people, places, and things that really light you up. Revel in everything that delights you. Grieve anything that feels sad. Let your heart expand to hold it all.

When you let yourself feel all of it, the energy and vitality move through your body and out, rather than getting trapped or stuck—which eventually will cause physical symptoms.

Acceptance is both shedding and expansion: shedding what isn’t serving you anymore and expanding to hold your ever-increasing life experience.

Building Capacity vs. Resilience

I have never cared for the word resilience.

In the training ground of my nursing practice, we worked with high-risk clients and their children—people who had experienced significant trauma, poverty, and hardship in their young lives.

The term resilience was often used to show admiration (but not necessarily true understanding) for all that they had come through and survived “anyway.” Yet it seemed to place their trauma central to their character, overshadowing other qualities.

While this is all true, I reject the notion that a person, particularly a child, needs to suffer trauma in order to develop resilience. Too often, resilience is also used to justify harm: “He’ll be ok, children are resilient.”

Instead, I offer the idea of building capacity—the ability to hold both the difficulties and blessings of life in balance.

Resilience can feel like “what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger,” a badge of trauma that may become central to a person’s identity.

Capacity, however, grows from all kinds of challenges:

• The ones you don’t choose, yes, but also the ones you do choose—

• Being in relationship, becoming a parent, graduating, training your body, serving others, or learning something new.

Anything new is challenging, and from it, we gain perspective and confidence. No trauma required.

“Strong Back, Soft Front, Wild Heart”

This is my favorite Brene Brown quote, and I offer my interpretation of what it has meant to me.

• Strong Back: Holds physical and emotional structure and boundaries. It is protective and gives the strength needed to face difficulties, finish projects, care for the body, or stand up for what matters. We can learn to trust our strong backs—ourselves.

• Soft Front: Represents openness to others’ perspectives. It feels both grief and joy. It extends compassion to others, to Nature, and importantly, to self. It’s flexible, willing to learn, admit wrongdoing, and change.

• Wild Heart: Lives fully, not by shutting down to avoid pain, but by opening wider to hold everything—the beauty, the horror, the joy, the rage. These emotions let us know if we are living in integrity.

The practice of nervous system regulation is the key to opening up the Wild Heart.

Softening Without Trauma

I do want us to be softened—to be kinder to ourselves and to each other, to see life from another’s perspective.

But I do not want that softening to come from repeated trauma. I want it to come from reflection and reverence (see our previous blog).

Reflection on how far we’ve come—thanks to both challenges and blessings. Reverence for the beauty and awe of life itself.

We are here on this wild, unpredictable, yet predictable planet. The sun rises every day. The seasons change. People are having babies, building companies, flying to space, creating art, breaking records, and healing each other.

We hold the capacity to feel pain, and at the same time, breathe deeply in wonder of it all.

An Invitation

At Partnered Healing, we wish you many beautiful moments this fall to revel in, and we’re here to walk with you through the challenging times.

Please continue to follow the blog as we explore a new topic each month for bringing more vitality to daily life. And as always, speak with your Partnered Healing Provider about nervous system regulation—it is central to healing.

As members of Partnered Healing, you are also invited to join our newly established monthly Partnered Healing Community Group, where we dig deeper into these topics and put nervous system regulation into practice. RSVP on the Events page on our website for the next one being held on October 16th at 11.

Written by Jessica Cochran, BSN RN Integrative Life Coach