Let It Wreck You

The tender tax of caring

Sometimes we just have to let it wreck us.

I started to feel a cold coming on. I negotiated with my body “I have a few incredibly important things to do over the next couple of days, so I need you to not get sick until at least Tuesday.”

In reflection, I can just imagine my body looking at me skeptically, like “you’re going to tell me when I can get sick? Girl, no.”

And sure enough, my body did not listen to my pleas.

Within a week’s time, I found myself navigating three kinds of heart-heavy experiences.

I heard from a long term and beloved client that she’d entered hospice after a long journey with her diagnosis. I fell apart, but quickly compartmentalized and composed myself. I gathered support and advice and wisdom about how I could make our last meeting together as helpful as possible.¹

I braced myself the following Monday for my own diagnostic appointment, the results of which were relieving, but invasive all the same.

And then I braced for my dad’s surgery, which, while successful, came with some of its own complications in aftercare.

There was nothing to delegate, nothing to delay, nothing I didn’t deeply care about. I had to attend to it all, and each of these were important to me. My body was showing me that this perfect storm of important experiences, alongside all of whatever else I was navigating in life, and helping others navigate, was going to take its tax on me physically.

“I should be fine in 3 days” I’d tell myself, recalling how long I usually have a cold for. That time line came and went. The cough persisted, my sleep disturbed, and my mood plummeting.

Cancelled plan after cancelled plan, I watched as my body carved out the space I wasn’t willing to carve out on my own. I watched as she created the rest I wouldn’t take, summoned the nourishing food I’d been avoiding, and stopped me, holding my cheeks and making me look at these things that were wrecking me.

Inviting me to simply be wrecked.

Maybe we aren’t meant to be doing all the stuff we’re doing.

I know that I’m not.

It raises the question “do I have enough margin in my life for when really important things happen?” Do I have enough space to attend to the soul-level experiences with the heart and integrity I wish to?

Do I have enough room in my life to be wrecked by that which must wreck me?

I remember experiencing a professional loss a decade ago. A former client of mine had chosen to end his life a year after our work had concluded. I was devastated, but busy. I was scared, but spread too thin to admit it. I couldn’t let the fullness of how that was wrecking me to have its way with me - or I thought I wouldn’t survive it.

It wasn’t until a couple of years later, and many many therapy sessions in that time, that I realized I had hoped to contain that experience so that it wouldn’t wreck me, and that’s just not how I’m built.

I’m actually built to be demolished emotionally over and over. To be wrecked by the tenderness of the world. To be overcome with sadness at the loss of someone I’ve grown to love, someone whose healing I’ve witnessed.

I am exactly as fragile as I need to be in this way because it was all supposed to matter, it all will always matter, and the wisdom of my body knows that.

So I’ll let this wreck me. Because maybe that’s not weakness…but wisdom. And as soon as I exchanged “I’ll give this a couple of days” for “this is really hard right now, and I’m really sad, and really grateful, and really tender.” My cough began to subside. I could see the invitation my body was offering. The invitation to nourish in the wreck. To name what was real. To feel, physically, what felt like too much to feel emotionally.

And I will accept that invitation because this is important. This work, this life, my humanity and yours.

Maybe we just have to let it wreck us.

If you’re feeling wrecked, maybe that’s holy. Maybe your body knows.

1. I’m writing about this. Giving it time to breathe and myself time to figure out how to meet it with truth and confidentiality, side by side.