stay

I have decided to start loving the parts of myself that are hurting right now. - anonymous

As we come close to the end of another year, I find myself naturally reflecting on what has shaped me most. There have been many lessons - some gentle, some devastating - but one rises above the rest.

Stay.

Stay with the parts of me that once felt rejected. Stay with the parts that felt abandoned, alone, worthless, stupid, ugly. Stay with the parts that learned to hide. Stay with the ones that learned to fight. Stay with the ones that learned to disappear.

It has not been gentle. It has felt like a death. Many deaths, actually. The dying of old patterns. The dying of old stories. The dying of who I thought I had to be in order to belong.

Again and again, I have been asked to stay - not to fix, not to bypass, not to transcend - but to stay with the pain, the sorrow, the grief, the fear, and the tenderness I had carried alone for so long. And something astonishing began to happen.

Each time I stayed, something softened. Something thawed. Something remembered how to breathe.

I began to discover the quiet intelligence of the body - the innate wisdom of our nervous systems - the way we are wired not just for survival, but for healing. Expansion and contraction. Tightening and release. Fear and safety. Death and rebirth. This is the rhythm we live inside, whether we fight it or honor it.

For so much of my life, I fought it.

I thought healing had to be complicated. That I had to understand everything. Fix everything. Heal everything. But what I am learning now is far simpler - and far more radical:

Stay with your breath. Stay with your body. Stay with the part of you that is hurting.

You do not have to exile yourself to heal. You do not have to abandon what aches in order to become whole.

As Joe Dispenza says, there is a generous present moment available to us - and I’ve found that we return to it not by escaping pain, but by staying with it long enough for it to open.

This is the update. This is the medicine. This is what changed the entire trajectory of my life.

If there is anything I know now, it is this:

Stay.

And if there is anything I would say to anyone walking a dark road right now - anyone standing at the edge of a cave they’re afraid to enter - it is this:

Stay, stay, stay, dear one.

There is treasure waiting for you inside that cave. Not someday. Not when you’re “better.” Not when you’re healed enough.

Now.

Because you are the treasure you’ve been searching for.
And the doorway has always been staying.