I am always amazed by the people who really see me as well as occasionally saddened by those who don’t.

Fortunately, my dear friend Teri and my children do. There are also those out there with whom I have shared an intensive or little more than blog posts who also see.

I came to an understanding this morning that there are those who won’t. To see past what I show is too uncomfortable.

What I show most often is passion, sensuality, frustration and anger with delight and compassion thrown in for good measure. What I will rarely agree to show you is pain. If you’re looking, as my friend shared with me yesterday, you will see it lurking behind the anger. What she understands better than possibly anyone is why.

So after a heart-twisting conversation, I’ve been sitting with this pain. And it is fucking uncomfortable. For me it’s the internal, emotional version of a “crick” in my neck and no matter how I hold my head I am to turn the volume down or get comfortable.

We opened a box yesterday and I would like to close it and be acceptably functional. I won’t. So I’m sitting here in my beautiful, beautiful family room, no tv on, windows open and soft waves of sound coming in from traffic and birds. It’s perfectly gorgeous  out and I’m sitting here rummaging around in what feels like grief stew. It rolls through me and when it gets to the top it brings tears that I am allowing despite an angry desire to refuse them liberation. I’m angry that I still have tears. I’m tired of crying. I’m tired of unresolved wounds and if you’ve ever been where I am you know that when I use the word “tired” it comes from sensation.

Anyone who has ever spent more than 5 minutes with me knows that I am expressive. I am emotionally accessible and I am aware of what I share. For all my awareness, and perhaps because of my degree of awareness I knew exactly where and how to hide the pain so that I wouldn’t have to look at it too often.

Unresolved pain builds armor.

I am well-armored and until last night I wasn’t willing to see why. I “couldn’t” understand why I’ve been doing all this work over the years and I can’t seem to release this armor. This armor and I are great friends – as was spoken in one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work, “great and terrible” friends. We’re so close that it arrives automatically. I have become aware of it’s comings and goings, and  I can release it once it’s here. I sense its arrival but I have yet given myself the freedom to prevent it from arriving. Now that I am willing to be in the origins of the armor, I can become more and more attuned to it’s arrival and be able to choose when and if I want it at all.

Learning to live in a place in which I am not wallowing in pain and building armor. Nor am I pushing it down with excuses – “she/he didn’t mean anything”, “I’m too sensitive”, “if I just stick it out, things will change.”

Trust. Vulnerability. Risk. Shedding my armor.

To live my purpose without apology, excuse, fear of exclusion or approval.

Awareness gives me wings.