Finding Understanding and Acceptance

This is another story from our book Mindfulness for Transformation. The stories are written by members of our community.

By - Jennifer Gilroy

I work in a busy job. It is a good job and I enjoy it, but it can be stressful and demanding. Around five years ago, my job was at a challenging point and I was juggling quite a bit in life. But, despite all the juggling, I persevered. I thought I could work through the stressful period and come out unscathed on the other side.

Do you ever think about how sometimes society simply expects us to deal with stress: where enduring stress is considered to be a strength, and not coping with it is seen as a weakness? At the time,I didn’t understand the potential damage stress could cause, or the effect it might have on me. But then I broke down. And I say I‘broke down’ because not only did the experience leave me with a bad case of generalised anxiety disorder, it also made me question who I was and what I was capable of. I wound up feeling truly useless.

Then, I met Hanz, a wonderful human. He showed me how to move forward. Over time, I learnt things about myself and my past, and once I was on the mend, he introduced me to mindfulness. I was so grateful to Hanz for his support, and for introducing me to the practice of mindfulness, that I was driven to help others. And so here I am, five years later: a mindfulness teacher.

Profound things have happened to me as I have learnt about mindfulness and developed my practice: a series of insightful, transformational moments that have improved my relationship with my past experience and with the world. I will share one with you.

She
She developed terminal cancer. For nine months, I watched her fear, her sadness, her weakness, her desperate attempts to regain her health. During my five years of practising mindfulness, I had learnt what it was to sit and ‘be with’ all my experiences, and so I had become kinder and more forgiving. The minute I discovered the truth about her health, I decided that I wanted to spend my time learning more about her so that I could understand why life had been difficult for our family.

I discovered that she was truly wonderful. She was cheeky and,quite frankly, a pain in the behind. The nurses knew it,and so did the rest of the ward. She had a rebellious streak. She always sought freedom, although a lot of the time she couldn’t reach it. I felt sadness and empathy for her continued search. She took pictures, and you could see from her social media posts that she had whisked herself away again to those comforting places of beauty. She wanted to return to those places and longed for freedom but, sometimes, she did not have the courage to find it.

She felt immense pain during her life. She lost her sister, and that’s when things changed for her. I have come to understand that she valued our relationship and considered it special–more special than I had realised. I had spent my adult years focusing on my independence and trying not to need this relationship. Then I finally understood why she had not been able to provide me with what I had needed–and I was able to forgive her.

I spent a lot of time crying on a bench at the top of a nearby hill. However, this wasn’t a bad thing; it was necessary. I was grateful for my mindfulness practice, because it had opened up an empathy inside me that had previously been difficult to access. I was grateful because over those five years of developing my practice, I’d begun to see death as part of life, inevitable to us all. I knew it was okay to cry, to let the waves of emotion come and go, with no need to push them away. And I knew that what would be,would be.

At the moment she knew she was about to die, she asked us all to leave her bedside. This was the most painful feeling I have ever felt. It topped the feeling of sadness I’d had over the years, the wishing for our home life to have been different. What a final thing to do. On reflection, though, this act gives me great comfort–perhaps, even if we are scared about our own death now, we will not be so scared right at the very end. This final act encourages me to ask myself: “At the end of it all, will I have been happy? Will I have had ease of being? Will I have forgiven myself and anyone else necessary to allow us to live in harmony? Will I have felt free?” And if the answer is “No”, then I work on my own wellbeing. I work a little more on developing this wonderful, peaceful presence that is growing inside me. I spend more time giving to others. I remind myself why I am teaching, and I congratulate myself for doing a good thing. I choose to pause for a while and focus more on the fun and the connection to be found in life.

The deep roots of my mindfulness practice have taught me the nature of impermanence, and I have cultivated a level of friendliness and curiosity towards my experience through my practice. You may be able to relate to why I hold mindfulness so dear–I have been able to see the difficulties in life as opportunities. The stress, the success, the suffering we experience in our attempt to ‘get there’, to the finish line, to the point where we can allow ourselves to stop striving and relax: none of this matters.

This is the moment that matters.

This moment is all there is.

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