Those who sow in tears

On letting your pain live outside your body

When we moved in late April, I ordered seeds. In thirteen years of marriage, we’ve never really had a yard to tend or enjoy. So I dreamed of color and cut flowers. I picked packs of seeds in wildflowers native to this land, and when the last snow of the season melted, I tilled and sowed and smiled.

One of my dearest friends sent a card to celebrate buying our first house and in it she mentioned the second part of her housewarming present would come in the fall. Peony bulbs. She knew they are my favorite flower, but she didn’t know I was soil deep in studying the life cycle of peonies for the first somatic retreat I’d ever lead. She didn’t know that one year prior I’d told a group of women that mostly what I want in life is a yard with peonies I can cut and admire.

But then illness came. My life seemed to shrink to the size of a seed, buried under the dark soil of more sickness than I’ve ever experienced.

When I was hospitalized, the wildflower seeds I had planted had sprouted but seemed weak. I assumed they died while I was fighting to live.

When I finally came home, I rested on a rocking chair outside before the effort of getting up our stairs and collapsing into bed. “What’s that your dogs keep getting into?” my father-in-law asked.

I looked up and saw…flowers. Bright orange poppies and yellow black-eyed Susans. A rainbow of purple, pink, blue, and green. I was shocked.

What I assumed had died was alive. The flowers I couldn’t tend on my own were thriving.

The flowers felt like a talisman of the truth of my own life. They survived and so would I.

I learned in the weeks that followed that one of you had reached out to my husband, offering to garden our yard while I healed. (I still can’t think about it without tears welling up.)

Week after week, Kate came and weeded and tended. She planted herbs and flowers in our flower boxes. She made sure my wildflowers stayed alive. For probably the first month, I couldn’t make it downstairs. But when I finally was strong enough to start leaving bed, I was greeted by green. When I was strong enough to sit, my yard was beautiful enough to bask in with joy.

It took months before I was well enough to be outside while Kate was over and could finally meet her. I told her how astounded I was that she would be so generous toward us. She told me she just wanted me to be greeted by beauty when I was able to be out of bed. To this day, it is one of the kindest things anyone has ever done for me, this quiet, humble tending.

Last month, before the first big snow blanketed our yard, my friend’s gift of peony bulbs arrived. I held the box with gratitude for my friend, but my sadness weighed far more. I still wasn’t strong enough to plant them on my own, and I feared her gift would go to waste. I couldn’t make my own dream a reality.

That same week, Kate reached out again, asking if she could plant some bulbs.

She planted what I grieved as being too much for me. She dug holes in the dirt where flowers could be sheltered and safe through the cold of winter so color could bloom in spring. She, yet again, took time to tend what I couldn’t so that come spring, I’ll see more than weeds.

Here I am with Kate Fugate, the day she planted our bulbs. 😭 If you are local to Colorado Springs and need help with your yard, Kate is a gifted gardener and specializes in helping make beauty accessible for those with disabilities. You can find her here: https://instagram.com/sweetgardenbaby?igshid=OGQ5ZDc2ODk2ZA==

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Recently I listened to an On Being podcast interview with Matthew Sanford. He was paralyzed from the waist down in an accident in childhood and yet has come to be a presence of deep compassion toward the pain and promise of living in these bodies of ours. I’ve thought about one part of the interview again and again in the weeks since listening, his words clinging to me just like the national park stickers that cover my water bottle.

He said, “There’s a reason why, when my son — he’s six — is crying, he needs a hug. It’s not just that he needs my love; he needs boundary around his experience. He needs to know that the pain is contained and can be housed, and it won’t be limiting his whole being.”

His son’s tears need a container bigger than his own body.

A few weeks ago, my friend Nicole came to sit with me. We sat on my couch, clutching hot cups of tea, and before I knew it, tears were streaming down my face. Life remains harder than I wish it was, and I couldn’t hold my grief inside. Nicole wrapped her arms around me, and I wept.

My sadness needs a bigger container than my own body, and so does yours.

I apologized for crying, even though I knew I don’t need to. (The female urge to apologize for ourselves sure is strong.) But as I dared to let the truth of what’s inside me be seen, I felt lighter.

Later, while thinking about my tears, the words of some of my favorite Psalms came to mind.

Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. Psalm 126:5 (NIV)

You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book. Psalm 56:8 (NLT)

The bulbs I couldn’t plant myself need a safe place to be sheltered to eventually become big blooms. The tears spilling over when I share need a place to be held as precious rather than a problem.

I am learning to trust my tears are seeds.

I am learning to let my pain live outside the bounds of my body, for it is too big to hold inside.¹ I am learning to let arms wrap around me as I weep and to let others’ hands hold the hopes I cannot plant for myself. I am learning to let loss spill over the edges of my eyes so that lament can alchemize—as it always does—back into boundless, steady, strong love.

May it be so for you. Your pain was never meant to just be private.

You were never meant to be a strong enough container to hold every loss, trauma, and disappointment in your life.² You were made to be held. You were made to live into more and more love through the same cycle as seeds and bulbs; in sowing, you grow. Let your losses overflow.

Receive this blessing from The Book of Common Courage:

If God keeps track of your tears

and holds them safe in a bottle,

then perhaps

your pain

is precious,

perhaps

your tears

tell truth.

Perhaps

you don't have to stop

the flow of what God wants

to hold as a treasure.

—crying is holy.

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PS I am planning on resuming sending additional posts for paid subscribers of Embodied!

Gently. Being less of an idealist/perfectionist. And just sharing more glimpses of my process of healing than I am ready to share with the wider world. Next week, I’m hoping to answer some of your questions! Ask about, well, anything. I’ll ask for Qs over on IG and answer them in a roundup post for paid subscribers here. (If you aren’t on IG, definitely feel free to drop your Qs below though!)

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PPS A bunch of you have nominated The Book of Common Courage for a reader’s choice award with The Englewood Review of Books. 😭

They updated folks on twitter, saying my book is one of the leading nominees, which is, just so encouraging. I wrote most of that book during what was then the hardest season of my life. The way it keeps resonating with you reminds me that when we offer the little bit we have, even when we fear it’s not enough, love will ripple out farther than we expect. I have needed that reminder once again, and it’s actually what gave me courage to write again today, even though I didn’t feel like I had the best words to say. Anyway, I’d be honored to receive your vote!

1. You might be asking, “But how?” In a post for paid subscribers next month, I’ll be sharing some of the ways I’m practicing giving my pain somewhere to live outside my body during this season.

2. In fact, the pain we hold inside tends to hold us back. While I feel utterly humbled and often confused by the intensity of pain in my body in this year, I also have observed this again and again: the pain I witness softens. When I give my pain somewhere else to live than in my body, it decreases or at least becomes more tolerable. When I take time to notice annd express the feelings of rage, shame, and grief connected to my physical pain, the pain softens. It’s energy, meant to move us into safety and love.