a love letter to detachment

Dear Detachment,

Last night, as I hung on the line for seven minutes while a meltdown happened a world away, I knew only that I could do nothing but pray.  Pray and send honey light to an aching family and allow my bones and heart to ache along with them.  And, somehow, I rested in this surrender.

            This is not mine to fix

            yet it is my choice to stay near

            to allow the pain to touch me

            to galvanize me into action

            to be here and do what I can

                        listen

                        reassure

                        pray

                        send light

Sometimes, detachment, you have felt like a shirking of responsibility, an irresponsible stepping away.  Not now.  Today you feel like health, like true helpful helping, like clarity and calm.  Sometimes, too, you have felt like a lack of feeling, deliberate coldness or even callous self-defense or selfishness.  Not now.  Today you feel like fully feeling

            the sadness

              unnecessariness

            the trauma

              and my heart aches for it all

So again I return to my question of late - What is mine to carry?  And with this I open to the pain, the beauty, the enormity of it all.

Please, detachment, show me how to stand not in judgment, not in right-thinking, or in I-know-the-way, but in love and listening, so that I may hold a space for whatever may come.  So I may speak the hard-to-hear truth:

            First, love yourself

            and then do whatever it takes to get there.

            Take my hand and the hands of others,

              do not choose to go at this alone.

A wise one said to me:  “Some of us were born with demons.  It is not our fault, but it is our responsibility and our challenge - and perhaps even our reason for being here on Earth as we are – to release, to heal and to live into a healthier way.”

Step by agonizing step.  The stakes are so high; so high that we can only begin this way.  One step at a time.  Anew.  Again and again.

And so, I write the next day to offer my truth and my hand.  A few moments later, words came back through the ether: 

  I will take your hand

  this is so hard.  

And unsaid:

   stay with me, 

   stay with me.

   I respond:

   Yes, I am here.

    in my full love...

   And unsaid:

    …in my blessed, hard-won, 

    loving detachment.