Alone, I am too small to meet
the great weight of your pain.
Loving, I want to turn toward you.
Aching, I want to turn away.
But yesterday I rested for a time
on a wide gray rock in an alpine cirque.
In my stillness I felt how surely
I was cradled by the world so much
vaster than I. There, surrounded
by greatness, I invited your pain
into my heart and held you there in me.
I breathed in your ache, my ache,
and felt us both surrounded
by vast fields of wildflowers,
by the deep green shoulders
of sheer gray cliffs. I envisioned
I was breathing out love, but more truly,
I was being breathed by the mountain,
or perhaps by life itself.
The weight of the pain was no less,
but I knew it as a blessing,
a gravitational force magnetizing you and me.
What a gift to hold the weight together,
to know in my whole being
how miraculously we are held.
Posts Tagged ‘breathing’
The Holding
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breathing, friendship, holding, mountain, tonglen on July 22, 2026| 2 Comments »
The Night I Remembered What Love Can Do
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anxiety, breathing, heart, heart energy, love, panic attack, unwanted on May 19, 2026| 12 Comments »
What is unwanted still serves.
—Sam Aureli, “Dandelions”
I was just sitting on the edge of the porch,
but I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t breathe,
I was sobbing and scared and hurting and
I couldn’t fucking breathe; panic surged in me,
my brain screamed red, and I tried to breathe—
why couldn’t I breathe?—as my chest squeezed
and sobs quaked and shook and stole me,
and I couldn’t feel my heart. Wait. I couldn’t feel
my heart? A star-bright awareness sang in me then
like a one-note song I could follow home through
any darkness or density. Not that the terror disappeared,
but in attuning myself to my heart, my physical heart
opened enough to hold the terror. I sat on the edge
of the porch. Just sat. And was breathed.
The Minimum
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breathing, spring, surrender, worry on March 25, 2025| 1 Comment »
Even when worry wrecks us,
leaving us broken on the shores
of the life we had,
even when we have been wrung
like rags, even when we
are brittle, snappish things,
even then the scent of spring
can reach us with its notes
of damp soil, sharp pine,
and sun-warmed grass,
the air clean and slightly sweet.
We don’t need to open
our eyes. Don’t need to try.
All that is asked of us: breathe.
Inviting Spaciousness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belonging, breathing, connection, self-compassion on November 4, 2024| 22 Comments »
Today when the heart is a small, tight knot,
I do not try to untangle it. I don’t tug on the strings
in a desperate attempt to unravel it.
I don’t even wonder at how it got so snarled.
Instead, I imagine cradling it, cupping it
with my hands like something precious,
something wounded, a bird with a broken wing.
I cradle my heart like the frightened thing it is.
I imagine all the other frightened hearts
and imagine them all being held in love.
And I breathe. I breathe and feel
how the breathing invites a spaciousness.
I breathe and let myself be moved by the breathing
as I open and soften. Open and soften.
And nothing changes. And everything changes.
The heart, still a knot, remembers
it knows how to love. It knows it is not alone.
Why I Take Deep Breaths
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, breathing, grief, ocean, swimming on October 25, 2021| 6 Comments »
In this deep sea of grief,
it is hard to trust
my own buoyancy—
great waves break on me,
take my breath away,
I’m submerged by loss,
yet with so little effort
I rise. Just by being alive,
I rise. So I splutter.
So I’m graceless.
So I cannot see the shore.
But my friend reminds me,
there’s no way
that I can do this wrong.
So I let myself be carried
by currents unknown,
and each time I breathe—
I feel myself rise.
With so little effort,
I rise.
When I Need to Remember
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breathing, happiness, lake, swimming on July 10, 2021| Leave a Comment »
Tucked in my mind’s back pocket
is that evening when I ran full speed
off the end of the pier
and leapt fully dressed into the water.
The air in my clothes buoyed me for a moment
before swirling around me like a purple bloom—
and the heavy sun was orange and low,
and the water held me, refreshed me,
stole my breath for a moment,
then gave me back the gift of my breath,
only deeper, fuller, a bloom in my body.
Oh the freedom—how easy it felt to be alive,
to be afloat, to be enwombed by the world.
Everything felt right. Everything felt yes.
Sometimes, like now, when worry polishes my thoughts,
I dip a toe into that pocket and feel the splash on my skin,
hear the water lapping against the buoys, the pier.
Sometimes, like now, I jump in and swim there
long enough that when I return to this chair, this room,
I find the faint lake scent lingering in my hair,
my face still wet.
Pneumonia
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged body, breath, breathing, friendship, healing on April 28, 2020| 4 Comments »
—for A
And if I could, I would breathe for you.
I would inhale and exhale and hold
your breath for you. For you I would
sigh and rant, I would hack and pant,
I would be your lungs if I could. I would
ease this ache, I would carry this pain,
I would take away fear, I would be
the wind, the wild mesa wind,
the late April wind that blows change
into all we thought we knew
and rearranges the meaning of here.
No one could ever speak for you.
But I would breathe for you, friend.
Please, breathe, please keep breathing.
I need you to breathe for you, breathe
for me, please, friend. I wish I could
breathe for you, breathe for you.
Longing to Help
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breath, breathing, connection, help on January 19, 2020| Leave a Comment »
The world enters
us as breath. We
return to it itself
as breath.
—Joseph Hutchison, “Comfort Food: Breath”
And so today, on a day
when I feel quite sure
I can’t give you anything,
not anything that really matters,
I give you my breath.
It’s more conceptual
than actual, perhaps,
though scientists say
that the molecules we breathe
have been redistributed
in our atmosphere
for a century or two.
I decide to breathe as if.
As if with each breath,
I connect to you. As if
with each breath, we
become just a little
more each other
one molecule at a time.
Midnight in Tennesee
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breathing, night, poem, poetry, tennessee on October 2, 2019| 4 Comments »
Is not like midnight in Colorado.
It’s dark, of course, same stars.
But the air here has a weight
that holds me—as if it’s been having
a long conversation with me
since before I arrived, as if it knows me.
I have come with my arms too full.
The night asks me to set down
whatever I have brought,
to hold it the way it holds me.
I breathe into the night
only to find it is breathing me.
Remembering How I Got Here in the First Place
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breathing, meditation, meditation retreat, mind, poem, poetry, Susie Harrington on September 22, 2019| Leave a Comment »
“Focus on your breathing,” Susie says.
“Imagine this next breath is your first.”
And for a while, it works. I feel the inhale move
from nose to throat to lungs, feel the new air travel
through my legs and arms. Then breathe it out.
I’m curious. I follow as the breath becomes my
daughter, and I wonder how her first day
of climbing went yesterday. And that was so weird
how she was in my dream last night when
I swallowed a spider. Oh yeah. Exhale. Inhale.
The breath. My chest is rising, my hands are still,
and wouldn’t it be nice to go walk in the redwoods?
How long has it been since we were there? ’97?
’98? And inhale. There it is again, the invitation
to take the first breath, and wow, feel all that air
as it rushes in and fills the body like
the balloons at Finn’s birthday party last weekend.
That was so fun, the boys in the waning sun
playing out on the lawn. I can’t believe how sweet
they were to each other and breathe. Right. Here.
Paying attention to the places where my body
meets the ground. Butt. Knees. Shins. And isn’t
it wild how the hum of the cars on the highway outside
at first sound just like a gong. Wrong. Wrong. Think breath.
Or not wrong. Just an other invitation to embrace the process,
each thought like wind, and I, I’m rowing a small canoe.
Is silence always this loud? Someone across the circle
is snoring, and from the kitchen it smells like, mmm,
Thai curry. And Susie says, “Return to the breath,”
and for another moment, I breathe in, breathe out.
And I thank you, mind, for all this practice. You’re
so good at what you do. It matters, this dance,
this chance to be present, to show up and meet
the all that is. I so want to know what is true.
One Slow and Steady
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged anger, breathing, mindfulness, poem, poetry on February 3, 2018| 5 Comments »
Journey Back to the Prefrontal Cortex
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breathing, meditation, poem, poetry, relaxation on February 8, 2017| 4 Comments »
Susie suggests to improve
my stress, I “put space between
the stimulus and my response.”
Breathing will help, she says,
and so tonight, never mind
what the stimulus was,
I imagined taking in a breath
the size of North America,
let the whole topography
unfurl in me, and when
I still felt the urge to fight,
I upgraded the next breath
to a space more the size
of the milky way and while
I was out there, on impulse, I put
that little almond-shaped amygdala
of mine on a passing comet
and watched it fly away,
its fists still up in the air
swinging at nothing.
I don’t know how it made it
all the way back to Placerville
so fast, but it was there in time
to hear my lips say what Susie
told me to say, Let’s start over.
And damned if it didn’t just put on
its fussiest pucker face, but
instead of mocking me,
it got all starry eyed, as if it were
thinking about how nice
it had been on that comet ride,
tiny lanterns of stars all around.
And Could It Be More
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breathing, dad, daughter, dreams, love, parents, poems, poetry on February 11, 2012| 1 Comment »
In the other room I hear
my father snoring
and imagine how
he’s stood before
outside my door
and listened
to my tides of sleep
with, could it be,
as much love for me
as I have now for him—
his shore is my shore,
our heart sails
open.
And a Sweet Scent, Too
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged breathing, losing the self, Rumi on September 9, 2011| 3 Comments »
Oh Rumi, already
I have forgotten
your words from
this morning, I heard
them as though through
a hundred white veils.
It was something
about sweetness
and scattering, and
it feels like a loss
to not remember
exactly what was said.
Your words
were like, I don’t know,
a breeze moving over
my body, rearranging me
as if I were sand so
that what remains is
more art of the beloved and
something less of me.
Perhaps this is part
of the emptying—
letting go of words,
even lovely ones,
as the body releases
a breath. The lungs
do not lament the air
that so marvelously
filled them up.
How difficult I make it
sometimes. Like today,
for nearly an hour
I plum forgot to smile.
By grace I remembered
to soften the face
and let myself be smiled.
How wonderful it’s been
since then, the veils
rippling around me,
openings appearing
in the current of folds.