Tara Brach

So she opened to it, okay, this grieving.

And then the nurturing from the grief.

She had this sense that she was just calling for the mother of the universe, the divine mother, to hold her and love her.

And she felt that calling out and imagined and felt herself showered and held with love.

The message from this divine mother, the divine feminine, was trust you belong.

You are loved.

I'm here and I'm not leaving.

You are larger than this hurting part.

And in a way she became a holder in the held because she was that larger space of wisdom holding the suffering and vulnerability of the victim self.

And so, as many are aware, after the rain, which is when you really rest

in that truth of that larger beingness.

And that's what she did.

And she had to do many rounds of it.

But in her daily life she found that something would come up with a friend or whatever and she would start to be able more and more to interrupt that sense of, I am a victim.

And to hold that with kindness and become the holder, the compassionate space that was holding.

Remember that she was larger and that empowered her.

She started giving herself permission to nurture and be giving to others without expecting something.

And she started participating in some groups that were really, went much deeper in the intimacy.

For her it was ACOA and some spiritual friends groups, KM groups, Kalyanamitta, to find those sources of nurturing.

So there was a real shift in identity from I am a victim to a sense of being the awareness that could hold it and then having some agency.