Despair & Desire

Despair. It can live quietly in the corners of my being. It can go unnoticed or ignored for years. Even decades. Until one day it is no longer quiet.

But loud…

Despair is a painful gnawing within.

An aching emptiness.

A lonely tomb.

It feels like it eats up at my heart. My stomach. My bones.

It turns my food bitter. My hands cold.

It turns my strength into ashes, and the sunlight into darkness.

It draws out all of my blood leaving me with nothing as I hear over and over again, “What you most desired in this life. Will never. Come to pass.”

I first met Despair as a little child going back and forth between my parents and orphanages. I remember feeling a longing for love deep within. I hated feeling this desire as a little girl because it highlighted the terror of my reality: My parents were addicts, violent and cruel in a myriad of ways.

When I was about 5 years old it became clear to my heart that I was trapped between my yearning for love and the violence of my reality. This constant experience pierced the tender fabric of my being and split me into survival mode. It was like being compressed and constricted between walls closing in on me.

My reality was inescapable. If I felt desire, it would always go unfulfilled. It would be better for me if I didn’t feel it.

From that point on, despair lived deep within me.

When I grew up, I thought my painful childhood was behind me. I thought I could move on just like that. That faith, purpose, and love were enough to bury despair deep into the earth.

Far away from me.

I thought this sense of despair was the problem, so I avoided it at all costs. I ran from it. I pushed it away. I distracted myself from it.

All of this worked for a good while.

Until it no longer did.

And when Despair turned from quiet to loud within me, I realized it was trying to tell me something.

It was trying to tell me my dreams had died. My vision for life. My strength and desires. They were gone. It wanted to alert me that something had killed my hope all the way back in my childhood. It was calling me to investigate. To look again at what I was running from.

I began to realize that instead of running from Despair, I needed to lean in and begin to listen.

What would happen if I could begin to befriend it in a sense? Maybe invite it for tea and ask, “What are you trying to tell me?” Maybe I could get to the point where I could hold its hand and when I felt my body’s temperature drop and my bones begin to freeze, what if I could begin to breathe through the cold within me, instead of avoid it.

As I began the work of leaning in closer, Despair led me back to Ground Zero where my hopes and desires had first been killed, and their death had become the only way to survive.

In this place I could begin to recover the sacred yearning I had once felt so deep within me; because desire, although painful when unfulfilled, it is life and vitality in pure form.

Trauma, life transitions, grief, loss, and many other experiences that involve broken desire can at times bring up a wide, open sense of despair. We can choose to ignore it, and it may grow into a cycle of broken desires leading to despair, and despair leading back to more broken desires.

Or we can choose to find a way to lean in closer and let it show us the way.

There is no escaping a visit from Despair at one point or another if we live on this earth, and yet, there is no need to try to escape it. In my own journey, the process for me, too, even as a trauma care practitioner, is an ongoing unfolding of discovery and practice.

Over the years I have found safe spaces that can help me lean in closer long enough to feel this sense of hopelessness as it shows up, and listen to its message for me. Long enough to practice tending to my spirit, heart, and body while I feel the waves of despair coming and going, so it can show me where it all started.

I find that conscious, attentive presence is in itself a powerful tool to disrupt the cycle of despair and broken desire.

This is not an easy task, but it is worth it to feel all that I need to feel, so I can receive more healing and transformation within me. We cannot heal what we do not feel. If we no longer feel, then how will we know what we most desire in our lives and in relationships, and align to make it happen?

There are still mornings I open my eyes, and Despair might be waiting for me. Or seasons when I feel it slowly coming along with a loss, a transition, a trauma, or with grief.

During these times, in order to be able to stay present and not revert back to running away, I resource myself with care and support in several ways, including:

• I use my hands as instruments of healing and hold my own body for a few seconds before I get up in the morning.

• I practice conscious deep breathing for a minute or two.

• I close my eyes and remind myself of the deep, beautiful love that is very present and real in my life.

• Maybe I invite a friend out for tea or coffee.

• I meet with my therapist, spiritual director, and/or mentor.

• I write or record a voice journal.

• I look for community to belong to and a place where I can serve my people.

• I swim, run, or go to yoga. I go for a hike, connect with nature and absorb its beauty.

• I write letters to people I love.

• I pray.

• I find safe, beautiful spaces where I can feel free again, etc.

I find something.

Anything.

Whatever helps me get into contact with goodness, love, and beauty.

I hold on to these good things as I enter this terrain of Despair and begin a gentle exploration. This is a process that can last anywhere from one hour to several months as I choose to get close to Despair, and ask it some courageous questions. Sometimes in writing, sometimes verbally.

Once I feel like I have spent enough time hearing and feeling what Despair is here to share with me, I express deep gratitude; for it alerts me to a needed change, internal and/or external.

• For example, maybe I realize I need to grieve a loss that has gone overlooked.

• Maybe it shows me a part of my life that is no longer alive.

• Maybe it guides me back to revisit a memory, so I can excavate truth.

• Most importantly, it can show me the way back to a part of my heart I might have left behind, and where I need to go to retrieve it.

Whatever the invitation might be, I am now grateful for this sense of despair that sometimes comes to wake me up from numbness, stupor, or inertia and points me to a better way.

Despair becomes the terrain I can enter in, and practice tending to my spirit, heart, mind, body, and story in ways that acknowledge how sacred every part of my being is.

If I am not in touch with my hopes and desires, then I will not be able to align with designing a life that is fulfilling. Injustice wins and I, myself, continue the unwanted cycle of broken desire and despair in my life.

This process gently disrupts this cycle, and invites me to be an active participant in my own healing, transformation, and continuous remaking.

It is in leaning in that I find the way back to recover sacred longing, hopes, dreams, and desires, and I can cross the threshold into the goodness that is now available to me.

Getting back into contact with our true desires for life is part of justice and a sacred gift to all humanity.

It is the gift of AGENCY at work, and everyone is capable of doing it. It just takes a bit of heart exploration, kindness toward self, some grit, and good support.

At the end of this process, I might sit in stillness for a moment. I, then, might go for a hike in the woods, find a body of water, or a garden where I am no longer constricted between walls.

I find a safe, beautiful space where I can let the child in me play in the warm sunlight of sacred desire and hope, as I find my belonging in nature’s “family of things.”