Heart Cave Healing: The Journey Itself is Home

In 2015 after getting through my first heartbreak, losing a dream job and receiving the devastating blow of my Dad’s fatal cancer diagnosis, my spirit was crushed. Initially, I just wanted to feel numb. The flames of my passions and ambitions were nearly extinguished. I am so incredibly blessed to have had the friendship I had with my Father. When I started studying German in school, it gave us even more to bond over, as he was very passionate about our genealogy and German ancestry. He was one of my biggest supporters of my budding dreams to live and work in Germany someday. It was an unbearable truth that my Dad wasn’t going to be around to see me realize these dreams. At some point I came across the German word Fernweh, which I felt perfectly encapsulated my human condition. Literally “far away pain,” it is often translated as an ache for far away places, similar to the meaning of the word Wanderlust. I found a more meaningful translation to be a homesickness for a place you’ve never been. A heartache for a place or destination that feels like home — peaceful and safe, yet fulfilling and enjoyable.

Thankfully, I began finding little flickers of my dreams and ambitions again. I resolved I still wanted to chase my international goals, even if my Dad wasn’t going to be around to bask in the joy of my accomplishments and tell me how proud he is of me. My goals were important to me because they fulfill me personally. I had the word Fernweh tattooed on my ankle to commemorate these important revelations and the beacon of hope they served. At the time, Fernweh represented my ambitions and dreams and the feeling of stuck frustration I experience when I’m not chasing them. Around this time, it became blaringly clear that the only thing standing in the way of my dreams was my own self-doubt and anxiety. I asked myself what were the legitimate tools I had in my pouch to cope with stress, anxiety, depression and grief. What’s the deal with this meditation stuff my Dad tried to share with me years ago? In the early days of my dance with anxiety, my Dad tried to help by suggesting guided meditation. God bless my Father and his brilliant, enlightened soul, but I was not at all in the right space to listen and receive Shinzen Young’s, Break Through Difficult Emotions: How to Transform Painful Feelings With Mindfulness Meditation. Why on earth would I want to sit with the sensations associated with my uncomfortable, panicky anxiety?

A major blessing came in the form of a therapist who knew plenty about this mindfulness meditation stuff and thoroughly understood my desire to find sustainable, healthy ways for handling my emotions. She pointed out to me that most emotions have a rather short half-life, and if you can calm yourself enough to observe the sensations of the emotion, rather than resist or feed the emotion, you will notice the emotion dissolves away much quicker. It reminded me of swimming in the ocean waves. If you know the wave is coming and are able to duck underneath it, you miss the full force of the wave. Being brave enough to dive underneath the wave, fully submersing yourself in it, saves you from being tumulted and pounded against the shore. I started to see how meditation could help me. It was like learning to swim in the ocean.

My therapist recommended a book by Pema Chödrön to help make the concepts of Buddhism and mindfulness more accessible. When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times was an incredibly inspirational read that met me at my level. I went home to North Carolina, so excited to share with my Dad that I was finally trying meditation. I told him how inspired I was by the relatable words of this American Buddhist, Pema Chödrön, and he eagerly affirmed he had read everything she’s ever written. (He could say this about several authors, he was incredibly well-read.) I’ve always admired and still am quite fascinated by my scientist Father’s spiritual journey, during the course of which he unturned every single stone in his search of spiritual truth. Needless to say, I felt hugely validated in my own spiritual journey now that I was visiting some of the same concepts and texts that were part of my Dad’s spiritual journey.

The next two years were an incredible uphill battle. Slowly I came to terms with my grief and was making steps to re-dedicate myself to a professional career. After a period of feeling like a complete failure (which was totally not the case), I was beyond thrilled to land a job at my alma mater and Dad’s, Penn State University. Scoring the job at Penn State in the midst of my period of aimless wandering in the valley was a beacon of hope for me and peace of mind for my sweet Dad. I was grateful for this second chance to get my foot in the door. After all the work it took to earn my undergraduate degrees, I definitely wanted to pursue a professional career and having this position at Penn State did wonders for my broken self-esteem.

Meditation altars with can serve as a focal point for mindfulness meditation.

Honestly if I hadn’t been pursuing a daily meditation practice in the months leading up to my Dad’s passing, I don’t know how I would have coped. Life was certainly still challenging, but meditation helped me stay grounded during my initial stages of grief. I experienced a great deal of “anticipatory grief,” what I referred to as anxiety about how I would handle my pain when my Dad died. I had a few friends in the area, but I was apart from my family unit living in North Carolina, which was tough. It was some of the most intense emotional challenges I have ever dealt with. I still wish I had handled things differently, kept a better grip on my grief-related outbursts and had more patience with the people around me, but ceasing to feel guilty about a few broken pots is part of my current healing.

While I was experiencing the darkest winter in my soul, my friends and coworkers were enjoying the glorious summer outside. I seethed with anger. I wanted the whole word to hurt as badly as I was hurting. I wanted the people who hurt me to suffer an extra cruel fate. I was so mad at the friends who didn’t act in the right way. Never in my life have I experienced such intense anger. Working with this anger was challenging. Things that helped me were screaming at the top of my lungs (preferably out of ear range of concerned others), running/exercising, writing angry letters and burning them, coloring furiously like a hyperactive child, digging in the dirt and doing something creative like painting or drawing. After energy-releasing activities like these I was usually calm enough to pray and meditate with crystals. Apache tear, unakite, rhodochrosite and rose quartz were especially helpful for my grief, hurt and anger. I did an amazing job healing myself while I was living away from my family, but the time came when I realized my growth and healing had stagnated. My job at Penn State hit a bit of a dead end when I realized my professional development was a non-priority in an office in perpetual crisis-mode. One of my coworkers frequently described the status of the immigration field under this current administration as the Wild West. A few of my friends were great support, but sadly many friends faded into acquaintances I became too shy to be around.

North Carolina Coast at Cape Lookout

I decided I needed to move back to North Carolina to give and receive support from my family. There, I felt, would I find the healing I needed. The trap I fell into was placing my happiness and peace of mind on an external event — moving back to NC. My last months in Pennsylvania were quite difficult, because I had convinced myself I couldn’t be happy there. I felt I could only heal, move on and plan my next moves when I was safely relocated to North Carolina, watching The Devil Wears Prada with my Mom. Eckhart Tolle talks about large-scale waiting, when we tell ourselves “oh, once I get a good job, I’ll be happy, once I have my house, once the kids are grown,” etc. The problem with that type of thinking is it robs us of our ability to be content with the way things are right now. There are infinite blessings to reap inside every single moment. Even if that moment is full of pain, in a way, it is beautiful. Being awake, conscious and present in each moment, that’s the sweet stuff of life. Tuning in to the very essence of what it feels like to be human, in all its beauty, misery and glory and appreciating it just for what it is. Whether we’re weary rowers seeking the lighthouse during a heavy storm, or eager sailors scanning the horizon to catch the first glimpse of the land of opportunity, we can all benefit from pausing to appreciate the beauty of the journey.

As I sit here in my childhood home, bags backed for Sunday when I’ll fly off to a new life in Munich, Germany, I’m filled with a range of emotions: nostalgia, grief, excitement, doubt, nervousness, hope, fear, curiosity, restlessness, anxiety and joy. The Buddhist concept of dukkha refers to these feelings of discomfort, dissatisfaction and suffering that are inherent to the human experience. Part of me wants to just get there already, so I can get acclimated and start exploring. Then, after a few days of prancing around Munich, I’ll start anticipating the start of my program, so I can meet some friends, and so on and so on. Even these positive anticipatory feelings can sometimes be barriers to mindfulness, and staying focused on the present moment. The solution to this perpetual Fernweh, always-wishing-your-life-away mentality is to become at home on the journey. Love yourself for who you are right now and sing praises for the blessings of your life as it is right now. The journey is teaching you and blessing you every step of the way.

Relaxing with the present moment, relaxing with hopelessness, relaxing with death, not resisting the fact that things end, that things pass, that things have no lasting substance, that everything is changing all the time — that is the basic message.” ― Pema Chödrön

So even if the hot loneliness is there, and for 1.6 seconds we sit with that restlessness when yesterday we couldn’t sit for even one, that’s the journey of the warrior.” ― Pema Chödrön

Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.” ― Matsuo Bashô