There's Strength in the Beating Heart

An open heart.

That’s what I’m constantly striving for.

When I look back on the past ten years of my life—at all I had suffered and experienced—two things strike me:

1) That I’m still here. And not just physically here but in a life that has grown and transformed in ways I never could have imagined in even my wildest dreams.

In the depths of illness I lamented that I had once been a girl who climbed mountains and traveled to foreign places, only to find myself with a body stricken by pain and fatigue, unable to walk or care for myself. Now I wonder at how the soul perseveres through such pain, how the heart comes back stronger, how the fire can dim but never go out.

Because I’m still here... not just surviving but remembering how to thrive.

2) The capacity for love. For all that I had experienced, I recognize that it could have made me colder. I could have shut myself off from the world. I could have pulled the blankets over my head and given up...

except, I also couldn’t.

Because my own soul wouldn’t let me. And I know I’m not alone in this.

This is the strength of every beating heart—the capacity for love to rise stronger than any pain.

In my darkest time, it was the love of my dog, Riley, that saved me. It was the awareness of myself and who I am at my core that prevented me from shutting myself completely down. And now despite risk of pain or struggle, I vow to keep my heart open, to remain gentle in what has become a hardened world.

But this is how we change the world... by allowing ourselves to change.

It’s time to remember and become who we truly are.

(This essay was originally written December 2020 and re-published June 16, 2022 by Susan Dawn)