Acknowledgement

I had been silently crying at my desk at work for weeks.

What had started as an unexpected shower of tears while riding my bike to work one morning soon blossomed into a daily ritual of grieving openly during both my morning and afternoon commutes, which expounded into unwelcome solitary tears rolling down my cheeks to finally full-on watersheds while bean counting at my job on any given day.

I work in an office with ten guys in various degrees of their 20's, 30's, and 40's who wear jeans and hoody's, sneakers, and oversized headphones to listen to their music and Youtube videos while their eyes are drawn to one of the two or three monitors that sits atop each desk.  They don't pay much attention to anything outside of the design they create in their big boxes.  They fart, joke, burp, and lament loudly on life behind their wall-divider-sized computer screens, all without apology, in between hours of silence.  I love them.

They also provide the perfect backdrop and shelter to my unfamiliar despair.  I'm typically a work-it-out sort of gal when it comes to life challenges: there's no problem, business or personal, that doesn't have a myriad of solutions worth vetting, especially if you come at it from a non-emotional perspective.  But riding out the emotional tidal waves of an unexpected divorce has brought me to my rational knees.  The overwhelming sadness, loneliness, and isolation is almost more than I can bear at any given moment, yet I don't need to worry about causing a scene with my distress because everyone's in their own world.

I work in a man-cave of a studio.  We have tools and high-tech gadgets and games, virtual reality and 3D printers, cool beers in the fridge and an ultra modern design concept coupled with impeccable functionality.  But we don't have things of comfort, like coffee or closets or tampons or Kleenex.  So I had retrieved a roll of toilet paper from the bathroom to keep at my desk to wipe away the evidence and blow away the excess of tears.  The ultra-soft roll decreased in size rapidly as the hardest days hit me as I hid behind my screen.

One morning I arrived at the office to find a new box of tissues sitting on my desk.  One of my co-workers had noticed I was suffering and provided solace.

That seemingly small act of humanity means more to me than he'll ever know.  It said to me, "I see you; you matter."  In turn that opened the door for me to acknowledge my own pain, which is truly the only way to start healing.

Acknowledgement is everything.  I am so grateful to find it in the most unexpected of places.

An Unexpected Show of Compassion

‘Random Acts of Kindness’ has graduated to a staple buzz phrase in our world.  We’re not only familiar with its meaning, but most of us have experienced it, either as the giver or the receiver, or both.  You know what I’m talking about….the anonymous neighbor that weeds your garden and mows your lawn, the guy behind you in line at at the Starbucks drive-through who literally pays it forward by buying your coffee before you pull up to the window, or you carrying a load of groceries home for a senior or young mother who seems to be struggling.  I love the trend of showing kindness to complete strangers; it’s a custom I’ve come to rely on.

But I’m also a sucker for the unexpected show of compassion I receive from others, and occasionally dole out myself.  While compassion itself can be passive and does not necessarily require action, the intimate offerings of warmth I’m referring to require a little more interaction and often takes a lot of guts.  Example?  How about the lab technician who gave me a full-on hug from behind today while I was uncomfortably trying to keep my boobs from being squashed to death in the mammogram machine during my annual appointment.  Sounds wacky, but the unexpected offering of fellow feeling totally eased my angst over a painful medical necessity.  

We were talking about tattoos, as what else do you talk about when you see a crying eyeball in the center of a flaming sun etched on someone’s chest as you’re positioning their ta-ta’s on the tray?  She said she wanted her own permanent mark  for her 50th birthday, and we shared a moment of verbal appreciation for doing something for yourself that makes you feel even more in tune with your spirit than you already are.  Somewhere between the compression of the twins, and the holding of my breath for the umpteenth time while the camera captures a digital image of my mammary glands, she gave me a quick squeeze on the back of my shoulders. 

In that moment of uber exposure while my cha-chas’s lay flattened out on a cold glass table-top machine and portions of my chest were being crushed to the verge of a cracked rib cage, her simple charity of touch went a long way to both ease my distress and to allow me to accept the connection she was handing out through our conversation. 

While I traditionally can hold my own in the compassion department, I’ve recently experienced a rut, where the simple connection with others is difficult, as my immediate comfortable zone is to close myself off.  Thank you, fearless lady, for extending your humanity to me, even in the most awkward of times; your action has already started a chain reaction in me of reaching out to others. 

Shall we keep the ball rolling?