Navigating Traffic by debgrant
We are taught from an early age how to cross a street. The vigilance of slowing our pace or stopping completely to look both ways, to wait for the signal, to pay attention to who is getting the red, yellow, and green. We accepted a parent’s hand or a crossing guard’s wave until we could do it ourselves thankyouverymuch.
There are times in our lives, however, when there are no safe places to walk or cross and traffic is coming at us. A health scare, a relative’s death, a broken relationship, a financial crisis, a friend’s deep grief, a freighter of world news that is moving the air around us and thundering beneath our feet. Finding ourselves like a squirrel in traffic, we don’t know whether to run ahead, run backward, or splay ourselves on the asphalt hoping the oncoming truck will straddle us.
If you are looking for me to offer a soothing prescription for this unnerving metaphor, I have none. Certainly, our bodies are hard-wired for survival. The stress hormone does not mean us harm but wants to keep us alive long enough to let our own physical, mental, psychological, and spiritual resources kick in. If those resources have been tenderly nurtured, they will help. They may need a hand to hold to navigate us through the traffic to a safe place to regroup. Therein lies the challenge of adulthood. How do we hold our own hand?
Take care,
debgrant
Thank God, there is often someone there to support us so that we don’t have to hold our own hand.