A Passage from "The Invitation"

"We must move into darker places if we are to find the wisdom we so desperately need. We rarely go there willingly, though every life contains its own cycles of grief and celebration. To meet wisdom in these dark places we must be willing and able to hold all of what life gives us, to exclude nothing of ourselves or the world, to tell ourselves the truth. Wisdom will stretch us far beyond where we thought we could or wanted to go. She will show us what we cannot change or control, reveal what is hard to know about ourselves and the world, and tear at the illusions of what we think we know, until we are surrounded by the vastness of the mystery.

"And all the while, wisdom asks us to choose life. She does not want us to just continue, to hang on, to survive. She asks us to experience life actively, fully, evey day--to show up for all of it. (p. 40)"

AND

"When we learn to be with our pain, we retrieve the parts of ourselves we have attempted to leave behind, and we are able once again to love those parts of ourselves. We find our wholeness and leave behind the impossible ideal of perfection that keeps us from the wisdom we need to live fully and compassionately with our humanness and the world. (p. 44)"

-From "The Invitation" by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

They call the NICU experience of a micro-preemie parent an emotional rollercoaster. I can't speak for others but, for me, it's been more like a pit. Or, even more aptly, a medieval rack, the main difference being that I have survived (so far) and grown and have found things to be glad of. But I have still not totally forgiven myself for our having ended up here. Okay, I haven't forgiven myself at all. I have not let go of that "impossible ideal of perfection". Surely, that's going to cause me some trouble down the line.