The Porous Self

My heart breaks daily…

I feel the suffering of others and, try as I might to let it pass by, it finds its way into me. I absorb it, hold it, and in some unchosen way, begin to transmute it. Their storms seep into me and change shape, becoming part of the weather inside my own body. It has always been this way: my edges porous, unable to draw clean borders between myself and the world.

Some of what I carry is old, the grief of growing up in a fractured family, the lingering ache of trying to make sense of what was never whole. Some of it is new, the ripple effects of choices that continue to shape my life in ways I don’t always foresee.

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