Loving Your Unloved Parts

Just the other day, I was thinking about the poem by Mary Oliver called ‘Love Sorrow.’ Everyone I have shared it with has been deeply touched and many have teared up, for this poem speaks the truth of the heart. It speaks from the knowing that we are made up of many different parts, and most of these parts run us from underneath our everyday awareness. As we learn how to recognize ‘who is here’ (inside of us) at any given moment, the vulnerable and rejected parts of ourselves feel recognized and acknowledged. Then, rather than causing upset in our lives, they become beloved and essential parts of the community that we are.  

The subject of the poem is sorrow, but you can substitute for sorrow any part of yourself – anger, fear, jealousy, hatred, grief, self-judgment, anxiety or depression.

Love Sorrow by Mary Oliver

Love sorrow. She is yours now, and you must
take care of what has been
given. Brush her hair, help her
into her little coat, hold her hand,
especially when crossing a street.

For, think, what if you should lose her? Then you would be
sorrow yourself; her drawn face, her sleeplessness
would be yours.

Take care, touch her forehead that she feel herself
not so utterly alone. And smile, that she does not
altogether forget the world before the lesson.

Have patience in abundance. And do not
ever lie or ever leave her even for a moment
by herself, which is to say, possibly, again,
abandoned. She is strange, mute, difficult,
sometimes unmanageable but, remember, she is a child.
And amazing things can happen.

And you may see, as the two of you go
walking together in the morning light, how
little by little she relaxes; she looks about her;
she begins to grow.

The poet says, “remember, she is just a child” because the roots of these most unloved parts go back to your childhood. And the poem ends with, “little by little she (the unloved part) relaxes; she looks about her; she begins to grow.”  In other words, as these parts are included in your heart, you become the wonderfully alive innocence that is your natural state.

May you hold the intention to truly see and listen to every part of yourself so that in integrating them, you become a healing presence in the world. 

Image of ‘Protect Thine Heart’ by Amy Hillenbrand  www.amyhillenbrand.com