A Meditator's Journey from Transcendence to Tenderness.

I came to meditation more than twenty years ago to douse the burning suffering I was in. Dangerously underweight, insomniac, depressed, I went to retreat after retreat seeking relief from the body and mind I felt imprisoned in.

For weeks and multiple 30-day Vipassana retreats, I sat in silence for hours each day without movement. Not a word spoken. No entertainment. No seeking excitement or distraction.

There were moments of stillness and mystical experiences. The body and mind dissolved into pure awareness. Calm infused every cell. Sometimes these states lasted for days, even in brutal conditions: 50-degree Celsius heat, no electricity, one meal a day, my stomach lining burning with acid.

And, unknown to me, a fallacy was taking root.

I am special. This is enlightenment. Suffering has been obliterated.

I returned to regular life after my last 30-day retreat. I met someone. I became a mother. Built a career. Life got incredibly busy, accelerating beyond my grasp. Responsibilities, to-do lists, ambition began to crowd out the spaces between thoughts, breaths, feelings. I still believed I was integrating what I had learned, that my practice was woven into daily life. But more frequently, it would take just one moment of things not going my way for me to lose my mental balance. One moment when concentration was no longer an effective stick to tame my mind into submission.

My partner lost his temper again. My daughter defied me at bedtime. My supervisor made another impossible demand. My body seized with excruciating pain that no amount of mindful breathing could make better.

The illusion I had built was beginning to crack. In the 'real' world, off the meditation cushion, disappointments, fears, desires, anger, and loneliness chipped away at the identity I had propped up: that I, an experienced meditator, was beyond the frailties, the mistakes, the suffering of being human.

I had learned to transcend. What I hadn't learned was to feel fully and deeply.

In the past year, the waves of life rose up again in all their turbulence. A challenging work environment reignited old fears and trauma from childhood abuse. My relationship with my partner, the father of my daughter, frayed to the point where it snapped. My body began to age rapidly, multiple health issues arising suddenly. Together, these pulled me deep into a depression I had hoped I'd outrun by now.

I yearned for sleep but lay for hours, heart racing. All sense of smell and taste had deadened, leaving no desire for food. I felt no connection to anyone, including myself. Even my daughter, who needed me present, felt like a stranger I didn’t want to know.

Each morning, I got out of bed. Ate what I couldn't smell or taste. Worked when I couldn't think clearly. Walked my dog numbly around the block. Went to the gym to repeat the exercises I needed to.

As the darkness and I became one, I repeated this routine for almost eight months.

Slowly, with the help of therapy, journaling, and walking, I gathered courage to go deeper into the places I had shut off. Those places that I had disconnected from. This felt like a journey into the core, through the heat and shame of the outer crusts I had developed to protect myself. On the cushion, I had learned to observe, to transcend, to find stillness beyond the chaos. Now, I was learning something harder: to stay with what I had been observing from a distance. To let it touch me. Break me open.

Those wounds hiding behind grievances, the fears wearing masks of anger and fierce independence, began to sense some tender space in which they could air themselves. Be seen. Be heard. Be felt.

Like tiny cracks in the dam, the heart began to open, often imperceptibly.

At the crunch of snow under my snowshoe on a bright moonlit walk. When a bird chirped joyfully on the first spring day. At the sounds of giggling and barking as my daughter and dog played hide and seek on a Saturday morning. When my partner left a kind note even though he was upset and hurt by my silent treatment of him.

Intentionally, I scanned my memory for moments of my own goodness. I recalled my generosity and acts of kindness. I looked for space and expansiveness in nature during my solo walks.

And then there were moments in the middle of the night when the house was still, when my attention wasn’t hooked into tasks, duties and distractions, and the dam burst. Sobs racked through my body.

The little girl who was me at five, eight, ten, still scared, hiding in the dark recesses of my mind, would step out guardedly. I took her into my lap, and my heart broke, over and over, the steely exterior softening in the presence of my full attention.

With my heart split wide open, all that I had turned away from came to the surface, asking to be seen.

The grief over my father's death, a man who was violent and conflicted, withdrawn and wounded, dutiful and honest, generous and jovial.

Fully awake, I wept in the dead of night, tears soaking my pillow, for the loss of my relationship and my family, now fractured, never to be put together the same way again.

I fully felt the remorse and pain for all the times I shut my partner out, shielding myself in silence, using distance as safety for myself and punishment for him.

Sorrow, for my younger six-year-old self left behind in boarding school, rose up and broke through the wall I'd built around that terrified child. All those years of stoic strength crumbled. I felt the abandonment and despair as if it were happening now, the loneliness raw and immediate in my chest.

As I opened up to myself, more and more, the space expanded into boundless love. Love for myself as I had taken care of myself every way I knew how through violence, abuse, loneliness, and fear.

Only with the willingness to go where I had not wanted to go, to look at what I had hidden from myself because of shame, did I feel free and light.

With this act of pure love and full acceptance, I forgave myself for the hurt I caused others through anger, greed, selfishness, and delusion.

I began to make peace. Peace with my father, something I have done before and know I'll likely do again, each time releasing a bit more. Peace with my partner, as I looked deeply into his heart and felt his suffering and humanity. And peace with myself.

And in that moment of full presence, not pushing anything away or seeking something special, I saw clearly how things are.

That beauty lies in the fragility of each moment, ephemeral as it is. Like a wisp of air that never holds its shape or solidity, the future and past we cling to are gone even before we fully inhabit each fleeting moment. In our clinging to what we want and pushing away what we don't, we miss the fullness of this moment and everything and everyone in it. We keep recreating suffering, never fully accepting and loving ourselves and others as we are, as they are, as life truly is: unfolding in all its heartbreaking beauty and perfection.

This is by no means a beatific view of life or some transcendent approach to avoiding its trials and tribulations as we navigate our failing bodies, fragile relationships, and turbulent existence in this world. Rather, it is full embodiment of every experience, moment by moment, in full presence, no matter how painful or pleasurable.

I still try and sit most days. But I'm no longer seeking that dissolution into pure awareness, those states that last for days. Instead, I hold the intention to pay attention to what arises: the tightness when my daughter resists bedtime, the grief that still surfaces unexpectedly at relationships ending or changing, the joy at small kindnesses. I feel it completely, let it move through, release my grip on how I want it to be.

Twenty years of meditation didn't teach me to transcend thinking, worrying, feeling. It taught me to pay attention fully so I see that freedom lives not in spiritual attainment, but in the willingness to be present with curiosity and courage, so each experience is felt completely.

And in this full presence, I keep learning the same lesson: the more I cling to my views, to things as if they were permanent, the more I suffer. And the more I release my attachment to how I want things to be, the more I open to all parts of myself and others, to the transient beauty of being fully, imperfectly human. Freedom and happiness reveal themselves, not as something to attain, but as what remains when I stop seeking.

This kind of inner work is what I explore in my Chain of Habits workshops, where habit change is approached through understanding, not control. If you want to explore this deeper, feel free to join the waiting list here.