Do you know how a pearl is formed?

It begins when a wayward irritant, like a grain of sand, makes its way into an oyster’s tissue. With no way of expelling the nuisance, the oyster begins to coat it with layer after layer of a self-made substance to make the object less irritating. For my fellow crystal nerds, that substance contains aragonite! After a few years of work, a pearl is created.

In last month’s newsletter, I wrote about clarity and joy and well - ask and you shall receive! Without going too deep into the circumstances around how this clarity was revealed, what I came to understand is the root of a shame which I’ve been carrying since I was a young child. This belief is something which has held me back in so many ways.

When the realization came, I wept. And then I felt stupid for crying because the “shame,” seen from my adult perspective, is something I actually wouldn’t feel ashamed about now. But that’s the thing about inner child wounds - they are frozen in time. Always reacting and filtering similar triggers through the lens of the child who first experienced it, until we become aware of the wound’s existence and tend to it.

And so, I wept some more - for the newfound awareness of the wound and for my inner child.

In addition to all of that, the past month has presented a few other challenges: Linda and I were in the process of relocating Té Tārā from Palos Verdes to Silverlake, but things didn’t pan out, then our family lost a beloved pet chicken, and there has been LOTS of energy expended on tasks which were absolutely necessary, but zapped my energy. Notice, I haven’t yet mentioned the despair one can feel with everything else going on in the world…

With all these things in quick succession, it’s easy to feel like the universe is an unfriendly place. It’s much easier to think “life sucks” and stay there, BUT I know that’s not true or helpful.

Here, the journey of the pearl can teach us about the alchemy of pain. With acceptance, working with the discomfort, and doing things to care for ourselves, hopefully after some time we can see how that pain has transformed into something beautiful.

The Journey of the Pearl