"The one thing she was almost magically able to do was speak the truth without any guise or filter. She said she had no choice. It was not like she had suddenly become wiser or smarter; she just spoke her unadulterated inner truth. She was who she was, and she wasn't going to hide anything that came to her mind. She wasn't going to waste a minute doing things she didn't care about. She suddenly, maybe for the first time, did absolutely everything from the bottom of her heart. And since her heart was full of pain, this meant she was present in her pain. Not clinically depressed, just present in her pain....There was nothing heroic about this, according to Emily. She had no choice but to be who she was in every moment. That is all she actually had left." --Matthew Gewirtz, The Gift of Grief
I loved reading this book--but this passage, in particular, because it resonated with me so deeply. However, I have to wonder if the rabbi who wrote this noticed that, over time, Emily stopped speaking her truth without filter. I'd bet that she did. Because the world is afraid to hear our truth. People don't know what to do with authenticity...it frightens them. There's no place in the world for those of us who want to speak what's in our hearts--to express our pain, but more than that, to express our joy and appreciation. Why is it scary, or threatening, or annoying, for people to hear those things?
