If I Open my Kimono, Will You Stay?

She showed me her injured and twisted shoulder – she hadn’t fully disrobed, just revealed the injured part.

In that moment I made it about me:

• It’s not pretty

• It’s too intimate

• I'm uncomfortable

• It reminds me of my own twisted body

Standing in the presence of someone’s woundedness, pain and sorrow can fill us with shame and fear which can be projected onto others.

“Don’t ask me to touch it or look at it or notice it.”

“Just cover it back up and let’s move on – nothing to see here.”

How sad and unfortunate that we run away from our shared humanity – being flawed and wounded. We are afraid to expose our ‘nakedness’ or to stand in the presence of someone else’s.

What would it look like if we endured the thirty, sixty, three hundred seconds needed to stay, lean into the discomfort and recognize the ugly beautiful – recognizing they’re just like me?

It’s like the cold plunge I experienced in Iceland. After twenty seconds my mind and body crossed over from discomfort to actually feeling my body, the water, my breath – everything heightened and alive.

Or at eighteen seeing the nude model in art class. Within minutes I moved from feeling shame and embarrassment around his nudity to seeing the beauty of contours and shadows – a piece of art. No longer naked, he became a living human being and it was an amazing shift.

The cross over from uncomfortable to comfortable, from awkward to normal is only a couple of deep breaths away.

What would it look like if we could do this for each other – for the grieving, the lonely, the struggling, the terminally ill, the one afraid of the dark, the one who’s scars are invisible?

What would it look like if we just took a couple deep breaths and stayed when someone opened their kimono and let us in?

What would we notice?

I hope it will be our shared humanity.

“I said: What about my eyes?

He said: Keep them on the road.

I said: What about my passion?

He said: Keep it burning.

I said: What about my heart?

He said: Tell me what you hold inside it?

I said: Pain and sorrow.

He said: Stay with it. The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”

- Rumi