your word of the day: breakthrough

If you’re sufficiently tuned in, you may have noticed that a lot of people, organizations, governments, companies, and ways of living and being and doing are falling by the wayside.

Truly, a new “everything” is ready to come forth, in ways that you may or may not understand intellectually. Not to worry. It’s not important whether your view leads you to declare, “The whole world’s going to hell in a handbasket” or the slightly more expansive view of, “Grand-scale human evolution is happening right this very moment, in my own brain and my own heart and in the core of my being.” You don’t need to watch Oprah’s pregnant man interview to sense that we are being asked to reconsider everything that we once believed about the human experience.

What matters most is that you do not resist the urge to change and to toss off ways of being that no longer bring you joy and ease — if in fact they ever did. Birth is rarely a pretty sight, what with all the groaning and spewing and weeping and pain. However, it is always exquisite and unquestionably awe-inspiring in the purest sense of the word, even as it takes both birther and birthed through a shocking transfiguration.

Breakthrough

After months of wrestling with an impossible question, suddenly you’re hit with the answer. You give up all hope of figuring things out, and presto! It takes care of itself. You can break through old habits in the blink of an eye, after gaining awareness for decades. After lifetimes of banging on doors that won’t open, you suddenly realize the door is not there. What looks like a breakdown is really a breakthrough. Walls that littered your way disappear. Foundations you stood on collapse underneath you, and your tumble takes you straight into breakthrough. A baby can teeth in delirious pain until his gum is ready for breakthrough. The paperwork sits without moving for ages and then something cracks and there’s breakthrough. You can build a stone tower to lock up your emotions, until you discover that all along you’ve held the key. Then it’s easy to step out and break through.

Excerpted from “365 Words of Well-Being for Mothers” by Rachel Snyder (McGraw-Hill 2002). This book is currently out-of-print, although used and imperfect copies can be had on the Internet for cheap.