Okay, get out your tissues or handkerchief because I want to strip off the layers. We all have a sacred knot somewhere so deep that all we can do is feel it. We have no power to untie it; that is up to God. I feel mine subconsciously. How long has it been there? Since I arrived on the planet via a forceps delivery during World War II. There was a shortage of nurses and my mother was left alone while in labor. When I finally got pulled out, my head was misshapen something awful, or so she told me. I have no reason to doubt her account of my birth.

In that beginning the knot happened and has yet to be untied. This is not anything you will read in a spiritual book. I am just speaking from my own experience as an earthling.

This knot was one I could live with until puberty, when I began having social anxiety to an extreme degree. I had no idea how deeply introverted I was or how I would have to pay a high price for living in this world. I just panicked continually and felt deeply ashamed about it.

I married a man I felt safe with and we moved to another city. Leaving the only family I had ever known, the knot tightened in my stomach and I felt alone. After giving birth to a boy and a girl, the girl sickened and died. The knot was now throbbing all the time. I was screaming out in solitude for God to help me deal with this.

Then the man I felt safe with died, too. The knot had become so tight that all I did was cry. No help came. No God got through to me. No friend had the answer for this dark night of the soul.

I wrote and wrote and wrote. And the knot remains to this day. Out of this stricture has come a deep understanding of how my lack of self-love kept tightening it. I put everyone first and no one seemed to even thank me. I was lost in a world of self-sacrifice.

Now things are different. I know that we all carry this knot in our bellies. Grace has a way of changing things. I met a woman who had a teacher from Peru. A couple of years ago, she invited some of us to have an energy healing with him. At her home, I met him and received a loosening of the knot. She died within 6 months and I went a year without seeing him.

He remembered me, that I was a writer. We have a deep connection, a wordless ease, one that releases the knot more each time I see him. He does not tell me to become selfless; perhaps he hints that I already am.

My brother has been ill and when I had a chance to go home to see him, I found I could not bring myself to do it. I am having eye surgery soon and made a selfish choice to put myself first. That is what unties the knot. Mind you, I have left one thing out. The price for living your own life is constant sorrow. Let no one tell you otherwise. I do not believe in a peace gained by submitting to the demands of this world. I only come to peace when I am true to myself and endure the sorrow of the entire world. For this is not where we achieve lasting happiness. Do not delude yourself.

I don’t know why you might need to have a good cry. I just know that I do. And because I do, I understand the rock bottom horror of living for other people while leaving yourself out. That is not altruism; it is a sickness foisted on us by an unknowing society.

We all grieve our losses. Each one triggers past ones. The one solution is a good cry and deep inner rest. I claim this for myself and you can do the same. I hope we learn from our losses because they turn out to be our greatest lessons. Learning to love myself, I suddenly understand there are no others outside of me. That is the greatest lesson I have learned. Love is an inside job. Let’s get to it.

Vicki Woodyard