Fear has a posture. If you sustain a violent blow to the heart – if, for example, your hometown is terrorized by multiple indiscriminate acts of unspeakable carnage – you’ll find you’re always bracing for the next blow.
Although you’re probably not literally ducking with hands over head, covering for the next explosion, unconsciously, you’ve drawn up your shoulders and, chin tucked, back hunched, heart compressed, you’re curling in on yourself. Angst and self-protection have turned you into a nautilus.
I’ve known the nautilus. While I wouldn’t compare this with our Parisian terror, I lived in a self-made nautilus for months after a violent accident took my eldest child’s life. Grief, trauma and fear weighed across my shoulders. Dread wedged my hope into a dark, airtight corner of my torso where despair dried my heart to the point of brittleness.
A brittle heart in a cramped nautilus? Was this any way to live?
The antidote for fear began when I first unfolded my arms and stretched them toward others in need. I was sobered finding there was pain everywhere, and always someone in greater need than I. Arms extended, I began to breathe more deeply, in sync with others. This softened my heart, revived it. Hope, that thing with feathers, caught an exhilarating updraft.
And the nautilus?
I fear I outgrew it.
Melissa, you and your writing never cease to amaze and inspire me. Thank you for another wonderful article.
Many thanks Melissa for this wholehearted testimony. This is a beautiful example of resilience and what Marie-Louise Labonté calls “Le Point de Rupture”.
Grateful to know you, even if it’s just on Facebook through mutual friends. Your giving, sharing heart barely fits in a room these days; nevermind the shell.
A beautiful collection of words, put together in a way that only a person with life experience and true love can do.
This snippet is beautiful. I love the nautilus image. In addition, the description of the author following the article is quite moving. Makes me want to run out and buy a book that she wrote!
Thanks Robynne, and you really should get her books! Here’s the link to her memoir: