The holiday season is full of so many traditions and opportunities for celebration with loved ones, which can deliver priceless happiness, gratitude, and laughter. It can also carry with it an overwhelming sense of nostalgia, and for those of us who have experienced loss of loved ones, decline in physical or mental health, or changing life circumstances, this longing for the ideal, for the beauty that was, can amplify feelings of loneliness, emptiness and pain.  But both forms, the light and the dark, the joy and the pain, can coexist. 

When my sister and I were kids, and we got injured and complained, my dad would always have the same response for us. We were athletes, and Dad was both athlete and coach, and without fail, as my mom would comfort us with kind words and hugs and apply first aid, no matter how impressive we thought our wounds were, his response was always the same…, “Go rub some dirt on it”. 

One time, when I brutally skinned my knee trying to back handspring down the driveway, and he gave me this response, I (half out of spite, half out of curiosity that it may actually work) literally rubbed a handful of dirt into the large bleeding abrasion. It got infected. I still have a scar, but I also have a visible reminder of his powerful teaching that hits harder and rings more true more now than it ever has. 

Because the power of his lesson wasn’t just in the explicit words that he said, it was in the implied message that finished the sentence. When my dad said, “Go rub some dirt on it”, he didn’t mean “Go rub some dirt on it and stop crying”; he didn’t mean, “Go rub some dirt on it and give up”; he didn’t mean, “Go rub some dirt on it and run away”. He meant, “Go rub some dirt on it; and keep playing…”. 

His “go rub some dirt on it” was a semi-colon. It was a reminder to live with it, to show up for it, to wear the undesirable, on purpose, and to decide to keep going. 

We are surrounded by so much pain, we are filled with so much pain, and sometimes that pain causes suffering that is so unfathomable that it becomes terminal. 

While I cannot speak to experiencing that level of stage 4 metastatic mental anguish, I have spent most of my adult life trying to learn how to live with the persistent pain, existential sadness and intermittent hopelessness that have been with me as long as I can remember. 

Over the years, I have learned and loved so much because of the pain; I have grown through it, around it and within it, and been able to explore it and get to know it, largely in part because I have begun to understand how to rub some dirt on it. 

The past couple of months I experienced a remission of some of my most unpleasant and debilitating autoimmune symptoms, and I was excited to spend this week at home with my kids, feeling stronger than I have in years. And then, on the first day of winter break, I was hit with a virus that knocked me right back into a nightmare of both viral and autoimmune symptoms, and worse, the need to isolate from my kids to protect them from getting sick. 

The holidays bring not only cheer, but also the expectation that all should be merry and bright, and so I spent a lot of time feeling sorry for my kids and for myself. Then on day 5, I sat down to meditate, and when I found my place of stillness, I heard that message from my dad being jostled loose from within the depths of me, and it filled me with peace (further proof that no one is ever really gone, when their echo and presence still have the power to shake us to our core). 

The last 7 years of my dad’s life were filled with the pain and loss that come with aggressive terminal cancer. An animated and gifted storyteller, he lost his voice (though was blessed with an electro-larynx, and gave a speech at my sister’s wedding that had the whole room both laughing and crying). 

A life-long athlete, he lost his ability to play or even to move around and walk with my mom (though he was able to beam with pride when he could attend his grandkids’ games). A born leader, he lost his ability to run the company he spent 40 years building (though he shared his gift for being present with customers and for showing respect and loyalty to his employees with my husband, who he truly regarded as his son). Not only did he rub some dirt on his irreparable wound, but he kept playing. 

Gratitude comes easy when the world, when our health, when our self-concept is clean and sparkling. But the dirt on it all is how we learn to grow and to truly show up for and appreciate the lives we are gifted with. When we feel pain, our tendency is to lament it, to run from it, to try and change it. 

While common sense dictates that we should avoid pain and dirt at all costs, when we embrace the pain, it may even help us heal. Rumi wisely said,  “the cure for the pain is in the pain”. In terms of dirt, it turns out that it can literally be healing (well, not in the case of my scraped knee)-- a 2013 published study out of Arizona State found that certain varieties of clay (a type of dirt) can actually kill harmful and strong bacteria like E. coli and MRSA. 

I used to think that the value in practicing mindfulness meditation was that it helped me to cope with and endure pain and uncertainty until it passed, until I felt safe and stable. But I have learned that mindfulness is really about fully being here with whatever happens to be here, right now, and about remembering (the Pali word for mindfulness, sati, actually means “remembrance”) what exists, what persists at my core. It is about remembering my center that is grounded in my body but not heavy with expectation, it is about basking in the joy of being that is light but untethered to hope, it is about noticing the powerful warmth of the love that fills me without condition, it is about experiencing the peace that emerges when the massive swirl of thoughts and worries settle to reveal it all. Being mindfully present with deep pain is like rubbing some dirt on it, and continuing to play.

In the spirit of the holidays, I want to share a practice that I call the snow globe meditation, which I created for times when we are experiencing pain, doubt, worry, sadness, despair, overwhelm, uncertainty. We can use it when expectation overtakes gratitude, when we forget the importance of showing up for all if it, even the dirt.