That Tender Feeling

"Tenderness is a feeling of concern, gentle affection, or warmth. It's the quality of a person who cries when they see someone get hurt or who gently picks up a tiny kitten." - unknown author

Tenderness is both blessing and a curse.  Sometimes we express tenderness on alternate objects, person, and place.  But, tenderness can be a way to deny, to isolate, to suddenly seek 'privateness' and seclusion. Some feel the need not to feel the tenderness so they seek to go express their tenderness towards something other than the object of distress.  Some stuff their feelings with other things that feel like gratification.  Our defensiveness can become a wall and the lack of trust is broken and needs repair, somehow.  It amazes me how suddenly one can go from feeling strong, full of vitality, joyful into someone who is feeling a sense of worthlessness, disapproval, rejected, and we can dredge up every situation we have ever experience that might be related.  All the negative reactions can include, or not, feelings of betrayal, feeling incompetent, feeling criticized, feeling dishonored, feeling weak and unable to get a grip, feeling failure, guilt, shame, and a bad person. And so, we do not talk about it to anyone.  We hold it inside and either implode or find positive relief.  The only positive relief is to quietly work through it, being diligent in refusing the negative thoughts, and changing what you must and keeping what you must not.  

It is difficult to feel tender, to feel weak, and so we turn positives towards other people, places and things.  In a way, this is powerful solace, yet, we must walk into that dark shadow in order to bring light to it.  In doing this, we can either abandon our own hope in Self, or we can learn from it and keep ourselves safe from that hurt again.  I have a middle daughter that has hurt me, bigtime, and I have waited over two years for her to come to some sense of being drug and alcohol free.  It is beginning to happen, but we, the family, are careful in our encouragement and our exchanges with her.  It is a sad place to be, but, she has been vicious in her drug-induced reality which does not fit the reality.  Yes, some does, but it is warped into something that does not reflect the whole of the reality.  I would not ever belittle what she feels are true, but neither can I allow her to hurt her family.  We walk a tightrope of hope and fear. I, as mother, have to accept any positives and firmly reject the negatives.  I risk her absence again and again.  Sometimes tough love is desperately difficult on all of us.  But, we do need to keep ourselves safe from her, emotionally, as well.  Sometimes we have to quietly walk away.  That is the most tender thing we can do.

Tenderness has a sharp edge.  Nothing is more tender than the feelings of holding one's new child, birthed or adopted, or new grandchild,. or new great grandchildren.  That new baby smell simply undoes us and we ravel out into pure love that attaches to that baby.  It is that tenderness that glues families together.  It is that tenderness that causes us to be 'instant' friends with feelings that we had to have known each other another time.  It has something to do with why we kin-keep.  It is why we get enmeshed, even in negative ways.  It is, to some, a sense of a weakness, and like a porcupine, we have many sharp edges, but a soft underbelly.  We equate tenderness with some kind of weakness.  But, I believe, when we feel that tenderness, compassion, desire to love others, and feel so betrayed, so hurt, so definitely wounded, is because of this draw to be tender.  It is not a weakness, it is a strength beyond simple character.  We are born feeling, caring, compassion, tender human beings and we mature, or not, because of life's harshness and our experiences.  Imagine, needed to learn about tenderness in our last years.  I need to really take a long look at tenderness towards others, but mainly, tenderness towards and within Self. Misplaced tenderness is pure toxic and I, as of the last New Year, made a commitment to find some kind of grace.  It is getting late, indeed, for me to be working on such.

Challenge:  Can you do an art journal page on Tenderness as you feel it?

© 11.2.19 Carol Desjarlais