This morning, I read Rumi’s poem called A community of the Spirit.

This line really struck me:

Open your hands,
if you want to be held.

Next, I was struck by this line:

Quit acting like a wolf, and feel
the shepherd's love filling you.

And then, this line:

Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?

We know that one trauma response can be a fierce independence or individualism. This has certainly been true for me. Even when love has been offered to me, I have often been unable to receive it because I didn’t open my hands and I acted like a wolf.

I have certainly had moments of despair about this but I can also have deep compassion for myself. It can be terrifying to give up a trauma response that has saved us in the past. But this particular response no longer serves us and it would be worth our while to learn to open our hands and stop acting like a wolf.

Maybe then, we will find that the door is, indeed, wide open ready for us to walk right through to freedom.