Growing Hurts like Hell

Andréa Cabrita wrote a story today about volunteering in an orphanage in Zambia. At the very end, she perfectly sums up a life-changing experience like she went through. She did a beautiful job.

It was like an insistent disruption that makes us want to disconnect, that makes us crave a glass of wine, or two, or three, but there wasn’t any. It was like that annoying feeling that makes us want to turn off, but there were no escapes that could allow it.

Sitting on the wet dirt, I kept on picking strawberries, listening to music and letting everything be absorbed in a slow and inexorable way; there was no point in fighting it.

This is the learning which is constantly mentioned in the trainings before you come here, I thought, this is the growing: feelings being felt in an irremediable raw way, with no euphemisms nor painkillers, letting all of our existence become involved in what is happening to us and allow it to mould itself, change and become better. So this is growing. And growing hurts, hurts like hell.