As the Paradigm Shifts | Letting the ache be sacred

||| THE PARADIGM SHIFTS by ROSIE KUHN |||

After dinner, I stepped out into the night to toss a bit of organics into the compost. That’s when I heard an urgent, aching cry from the woods. A sound so raw and tender, it could only be a newborn fawn in distress.
It pierced me.
It was dark. I couldn’t see anything. And so, to scramble through the brush to help was ridiculous to consider. Even if I tried to bushwhack through the thick underbrush to find the baby deer, what then? What could I possibly do?
I couldn’t bear the sound—what felt like suffering—and I was powerless to make it stop. So, I fled inside, away from the sound. Away from the pain.

I was upset. Almost angry. Why had nature presented me with this? This primal cry that disturbed every cell of my being. It ruined my peaceful evening. Damn!

To shift my mood, I tried to imagine the best outcome. Maybe the mother deer had already returned. Maybe it was just the fragile bleating of a fawn finding its way to her mom for the first time.
I prayed the prayer I use when my cat Lucy wanders into the woods for days on end:

“She is with God, as God, in God.”
I distracted myself with a movie and some knitting. Later that evening, I stepped outside again.
Silence.
I hoped all was well. I went to bed.
…..
I often wake in the early morning hours, visited by the unfinished business of the day. That night, it was the helplessness of the fawn that returned to me—not just hers, but my own.
The ache of not being able to help.
The grief of powerlessness and hopelessness.
And I listened.

Sometimes, when I quiet my mind, I often hear something more true beneath the noise. That night, it came as a question:
What’s mine to be with here?
More often than not, in these seemingly empty moments of stillness, what I’m really being presented with is the truth of my own powerlessness. My inability to change what’s happening outside of me. My addiction to the belief that I should be able to.

Then, softly, the first step of the 12-Step Program rose up:
“We admitted we were powerless over our addiction—that our lives had become unmanageable.”
Over time, I’ve come to word this into more personal renditions:
I am powerless over my addiction to trying to control existence.
I am powerless over my addiction to trying to keep the world from affecting me in ways I don’t like.
I HATE THIS!!
Admitting I’m powerless over what I cannot control is the worst!
…..
Having worked in Recovery for over eight years, I’ve sat with many who simply couldn’t stomach Step 1. The very idea of being powerless—of admitting there’s something they can’tcontrol—is intolerable. Despicable, even.
Many would rather return to their addiction than admit that, in this moment, they have no power over it.
There’s an agony in that admission. A humiliation. It’s an affront to that part of ourselves that truly has no other perspective than, “I AM IN CONTROL!” 
To admit powerlessness feels like erasure. Like defeat.

For me to face the truth this moment reflects is to realize:
There is no fix.
No answer.
No way out.
It is to touch the raw, sacred place of becoming… nobody special.
I’m just a human being, with a heart that aches—with no control over the sounds that echo through the woods. “This is what is! Nothing more, nothing less. It just is.”
…..
There’s a strange freedom that begins to surface when the illusion of control cracks—a softening, a quiet surrender.
At first, it feels like despair. Like I’ve lost something essential—my grip on reality, my identity as someone who knows what to do, my ability to fix what’s broken, to remain untouched by loss of any kind.

But over time, I begin to see that what’s been lost wasn’t truth.
It was only the scaffolding I built around my fear. The fear that sometimes, I am powerless. That sometimes, the situation is hopeless. Like the fawn in the woods, I too am helpless.
And when I face the agony of defeat—truly face it—something more honest begins to emerge:
The real.
The raw.
The ordinary.
Not the kind of ordinary that’s dismissed or diminished, but the kind that holds quiet majesty—like the grain of wood, the hush of dusk, or the silent presence of a newborn deer in the underbrush.

This is where nobody special begins to breathe. Not in grand revelations.
Not in mastery or spiritual triumph. But in the willingness to be with what is unbearable, without running.
To stay.
To listen.
To let the ache be sacred.
…..
I often wonder if the true spiritual path isn’t about ascending or transcending, but only about softening into the humility of our shared humanity.
To become nobody special is not to vanish—not to be irrelevant. It is to be real. It is to be available to the moment. Without needing to shape it, control it, or be the hero in it.
It is to say:
Yes, I am powerless in this moment.
Yes, this hurts.
Yes, it feels unbearable.

Yes… And, I am still here.
…..
When I finally stop trying to outthink my pain, grace arises from who knows where.
Again, stillness arrives. And, again, I begin to relinquish the fantasy of being exempt from the ache and the chaos of life.
I begin to own my direct, divine, exquisite experience of existence.
And in that stillness, I experience life.
Not in its ideal form, but in its trembling aliveness.
I remember that I am part of this world—not above it, not beneath it, but woven into its fabric.
I hurt.
I ache.
I cry out in my aloneness, hoping against hope that someone is listening. Is anyone listening?
The cry of the fawn. The silence that follows.
The ache in my chest—
All of it belongs.
All of it is holy.
…..
The Liberation of Letting Go
To become nobody special is not to erase yourself—
it’s to release the tight grip on who you think you’re supposed to be.
To loosen the armor of identity.
To let the soul exhale.
I know for me, the more I try to be “someone”—important, wise, exceptional—the more I distance myself from the truth relentlessly trying to live through me.
But when I stop trying to shine, I begin to glow.
When I stop trying to be known, I come to know myself far more intimately than I ever imagined possible.
Nobody special is not invisible.
Nobody special is transparent.
The light shines through.
…..
I’ve spent so much of life trying to prove that I matter. That I’m worthy. That I’ve earned my place. But what if I never had to prove or improve?
What if my presence was enough—just as it is, aching and tender and true?

To live in this place is not passive. It is not resignation. It is a fierce and humble participation with the isnness of what is.
It’s walking through the world with empty hands, open eyes, and a heart that no longer needs to conquer or escape.
It’s asking, in each moment:
What is mine to be with now?
Not to solve.
Not to fix.
Just to be with.
…..
This is not the kind of spirituality that sells. It’s not glamorous.
It’s not curated for Instagram. It doesn’t come with mantras or manifesting boards.
It arrives uninvited—in moments that shake every one of us to our knees.
In the dark woods. In the midnight ache. In the silent sob of something I can only soothe, not avoid.
And yet…
It is real.
And because it’s real,
it heals.
Not by taking the pain away,
but by making space for something deeper to emerge through it:
Wholeness.
Presence.
Grace.
…..
The Blessing of Being Ordinary
To be nobody special is not a diminishment—it’s a return.
A return to the sacredness of being. Not as an idea or performance, but as a lived, embodied knowing.
It’s the baby deer in the woods, whose cry echoes something ancient within me, within all of us.
It’s the heart that breaks—and stays open.
It’s the prayer whispered not to change the world, but to remember that I belong in it, with it, through it.
“She is with God, as God, in God.”
So am I.
So are you.

If you’re reading this, you probably know the ache.
You’ve tried to matter. You’ve worked hard to be good, to be worthy, to be seen.
And maybe now, some quiet part of you is ready to rest.
Not give up—but let go.
Let go of being someone.
Let go of needing it all to make sense.
Let go of the story that says your value depends on how much you control, accomplish, or endure.
And in that letting go, may you discover what has been waiting for you all along:
The gentle truth.
The unshakable presence.
The luminous, ordinary holiness… of becoming nobody special.

If you’d like to know more about Dr. Rosie and all that she offers, you can visit her website: www.theparadigmshifts.com.