A Reflection on Spring and Holding Contradictions

As an acupuncturist, I’m always holding a contradiction. I approach all my treatments by curiously being with what is, without an agenda of forcing change or fixing. At the same time, I know that every moment holds the possibility of deep transformative healing and that change is constantly happening. Both are true.

This practice of holding seemingly opposing truths doesn’t stay confined to the treatment room—it shapes how I move through the world more broadly.

In both my community work and acupuncture practice, I have often had peers or colleagues ask me how I can stay steadfast in my belief in the possibility for change. How can I so deeply believe that we can win—that we can transform the conditions of our world, that deep individual and collective healing is possible? I am not ungrounded or blindly optimistic. I regularly sit with the pain of the world, the suffering that exists, and the violence of injustice. I know this is one truth that deeply exists.

I also hold another truth to be simultaneously true. I know that each vision for something different—whether personal or societal—contains a longing compelling enough to transform. Each of our visions for another world holds so much possibility, just like an acorn holds the blueprint for all of the dreams, perseverance, and wisdom needed to fully manifest a tall, beautiful oak tree. Holding and honoring these contradictions lays the bedrock for change. This is the energy of Spring.

I want to share an excerpt from Liberated to the Bone by Susan Raffo. Susan is a lifelong organizer, write, and bodyworker.

“When focusing on healing and wellness, safety and care should not be an override, a way of sidestepping the truth of violence in order to stay ‘positive.’ Healing is not just what happens when we receive some form of care, sing with our people, or share food and medicine. It touches everything.

Many years ago, I listened to an interviewer ask Joanna Macy how she continues fighting without giving up hope? Joanna Macy is a ninety-something, radical, white, Buddhist, cisgender woman who has been involved in change work unceasingly her whole life. She responded that she never gives up hope, but she also doesn’t pretend that things aren’t hopeless. The challenge, she shared, is to hold two things at the same time, without contradiction. In one hand, hold the unflinching truth of violence and harm, both historical and in the present moment. Hold the scale of it and be alive to the fact that this violence might expand and win, tearing us apart even further. Don’t minimize it. Don’t soften it. Don’t generalize it away from the truth of how you and your people might have created or benefited from it. Feel it and know it as one possible truth. And live with what comes up when you do that. If you aren’t already, let yourself be intimate with the truth that we might not all make it.

In the other hand, hold the absolute truth that transformation is possible. Hold and feel what is beautiful about life, what is glorious, surprising, ancient, and new about the depth of connection that is possible. Hold love, and struggle as a part of love. Let yourself be filled with this. Live with what comes up when you do it. Don’t be held back with the limits of your imagination. Dream and vision fiercely, radically. If you aren’t already, let yourself be intimate with the truth that change is possible; that our descendants might well already be sitting together, sharing food and telling stories of the terrible times that ended.

The challenge is to then sit with both hands, one filled with horror and loss, the other filled with love and intimate connection, and feel them both at the same time. Don’t let them cancel one another out. Let the contradiction be. This, Macy said, is what we need to get to the otherside.”

This is the energy of Spring. How might you want to invite it more into your life this season?