Everwoven Excerpt
From Chapter 12, Arrows
By Megan Margherio
A couple of years ago, I sat in a meditation class, a five-day silent retreat, done entirely online. Only the teacher was allowed to speak.
She gave two lessons each day—Dharma talks. Ancient wisdom meant to help ease our suffering. The talks were short. Quick little nuggets for reflection.
One day, the teacher shared the parable of the two arrows from the Buddha, and it changed everything for me.
The Buddha once said that every person has two arrows.
The first arrow is the pain itself—the wound that comes from loss, betrayal, failure, or rejection. This arrow is universal. No one escapes it.
The second arrow?
That one, we fire ourselves.
It’s the stories we attach to the pain of the first arrow—the self-blame, the shame, the relentless questioning of, What if I had done something different?
The second arrow is overthinking, self-doubt, the belief that because something bad happened, we must have deserved it.
The Buddha said the first arrow is inevitable.
The second arrow is optional.
I think about this parable every single day.
I wish I could say I’ve learned how to stop firing the second arrow altogether.
I still pick it up. I still shoot it.
Some days, I don’t even realize I’m doing it until I’m already bleeding.
I’ve also learned something else.
I can put the arrow down.
And when I pick it up again—because I will—I can put it down again.
Over and over and over.
Next to yoga, this parable has been my saving grace.
When I feel anxious or when I’m cruel to myself, I ask, Is this a second arrow?
Most of the time, the answer is yes.
So I put it down. I shift my thinking.
It’s not always easy. And it doesn’t mean I won’t pick up the second arrow five minutes later. But I stop myself long enough to put it down.
And I will put it down over and over and over again.
By identifying my second arrows, I am learning to ease my own suffering.
Distrust
Distrust is the second arrow that never misses.
I don’t trust Jason’s unconditional love—love should have a cost.
I don’t trust my friends to hold my story—they’ll drop it, eventually.
I don’t trust myself to choose correctly—what if I ruin everything?
Distrust is a wall. A weight. A waiting game.
It feels like immediate resistance. Like there’s something left unsaid.
Like an invisible wall around me. A wall I have in place all the time but only notice when I’m skeptical—of someone. Of myself.
When I’m expecting it all to fall apart. When I’m making plans for how it will.
I feel it in my gut. An unease, like something’s not right. I become hyper-aware. Noticing every subtle shift in body language. Every change in tone. Every thought in my mind. A code I must break to find the truth.
When I struggle to trust myself, my body freezes. I don’t know what to do next, so I just hold still—waiting for the answer to come.
Distrust feels normal.
It’s a script within me, running exactly as programmed.
When I try to challenge it, it only gets louder.
Jason offers me love without conditions—love I didn’t have to earn— but I still look for the catch. And when nothing comes, when there’s no price to be paid, I can’t wrap my head around it. It doesn’t make sense. I don’t trust it. I try to reject it.
The magic of Jason is that he knows this. He trusts that I won’t stay in that fearful place for too long. He trusts my ability to accept something even when I don’t understand it. He trusts that I will keep showing up, keep trying.
And he’s right.
I’ve never known lasting safety. So, even when it’s offered freely—especially when it’s offered freely—I question it.
In my past, trust was always a trick. A setup for disappointment. For betrayal.
But not with him.
When the alarm bells go off in my mind and distrust starts to scream, I almost always spiral. I get stuck in a loop, doubting the things people say.
This is especially true when it comes to compliments.
I always think, They’re just saying that to be nice. Or, If they knew me better, they wouldn’t say those things.
I convince myself I’m preventing pain by not allowing myself to trust others’ words completely.
I can’t always lean into Jason’s unconditional love. Because all I can think about is how much it will hurt when it’s gone.
I tell myself I’m protecting myself. That it’ll hurt less if he dies. That it’ll hurt less if he leaves me. 
That’s not true.
I know distrust is a second arrow.
It’s not just how much I let Jason love me that determines how much I will hurt. It’s also how much I love him.
To withhold that love feels like an injustice to all the good he brings to my life. I don’t love him less to protect myself. But I do deny him the right to love me more.
I put limits on how deeply I let myself receive love. Because if I let it in fully, it makes the loss—whether real or imagined—feel like it will destroy me.
Distrust keeps me from sitting in joy. From sitting in goodness.
Good things feel so fragile. Like if I breathe wrong, they’ll blow away.
When moments of fun, excitement, happiness, or bliss come, I push them away. Every single time.
I’m afraid to feel good things because I know they won’t last forever. That, inevitably, the darkness will return.
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Megan Margherio is a writer, speaker and trauma-informed embodiment coach whose work explores trauma recovery, estrangement, joy, and the long road back to self-trust. She is the author of Everwoven: A Memoir. A Reckoning.
