Connecting the dots of me

Leaning into self-trust because I am the one I was waiting for.

Writing here has been a pathway to truly see me. To give myself an opportunity to be heard and to be seen in my human experience. Thats what this is. This substack, Creative Human Healing, is healing me. Thank you for sharing space with me.

The past few months I have dedicated myself to a slow, noticing voyage. One that is focused on the daily actions and reactions around my daily life activities and what feels right for the family as a whole. In order to get the whole picture I had to understand my picture first. My part of equation that adds into to our little beautiful family. What exactly was I bringing to the table. I wanted to be clear of where my foundation was, if it needed a renovation or just tending to and what wisdom if any I had to stand on. 

“I know what I know, but do I really?” This question of doubt in myself and my own experience needed to be blown up and examined bit by bit. In my mind and body, I needed to align with what my truth was. Give it the space to breathe so I could really understand it. Why did I carry so much doubt. Shame. Disregard for my own feelings? If you read more of my posts, you will see these themes in the way I viewed my experience, in a shadowed view of reality.

Finally seeing the WHOLE of my story and path to HERE.

In the slower moving days between Christmas and New Years, blending right into the first two weeks of January the pieces of my story began to fall together rapidly. The whole of it. Not just the last couple years but the life I lived leading up to 2020. The year of the pandemic, the move, the second baby and the “breakdown”. The before was just as much a part of me and the “after”.

What led me, other than the obvious external circumstances, to this grand explosion of self? What was I holding in and back that needed to burst out of me? Everything. 

A question posed in a book can hold more power than you think. Overtime questions read, contemplated and experimented with have met for a fuller understanding.

A question can be the spell that blasts the remaining parts of my subconscious open, allowing it the opportunity to fuse with my conscious reality of my life. A question or a doubt if you will, can be profoundly healing. Although, initially a painful process and potentially heartbreaking, the answers become soul fusing.

Below is the excerpt from “The Myth of Normal” by Gabor Mate and Daniel Mate, A question that could rattle your pysche as it did mine. 

Readers disgression advised - This question can be a catalyst and many catalyst are not an easy pill to swallow. So if you are not ready to ask yourself a question about your childhood, that could bring up unwanted feelings, please be advised and act according to your needs.

“I’ll now put it to you, the reader. Anyone whose conscious recall is of a happy childhood- a category that may range from innocuous to idyllic- and yet is confronting chronic illness, emotional distress, addiction, or struggles to be authentic, is particularly invited to engage with it:

When I felt sad, unhappy, angry, confused, bewildered, lonely, bullied, who did I speak to? Who did I tell? Who could I confide in?

Notice your answer, and also your feelings around it. If the answer is “No one” or indicated anyone other than the presence of a consistently available adult “ someone, an early disconnect was surely at play.”

________

I stalled on this question. In utter disbelief in the realization within my body, my heart and my mind. At no conscious fault of mine or my parents, they did the best they could, and have their own puzzles to figure out in their own time. But my answer is, no one. I had no one. 

At some point in my childhood I made the subconscious choice to hold the whole of my experience back. “Until we can reestablish a link to that inner third dimension, we lack the depth perception to see ourselves in our totality, and healing and wholeness are blocked” Gabor says.

It makes sense that my relationships have suffered. My relationship to myself has been split. I had no framework to work from on how to navigate the tough feelings and conflict that would arise in and around me.  I showed up as a split version of myself. I just shoved it down and kept quiet if it didn’t fit the “Cute and digestible” exterior. If it didn’t fit, I didn’t show up. I lived full of shame and unworthiness, defected for my inability to manage emotions I didn’t really understand. I navigated conflict by avoiding it, I “connected” by numbing pain or discomfort enough to “show up”. I pushed past my boundaries because that is what I have always done. Disregarded my self, my experience for those around me. 

Let the flood gates open. Feel It all. It was always meant to be felt. 

In the last couple months of making the connections in my daily life, I have realized the circumstances and situations in which I would subconsciously get hijacked into disregarding myself for the needs around me. Enter my little beautiful children who, very easily, can do this and within reason is just fine. My problem was I was not taking care of my needs at all and blowing past them to meet theirs, then becoming so tired, hungry and lonely I would explode. I know WHY I did this. It is because I have always lived this way. Don’t ruffle feathers, make everything easier even it that means becoming smaller, if everything is perfect and/or controlled, I will be okay mentality “worked” for decades. I just never had two other beings to take care of. To teach how to live.

Having children made me feel like I needed to be ON all the time and with my lack of boundaries I was trying to be on every moment. For everyone else. An external play of what I thought I should be which just created a frantic, anxious me with the potential of random, seemingly unexplainable explosion.

I do not want my girls to learn to be ON for the benefit of others and at the deterioration of self. It is not healthy, full stop. That feeling of needing to be more than I am to my girls and others was a way I lived my life before I had kids, but I was able to turn off by being alone, or by drinking so it was. Or so I thought I could turn it off and catch a break. I was just hiding from it. I do not want to hide my whole self from them nor do I want to teach them that the way I have been living is the way to do it. It's not. My goal is to teach us all simultaneously at different learning stages, to listen to how we feel and work through it to find the solutions. To respect their experience as I respect mine.

Finding and holding my Core Childhood wounds.

When I identified my core wounds, everything almost all at once, made sense. With the realization that I did not have the support I needed in childhood, I understood my path to here. I had acquired a core belief that I did not matter. 

Now, in my “adult” self, I can begin to stop the dialogue supporting that belief through a consistent mindfulness practice. Pausing in the thoughts, tuning into my higher understanding and reminding myself, I matter, has led to clarity around where this belief shows in my life. Identifying and creating awareness around something tightly wound holds the tools to untie the knots. To begin to let it go.

It is not mine but an ingrained pattern of being. Once I gained awareness around it, I was/am able to notice when it is holding me back from the life I want to live. 

I MATTER TO ME. My physical and emotional needs, desires, boundaries MATTER. I deserve to be listened to. First, however, I had to hear myself. I had to surrender control and allow space to hear the greater wisdom in my experience.

So before the outside world can learn how to treat me. I had (and will indefinitely continue) to learn how to treat me. I have needed to learn that I, in my core, matter and what I have to share is worth something. At the very least, what I have to share with myself is priceless.

Interestingly, and magically, as I look back, it seems as though my higher self (intuition) knew “I matter(ed)” the whole time. The inner voice of “not this” knew the truth. I just had to listen for the directions to find my way back to a loving relationship with her to understand. Ive been guided by a version of myself who knew I mattered. I cannot thank her enough and I do everyday. I bow in awe of her strength, love and perseverance.

Awareness is everything. Self-awareness is the beginning of Agency. The beginning of being who you were always meant to be. You. 

With kindness,

Rae