“We are born in relationship, we are wounded in relationship, we can heal in relationship” Harville Hendrix.
This quote explains exactly the the task I have had to concur. It was about a 1.5 years ago, a few months into sessions with a new therapist, I was just facing my wounds and being honest, fully. It is not easy to do this. Being honest with yourself and another human created a rawness to my state, fully exposed. I would carry this rawness with me for the next year and half, affecting my everyday life in a very messy but necessary way.
In this time, I had a small community of trust in my parents who moved to be close to support us and me, a beautifully accepting neighborhood and a full partner and support in my husband. Without these people, without support, kindness and love, I would not be here today. Full stop. These are the people that gave me ground to walk on. But I knew I needed to expand to heal.
When I felt well enough, I started the long road of healing wounds and creating connection outside of my immediate family. Trauma Triggers in mindfully and compassionately tow.
Ive known I have needed to truly feel in communion with other people in order to heal from the traumas caused by rejection, bullying, judgment and misunderstanding from other humans. My internalize response to the repeated rejection and then bullying of “me being me”, caused me to split myself deeply. No longer was I safe to be me in the world, to expose my true self and be heard and seen. This is the split caused me to never trust anyone. To never feel belonging for the first 30 years of my life in memory. This split is what allowed me show up, enough to look like I had it all together, just to retreat to my internal world. Alone.
I have been an island for most of my life. I am just now starting to build sturdy docks. My boundaries are my borders and I needed to test each design iteration, break it down and build it again. One day, the docks would be permanent with consistent vessels visiting. And with me, making regular ventures off of my island.
The process of uncovering, then facing my deepest wounds, then attempting to face my fears would leave me two steps ahead and then 5 steps back. Ive wondered if I could ever rid myself of my struggles. I would make an attempt, and eventually become overwhelmed with an tsunami of emotions, relentless inner critic and thrown into a fictional fear world. Flooding thoughts that have ruled my life for decades. Stuck. Again.
The idea of social interactions (without any armor) would give me an anxiety to my core, causing my whole body to tremor. I would visibly shake in fear if you looked close enough. Like a puppy who has been beaten in the past and now shakes whenever he sees a hand raised. How does a human put themself, intentionally, back in to these scary situations over and over. I think I was able to do it, because I knew, based on my meditations and mindfulness, that I, within myself am safe. If I can radically accept my story, I am whole and worthy.
I still shake but I shake less. I am breathing into the shakyness and putting a hand on my own heart. I am safe. I am worthy.
It has been about 2.5 years since my family and I moved, during the pandemic, with an infant. For the first year, I was all but secluded, confined to a street I didn’t know, in a town I didn’t know, trapped by my duties with no community to relate to. If I wanted to stretch my boundaries and find community, start facing fears, I couldn’t because of the pandemic. Early motherhood with an infant is isolating as it is but when you add in a move and a pandemic, it felt as if my whole world trapped. Internally and externally.
STEPPING OUT - Slow and Steady
As the world opened back up I started to feel well enough to leave my bubble and attempt to tie threads down. In the process of trying to find my people, I had to work through fears and anxieties EVERY TIME I interacted with absolutely anyone. Sometimes an interaction with someone at the grocery store could throw me into a dissociated tall tale of how crazy I must seem or they must know I have issues and the shame spiral would commence.
Just keep practicing. Just keep practicing. What do we do Practice practice… do do do do do (to the tune of Dory from Finding Nemo “Just keep swimming”
Yoga studio - Easy community right?
I did a bit of research to weed through all the yoga studios in town and found a small yoga studio more pure in practice that aligned with holistic living. I felt pulled to this place, it felt like it could be a home. In reality, I shook in fear, like a baby bird who has been broken by the cold wind as I spoke with the owner. I felt embraced there but my fears kept me from consistently going back to the studio for class. I kept creating stories, based on my traumas from the past and would become dissociated, depressed and anxious and not leave the house. Then, with time, journaling and therapy the stories would lift enough for me to return, still shaky, still in fear but still practicing showing up for herself. Rinse and repeat this cycle until this week. When I went into that studio for Nia Yoga and I was not stuck in a story or in my head. I let go of the stories, I did have slight shakiness but I was able to consciously relax it. My mindfulness meditation practice has been possible the piece to the puzzle. I am mindful about the stories, catch them and release them as stories. I am mindful about my body reactions and can feel into that part of my body to relax it with focus. I have been practicing giving my triggered responses the room to speak. Now it seems I am able to sink back into awareness and with conscious compassion for self and for the women around me. Knowing that they too have wounds they are healing.
I am here. This is today. This is me….now…..radically accepting my trauma responses. Radically accepting my whole story. Oh and radically dancing (still not quite on beat, I’ll get there ha)
Community can be found if you are open -
When I first started taking my 4 year old to school two days a week about a year ago, it was another trial in humaning, adulting, interacting in real life. I would walk into that building some days with tears in my eyes, and other days with a plastered smile on my face in hopes I could pretend to be okay, interesting enough, or kind enough so they wouldn’t see all my defects as a mom. I kept bringing her in, in all the fluctuating states of healing. Some days I would leave feeling as though I was a moron or they would absolutely know I was having problems. Shame. I felt shame for not being a perfect all together mom.
In the last half year or so I have been opening up to the front desk crew and the teachers at my daughters school. I have always been kind and say hello but now I stop and chat. I ask them how they are. Recently I have been sharing my work with them. I started out with sharing the cardboard projects that I built for the girls which opened up a conversation about collaborating there in the common room. (I wrote and shared about these cardboard creations here ) I found that one of them is a potter and that opens a world of conversation.
As I showed up, I have shared about my mental health struggles, parenting fails, parenting wins, artistic endeavors, and even my spiritual path. I have been met with nothing but acceptance and complete openness to get to know me more. Even with this acceptance, it took me over a year to feel it. To accept it.
It honestly makes a lot of sense that I would find some community there. Not only because they are part of my village, helping me care and and raise my girls but because I feel as though in another life, I am one of them. Before I became a toy designer, I was a nanny/babysitter/assistant preschool teacher. I have always wanted to do work that involves children, so we all have that bonding us. Innately, because of what we have chosen for our careers we have a strong connection to our child self, openness and empathy. I mean….these are my people!
I have a happiness in my belly that is uncommon right now. This is timid excitement of knowing I am now walking through those school doors to a sense belonging and not into the judges chambers.
Space of spirituality
My first friend I made here was like a goddess sent from Facebook heavens. We found each other through a local group and unknowingly, started on our spiritual journey simultaneously. We crossed spiritual roads when she invited me to a silent retreat where we both began to unravel ourselves independently. The support I have received from her and I hope that I have give back has pushed us both forward, facing our truths and our fears. She has helped me meet more like minded moms and brought me to a sound bath at a land sanctuary. This land was recently purchased and is being turned into a community. They have just begun to offer yoga and mediation in May and are open to collaborative projects which gets my mind turning.
I can tell you, I did not want to go, it was a late meditation and I never liked leaving the house late. I much prefer daytime classes but I breathed in deep, got into my car and went anyway. I pulled into the gravel driveway and just as I pass through the tree line, an oasis of nature sits. A pond and greenhouses, a house and a trailer up on the hill, and a small cottage lit in the most inviting warm yellow glow in the soft haze of the evening. Tonights meditation would be in the cottage that they had just finished preparing that day.
Find you resonate sounds. Find community. Begin to heal.
And then the women (and a few men) came. It was in a warm small room full of women who were there for the same reason as me. To practice meditation, to hear themselves, to connect with a source greater than them. I did not feel afraid. I was in awe of what I was experiencing and could continue to experience, 8 mins from my home. A community of likeminded people being created right now. All I am going to say for this space is, thank you to what ever forces brought the people together to start this community. I wonder just what my part will be in it. Perhaps I will be the writer than comes there to write, the artist that comes there to make their big sculptures, the meditation student then comes there for silence and peace. Im looking forward to finding out.
“If I is changed to we, Illness becomes wellness” Malcom X
I feel as though substack and my newsletter has helped me bridge the gap between the inner world and showing true self to the outer world. Owning my story here and telling my truth is something I have never been able to truly do before. Before I wrote it, I couldn’t speak it. And now, in small doses, I have and will speak and live my truth, wounds integrated. Shame be damned…she is in a figurative jail cell, still there because she needs to be understood but very much on lockdown. If she breaks out, a double down on the sentence, perhaps to the death. To be determined.
So here we are, feeling well, whole and compassionate towards myself. My journey is not done and I am still healing but I am well on my way. Thank you sincerely for being here.
Keep practicing, Stay Present, Kindness Always,
Rae
SPIRITUAL VISITOR- Snake - Sign of the Rebirth
Last week I had a visit from a snake. On my doorstep. I have had some time and presence to reflect on this visitor and I am increasingly sure she was a sign from a universal source. I have never crossed paths with a snake as I work in my garden and am outside relatively regularly. This being was located right on my doorstep as if to be bring me a message for my life.
This is the time of rebirth. This is the time I am able to shed the skin of my fears and shame.
My efforts and motivation to heal in therapy, journaling, painting, body integration and mindfulness practice have given me to tools to grow out of the skin I have been stuck in. Emerging from the soup in the caterpillars chrysalis, to fully spread my wings out into this world.
My being is meant to be a Warrior of Kindness. I am and will be a fighter for feeling, a fighter for healing.
Radical Acceptance Part II
Thank you for your willingness and openness to such beautiful vulnerability. It triggered a few fears of my own I've been working on accepting and healing lately, and gave me a different perspective to look at them from. Thanking you deeply.
I'm delighted to read about the healing process. I believe we all need companionship.