Reintegration from all angles.

Relationship to Self + Relationships + Authentic expression = Real time healing

All this time, I have been trying to reach myself. Through discourse with myself and you, dear reader and the passing of time, I have excavated the stories. I have lived them through a second or third time in order to reconfigure. The mutation was necessary. The morphing nature of this letter shows exactly the need for me to let these stories out. I needed a reflection of myself. I needed to reread my notebooks and these posts and go back on all the artwork I created. But it had to be out to be seen.

Relationship to Self

I look back at the sketches and paintings and see the symbolic representation of how disconnected I have been. I have been fighting with my brain, disconnected from my feet. I had been stuck.

At some point in the last few months, all the parts started to realign. I started to care for myself and my whole being and the artwork, well, the artwork changed. I had spent a year drawing heads and brains, disconnected feet and a small tiny version of me talking to my heart. When I started to draw the WHOLE body, that was a turning point. When I started to draw ME, that is healing business. Ive been loving on my own body from baths to lotion, from heating pads to my own version of stretchy yoga that feels good to me. There have been a few mornings recently where I have made myself an extra special breakfast just because I wanted it. These things seem little but to a person who has been disconnected, this is love.

Painting for me is loving myself. The process of studying my own body and realizing how beautiful it is to have carried me through but that is just a body. Like every other human body, it contains a soul that is so much more than the body it is held in. To love on your physical form with tender care leads way into a relationship only you can understand. Your journey of soul, your body’s journey. The love of one can feed off the love of the other. The love for my child self and all her wounds were the discussions that led to the relationship with my soul self, the higher version of me. Although I do not consistently inhabit this higher version of me, she now has the keys to guide me and pull me back into center so that I can act from a place of knowing instead of doubt.

Healing in Relationship

I have quoted this before but “If we are wounded in relationship, we need to heal in relationship” and I have been a human island for decades with no knowledge of how to even build docks. My knowledge of interpersonal relationships and friendships in general has been one purely of duality. One of which I hid my full self, or expressed my full self only to feel shame, embarrassment, defectiveness, etc. The relationship wounds in my life have been a big stone wall against me thriving in life. Against me feeling fully real, here and involved with humanity. As an actual real human, a mother and someone who deserves to be loved in friendship. Not having this category filled in my life, is part but not all of the story behind my depression and anxiety. It is not the whole story but one of the puzzle pieces to complete the picture.

A while back, one of my few first friends here in Ohio started to make connections between herself, myself and two other moms. I knew I could trust her judgement so I trusted just enough in her and in my own knowing, this was an avenue to try. At first, I blasted in with unapologetic honesty of where I was. This is a very harsh way to do it and do not necessarily recommend it, but for me, the way was through the fire of fear. If someone did not accept me for where I was in my own life and healing process I would know they were not aligned with the type of relationship I was seeking, even if I didn’t know what kind of relationship I was actually looking for at the time. The benefit to this brash honesty is clarity but in order to get to the clarity, I re-triggered myself. Having a solid foundation at home with my family gave me the safe space to return to, to help with these very disorienting and fear inducing trials. If I did not have stability somewhere, this behavior could have sent me off the edge.

I know, in theory, I have always been physically safe and not in danger but that does not make much of a difference when your brain patterns and trauma response push you back into a child-like fear state. 

Each new circumstance, each overwhelm and every disregulated state, would return to the safety of home and eventually my meditation space where I could lay flat to take all the physical pressure off. The act of laying down is way more helpful than our modern brains initially think. Laying down alleviates all the pressure to my body and brain so that I can begin to process and think clearly. Add in simple stretches to full on yoga depending on the energy level. If that’s not enough, I take intensely hot baths, light candles, incense and palo Santo to clear my energy and find my ground again. The beauty of trying ALL the modalities is finding the combos that work on any given day or at any particular moment.

In Real Time 

I keep showing up, practicing my tools of grounding while in the presence of others.

This past week, a group of moms and our kids went to a lovely metro park. I am usually always a yes for outdoor playdates due to the airyness and ability to get my “own space” to ground when necessary. It is much easier to clear energy outside than if you are stuck on an indoor playdate. The noise has no where to go and after an hour or two I begin to tire. I know that when I am hungry or tired, my triggers and mental state change and the lenses and cloudiness can creep back in. I know I have enough respect and self understanding that I do not want to project my lower frequency ways of being. This respect for self is the foundation for me to then be able to see the world clearly, with my traumas and triggers safety tucked in but still holding the honor in what they have to teach me.

Approaching my two hour mark, just as I predicted I was ready to go home. But my daughter, Ophelia, wanted to continue playing (Josephine the younger one was with her grandparents for the morning). I felt awful. I did not want my wounded needs to affect her joy but what were my options here? Stay and get triggered into disregulation or leave and have a very disappointed daughter. It was a wonderful place to be!

I always have been very clear with these women in the past about how I need to do things differently. Whether or not because of who I am and what I need as my particular expression of human but also one with trauma packing with her, ready to creep up when the defenses are down. There was zero hesitation and an immediate outreach of hands and brainstorming of options. We all settled on, go to the next park, we will watch the kids, you take a break. So I did. I took my break. I used my tools of music to refocus on where I wanted my intentions and wrote about how I was feeling right then and there. I cleared the energy and reoriented with the beautiful amazement of what had just happened.

I was support by other women without perceived judgment and held for what my needs were. I have been “supporting” myself without help and that hasn’t truly served me up to this point in life. It was a controlling way of living but at the time, in my mind, it kept me safe. 

Ive known in my brain I am safe, but that is still something different from what my body reactions have been saying. The feedback loop from my body back to my brain was falsifying information and coloring my experiences with old trauma responses. Until I gained enough physical body evidence and authentic experience in relationship, this wound would never have a chance in hell of healing.

I wrote in my notebook “You are okay. You have friends who are willing to help. You don’t have to do it all by yourself anymore”

We stayed another whole hour after that. What a gift they gave me and my daughter. A gift that will grow from this new understanding of what it means to live in relationship and community.

Friendship is something I never truly had. At one point, I never thought I would have it but it is clear to me, the necessity of connection in life. Without it, we float above the surface, with barely a tether to truth. But the truth in in connection. The reflection and understanding of self lies within a relationship to another. I am not the other, nor are you. As the fears of friendship fall, the notion of “other” becomes weaker. As I show myself authentically, it opens the doors for more authenticity, letting in the light that shows us, that shows me, we all carry the same stuff in different configurations and we need each other.

Motherhood is lonely, isolating and confusing if you do not have other moms to share it with. I could have no idea just how well or not well I was doing if I was living in my head and trying to be everything to both my girls. And then there was nothing left for me. But now, these friendships, can heal in real time. As moms, we are all struggling with something. Our kids are in varying stages of developmental milestones, growth spurts, head colds at any given time and as moms we have our own human needs, new career moves and all while caring for everyone else. There are always stories to share back and forth, ones we are experiencing in real time, and reflections of the moms who have been there are incredibly consoling and affirming. Enter the beauty of moms loving moms. The mom gets left to last, until a tribe is formed. A friendship group of likeminded women trying to do their best for themselves, their own healing all while caring and prioritizing the support and growth of her family. We cannot do this alone.

Ripples of Healing in the outside world.

In my day to day life, I start my days with tending to my inner world, clearing the landscapes and reorienting to true north. It has taken the form of ritual with candles, silence, and my version of “morning pages”. As I move out into the world, I try to consciously treat my interactions with human respect, a respect for the idea of humanity and that we are all “it”. Whoever is on the other end of my words, I want them to feel seen. So I find the name tag on their shirt and use it. I look at them and ask them how their day is. I share myself because I know just how lonely it can be even if you are right there in front of someone. This way of being calls me to something greater and I am not sure what that is exactly. Most likely what I am doing here will lead to whatever that is, either indirectly to directly.

Outward Creative Expression

In the mean time and all the while, as you know I have been sketching, writing poetry and painting. But where is all the art and poetry?

My answer is fear, my friend. Fear of it not being good enough. Fear of taking a leap. Doubt in my own abilities and inspirations. The whole of self questioning has kept me from shining.

  Until this week. This week I am re-emerging back into the grander social spheres. I am marching straight past my fears because I know they are just stories. If I don’t try, I can’t make new stories. If I don’t expand out, I continue to stay small. If I don’t make a move forward and out, I will stay stagnant in fear. 

So wish me luck my dear sweet reader as I embark in life on new terms, as I share my art with you and with the metaphorical world, with relationship to self and others as a backbone of which to launch.

With love for self and love for you,

Rae

There is wisdom in the tears and growth in the seeds of fear.