Virtual to Reality.
From social media connection -> to real connection in aligned environment and the winding stumbling yet fluid path to get there.
Hello to you! I hope this letter finds you well and riding the waves of awareness with grace and forgiveness.
I hope that this letter brings some kind of reflection or maybe a different way of seeing that brings in a new perspective.
I hope you find what peace and balance you need today amongst your personal daily struggles and pain of the world events.
I have intentionally not gotten too deep into the wars and the pain involved. I feel it and know it and the best I can do is to stay present and regulated as a mother. To my children and also to myself. I acknowledge how much of a blessing and privilege it is to be able to do this. And it does not change anything on a large scale but it is all I have capacity for.
I hope that we can be in our lives in presence because the best some of us can do is try to love in the face of pain. For those who act in the name of its opposite, my radical act it to continue to love at least within my own family system.
Now on to it..
The path of realizing my misaligned sense of self and environment.
Three years ago I shocked my system from many angles. I ignored all needs and boundaries I didn’t know I had. When I had my second baby, moved and became completely isolated during the pandemic, my internal systems, mind and body and whole connecting nervous system was in an utter state of shock. I had no ground to stand on, the depression and anxiety loomed over becoming heavier and heavier. Over the course of the next year I would fail miserably in solitude to course correct. I got a new therapist, went on a track to “fix” with medication and external sources. In the following year I decided to reach out and attempt to find connection and community to help heal. All the while, trial and erroring my way through places and faces and shocking myself back into smallness. I found all the wrong places first and all the wrong ways, stumbling and learning and getting closer to coming back to myself and what places are right for me.
About a year and half ago I found Human Design and though my experiment has been at the forefront of my desires I have stumbled my way through, forgetting to listen to my authority. After all, a 3/5 splenic projector is meant to try things out for themselves and as a splenic I need to listen closely for the internal cues of what is the next right thing. Add in the projector energy level, it has felt like I have been tumbling through the stormy waves of an unpredictable ocean.
This splenic voice of mine has been growing strength as a I fail and pick myself back up again. However, I have willfully drowned it out in favor of what is socially acceptable as a mom and woman even though I have known better. The knots of patriarchy, organized religion and past relationship stuck trauma pulled tight around my sense of self. How could I trust myself when all of these systems have failed and left me high and dry?
I realized over time, I was the one who had been holding myself back and only I could build the system for my own life. From a place of integrity to self. My grace has lacked and my anger has taken the wheel at points. My previous concept of self leaking out sideways and ruining my attempts to be in my most grounded align self. My somatic responses to the wrong environments are not meant to be seen solely as trauma or triggers but also “this is not my life” and “this is not the place for me to live and express and be in my fullest self”. The difference between fear and safety can be confusing as felt senses. My attuned discernment has been a priority but has not been nearly ironed out. Even recently I used language around a relationship I did not feel aligned within, in the tone of fear instead of, “this just doesn’t work for me” I wish to redirect this in my knowing. I am being sent a spark of “not this” or “check your boundaries and values” instead of “run, freak out, protect yourself, avoid, numb etc etc etc”. The meaning of the “not this” or “not for me” is information to be studied but not reacted to. I am not in danger anymore.
Coming to a place of self trust has been difficult when your surrounding supports are still pathologizing their own and your human experience as if you need help. Turns out my anger is true and meant to propel me in directions right for me. Turns out my depression was stagnant expression. In experimentation, my self worth has been related to my childhood and family of origin and my perceived suppression of emotions and self. An enmeshed family system of self doubt and unworthiness. A family that were met with disapproval on the outside for their own sensitivity and depression, big anger and messy humanity. We were all in a world not quite suited for the sensitive. We were something to medicate or turn away from. A product of religious upbringing and our ancestral lines they did the best they could. Having the support from my parents was important in the triage days of getting me out of depression but over time having them in a role of almost “co-parents” as I healed was thwarting my efforts to self actualize and come back to my individual circuitry and knowing. I am thankful for the initial support and I am grateful I recognized it was past its expiration date.
So self recognition it is. Prioritizing practices that allow me to care for me and who I am meant to be. And resting back into the self love and trust created through taking action in the name of my soul self.
I will no longer ignore my body. I will no longer enter into relationship without a clear resonance and recognition. I am not here to be helped but to help myself and stop betraying what I know and feel is true to me.
From Social Media -> Substack -> Artist Book Club -> Real Life Creative Community
In 2020 we were all stuck inside and on our computers or phones or whatever screen. Mirrors began to appear, reverberating our own thoughts back to us. Social Media was a bit more honest but then it wasn’t again. Honest and real accounts are out there you just have to dig to find them. And even then, these are just the bullet points and highlights and not the real deal everyday. Someone in isolation, predisposed to self doubt and confusion (Gate 63 and 64) or fears of not being good enough (gate 48 - fear of inadequacy) and emotional highs and low lows (gate 55) can implode on themselves in one scroll too many. Last year I felt this viscerally and removed myself from all of it. I wrote about it here. Disconnecting from social media and I painted this in reverence to the step back.
This social media break was after I had gained a few mom friends in attempt to establish a “tribe” of sorts. So much wanting to provide a community for me and my girls I forced, repeatedly not feeling safe or fully seen, I willfully pushed through until there was nothing left in me except paranoia, disregulated nervous system and a skewed perspective. I tried. I failed. But did I really fail? I definitely was not graceful and I absolutely showed up consistently in my not self. I think I learned my lessons.
Finding aligned community
Starting on unsteady ground, I knew I needed to find more creative ways to find community apart from the place I live and the social platforms that we have been given. I doubled down on trusting in creative spaces, online communities where people meet to work virtually together leading to a book club of 5 women meeting weekly for 12 weeks. Substack was my avenue to find the next right place while I showed up on the page in varying degrees and states.
These virtually aligned spaces helped me begin to feel safe and know where I feel seen and recognized. The Artist Way Book Study, I instinctively started was an align decision, quick and non rational. I did not know I would be able to hold space for these people until I experienced myself in it, actually doing it. This would be the place I would build weekly evidence of what it means for me to feel aligned and recognized and to also see myself in others. I needed to feel the evidence unfold over time and in that grounded state and it is because of this, I was able to make forward outward movement to spaces where I could gain physical material world evidence. The clues and truths led to trusted intuitive decision making. Bolstered by these women, I was able to expand out and trust in my own alignment and need to be a part of a community where I live and where I want to work.
Finding the physical places of connection and reflection.
2.5 months ago I went on pure intuition to find what I needed. I asked. I was answered. I followed. I was shown and I received it. I took the leap into a studio amongst many studios. I became and artist among many artists. All an embodied display of their full expression self and me, reaching up into the light of my own self expression and self worth.
Ive known this about me but taking action on behalf of my self fulfillment has been a hard ask. I have known I needed to be amongst other creative big feeling types, the people who wear themselves outwardly and unapologetically. I knew I needed to find my people but where? When I learned about my human design and that kitchens were my aligned environment to thrive it made complete sense. I have been working towards reorienting my life and finally, with my soul sisters to back me up and my own self worth propelling me forward, I am now consistently held up by this type of community. Kitchens, are places where creative collaboration and multidiscipline mashups happen. Kitchens are places of creative alchemy where two or more things are coming together to create something new. A place of simultaneous co-creation and singular creation. This is the environment that I feel alive in, where I feel seen, and where I feel at home.
I have read that when people are out of alignment with their environment it can have detrimental effects. I am one of those people who suffered in their lack of aligned community for years. Now in the correct environment, I can take that grounded understanding of self back home with me. My expression recognized by myself and others, I am supported as I have supported myself.
Tender new roots
I am still very much baby birdin it. From my art to my relationships I am learning on a 3rd or 100th go around the spiral how to make align decisions, listening to my quiet spleen and taking care of my sensitive nervous system with respect instead of revulsion.
I am a 36 year old mom of two children and a beautiful life in paper and photographs. But it has taken 36 years to come back to myself, to know myself and to stop bullying herself into being something different. It has taken that long to put myself in the drivers seat and to create my own rituals and routines. It has taken me decades and a concentrated past 3 years to come to know myself and my energetic boundaries. I will continue to experiment and most likely continue to shock the system. Either mine or others. From here I will continue to uncover my false beliefs and outdated stories of lack. From this point I move forward.
I am learning that this is the way I live and there is nothing to be afraid of because this is the life path of a human striving daily to remember what she forgot and to keep remembering through every experiment.
I wish you the courage to listen and to take that action. On the other end, is growth and self actualization.
In reverence for the journey,
Rae
Here is a photo me in my studio and how it is filling up. Rearranging, adding, removing, changing and reconfiguring it frequently as I learn. Happy learning to you and your projects, whatever they are.
Always love reading about your journey, eloquently put. Thanks for sharing x
Lovely studio. Wishing that you find more alignment in what you do, and the people you are with. All the best :)