Lately, I’ve found myself missing the rawness, softness, and clarity that came when my life was truly spinning out of control in my external world.
I’ve attempted to articulate this to several people, and while I felt heard, I'm not sure if any of them have truly understood, and that’s okay. For most of my life, my most difficult battles have been internal, so there was something magical that happened when I saw my deepest fears—loss after loss—playing out intimately in front of me—when I found my mom gone from this world—when I saw my dad, in the same position on the couch he took every night, knowing that was the final arrangement of his limbs. I wouldn’t have used the word magical then, and it doesn’t necessarily feel right now either, but it was something adjacent. Transcendent? True? I suppose it’s an experience that our language doesn’t capture. At that point in my journey, the throttling pain I felt, the feeling of the rug getting completely ripped out from underneath me, demanded my presence. It anchored me. In those moments, I survived by doing the things I’d always had difficulty doing: reaching for help, feeling my feelings, and being confronted with the reality of just how short life can be, taking action in ways I never had before.
Shortly after my mom died, I remember standing at the edge of the pond across the street as the sun rose.
I looked at my reflection in the water, as the fish swam through it and felt the wind produced by the wings of birds as they flew by. I felt engulfed in love and unequivocally supported. At that moment, I knew there were two possibilities: I was either waking up or absolutely losing my shit. I elected to lean into the first option, and from there, months went by where I continued to allow the rawness, softness, and clarity to be my backbone. I spent large chunks of my days writing, and walking around with no purpose other than presence. Sitting with myself and being were my priorities. Then as it does, as it should, life continued.
Now that the acute grief has waned and the dust settled, I’m in a tug of war between the freedom, power, alignment, and integration I unlocked during that time period, and the old patterns, beliefs, and behaviors that once again have more room for activities. I increasingly am having difficulty sitting with myself, let alone allowing others to see the tender and glorious soft sides of me. The first layer of armor is back on and this time I notice the weight because I've had a taste of what it feels like to move through this world with it off. So, here I am in my next phase of healing, bringing along all those versions of myself, and making a concerted effort to take the armor off piece by piece with my own two hands.
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Energy Reboot: Finding Balance in a Busy World: 5/12 8:30am EST
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