I want to talk about how we can feel lost in relation to our bodies and ourselves.
I lost connection with parts of my body as a child, and the journey to heal, is a journey to reintegrate these parts.
I developed both physical and emotional blocks. The left side of my body froze, unmoving, and held the grief that I couldn’t express.
So, how does one learn to trust again, to let go, to overcome these blocks?
If my mother, and my mother’s mother, had blocks around feeling grief, then chances are, they couldn’t show up for their daughter’s grief. And so we held it, and that created distance from ourselves, and our hearts.
If we’re taught that vulnerability is weak, and that we’re supposed to be stoic and motor on, we may never learn that we really need our vulnerability to feel alive and connected to ourselves, to know who we are and where we want to go.
Rather than motoring on, here’s what I needed and perhaps what my mom also needed to hear from her mom…
There’s nothing that needs to happen right now.
We don’t need to get anywhere or do anything.
Nothing needs fixing. There’s nothing wrong.
You can be exactly as you are.
You can rest, slow down and go easy.
I love you.
This is what I needed to hear. And still often do.
I’ve mentioned working with Shannon. She’s a Gyrotonics trainer that I adore.
Sometimes, when we’re working on building resilience and strength in my left side, the grief just bubbles up. We’re chatting, and I notice the grief but I keep on chatting, as though it’s not even there. I feel embarrassed and ashamed. I want it to go away.
Even after ALL these years, I still don’t want to be seen in my messy feelings. I’m an expert at stuffing them back down!
But, this time, I soften, and I let the grief surface, and when she meets it ever so gracefully, I feel more relaxed, whole and connected.
If I’m going to feel at home in my body, I need to release the grief and bring these feelings into connection with another human being. It’s a way of both loving myself and opening my heart to love.
It takes courage to face what’s in the way, to thaw the frozen landscape, the lost and lonely feelings, the anger, the grief, the blocks.
But if we take our time and value the journey, we can bow to these places that have done their job and release them.
I desperately wanted to skip over feeling and sharing my grief with Shannon, but THE REALITY IS that these wounded parts need attention and love to heal.
So instead of chatting and acting like ‘I’m fine’, when there’s a wave of grief just below the surface… I need to use my voice and SPEAK UP…
“Shannon, there’s some grief here. Can we slow down for a minute?”
When I respect myself in this way, and allow the grief to come into connection…then, I’m no longer lost. I’m embracing what is real, my truth. I’m reconnecting with a part of myself that got missed. And together, in the light of day, we can say…
Thank you.
We see you.
We’re grateful for all you’ve done to get Eve to this moment, to this place.
And from there, I can take the next step forward, from a more solid, connected and trusting place.
Additional Notes:
By being with the heartbreak, beyond the physical body pain, and understanding how desperately I needed someone outside of myself to trust and to guide me, I bring relief to the whole system. I let some light in where it’s been tightly held, unmoving.
It’s taken me years to learn to allow grief to move out of my body and to let it be held and received by a trusted therapist or beloved. As much as I might want to be able to breathe into my back body, I can’t force it. I can only go towards it with the hope that bit by bit, my body will open.
I may never be able to breathe into my back body but if I am going to get there, it won’t be by pushing. That’s the paradigm that I come from. Get back on the horse. Push on through! You can do it!
But in my case, I have to let go, be seen, be vulnerable, slow down, accept and make room for the feelings. No, not that!
And then, my body has the possibility of finding itself again. To heal, I have to learn to trust that another human being can receive me as I am and not need me to be different. And I have to accept myself as I am. And I have to accept the possibility that it may never change.
The paradox is that in embracing myself as I am, and meeting each layer along the way, my body may open up. It may not. We don’t know.
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