"But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . ." – The Little Prince
I lay in bed with a hand on my chest, feeling the almost rhythmic beat of my heart (I’ve had a slight, non-harmful arrhythmia, since my early 20s). I listen to the soft pounding coming from inside of me, a change from the normal external tuning.
I feel like my heart is trying to speak to me, but it’s coming through in morse code, or perhaps an ancient language that I once understood, but now has long forgotten.
“What are you trying to tell me?”, I ask and plead at the same time.
My heart just keeps beating. Perhaps a little quicker and louder now, in response to my desperation.
While my mind believes it always has all the answers, a suspicious part of it believes my heart holds a secret. I suspect that once the secret is revealed, it will put an end to all my mind’s suffering and finally quell its endless thirst to know everything. Or at least, this is a lie my mind tells itself, because it really just wants love and safety, but that sounds too vulnerable, too childlike to admit.
The paradox is that I know my heart does hold the key, but my demand that it speak in a language I can understand and fix everything I believe is wrong is exactly what closed the pathway between my mind and heart. I suppose we could also call it fear, which I can feel in the gentle constriction of my neck.
I breathe, realizing I’m in a state of anxiety again. It always sneaks up on me, without my knowing. It’s a learned response to not trust. Not trust in myself, in light, in Love. My anxiety never feels safe. But I’m learning that perhaps, fear is the lie.
I remind myself to relax. That all is well. I am safe in my bed and hear my dog’s sleepy breathing close to me.
I put down my pen and turn off my lamp. I know my heart will speak when it is ready, when I am quiet enough to hear it.
***
The next day as I’m driving, I hear my heart simply say, “I’m right here.”
I’ve got at least 30+ years of them suppressed and repressed inside of me.
Not because of parents who didn’t care, just parents who weren’t there. Or maybe there, but didn’t know how to comfort an alien (re: very sensitive) child.
So now, it’s a fight. But I resist the urge to text an ex.
I simply breathe into the anxiety in my chest. “It’s just a feeling”, I tell myself.
Yet I can’t deny the glow of my phone and I give it one quick scroll.
Really, I’m hoping one of them, or anyone, messaged me first.
Really, I just want the attention.
I know it’s a drug, but my mind calls it love.
It’s a quick fix.
A yearning I’m trying to nix.
“They” say if I sit with this feeling, this anxiousness, this yearning- this fear- long enough, that eventually what I seek I shall find within me.
How much longer?
I am filled with faith and doubt. Hope laced with despair.
Self-love hasn’t been a thing since…
ever?
But I’ve been practicing. With a little parts work and some psycho ed, I’ve started to quiet the voices in my head.
I know “enoughness” is only a game the ego plays.
I understand the stages of development and early childhood programming, how unsupported emotions turn into stories that turn into nightmares. It’s all in the subconscious.
In theory, I understand it all.
But this yearning…
I continue to breathe. Being with myself, the good parent, the nurturing mom, as best I can. I allow my inner child to be as she needs. I don’t encourage her stories. I just offer her my presence instead.
And for tonight, that will have to be, enough.
I rest.
******
Most of us mistake attention for love, as attention to a child is being seen by a parent. And if a child is at least seen, they’re safe. Safe-ish. Which is why even negative attention is good, as it at least proves our existence. What most of us really wanted as a child is our parents or caregivers’ presence. Presence, in a way, is god-like. Presence, in pure form, is love. A child who cries and can turn to a parent in their vulnerable state and simply be held, regulated by the gentle rise and fall of their parent’s chest, feels safe, feels loved, and can process their emotion and move on without an emotion being trapped by a story the mind created to make sense of a situation. In psychotherapy, we usually call a child who received this regularly “securely attached.” The rest of us didn’t develop that way, not because we weren’t loved, but because our parents or caregivers were simply passing down what they learned, and most likely, were doing better than their parents did, or could do.
If you have this wound, there’s a good chance you continually find yourself in relationships with emotionally unavailable partners, or simply feel confused, hurt, and unseen when a relationship ends. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s an opportunity to go within and be your own healer. We, YOU, can heal all of this by “re-parenting” yourself with the unconditional love (some of your parts will refute this at first) you always deserved. One of the best steps I have found is simply to turn towards (as much as feels safe) an emotion as a witness (rather than attaching to it) and simply take deep breaths into the heart and belly. This isn’t a “one and done” thing. It’s a continual practice, allowing our inner child to trust us by repeatedly showing up for his/her/their needs and being the loving presence they have always deserved.
Fear is a memory stored in our cells. A memory from the past where we were left alone with big emotions and no one supportive caregiver to help us process the experience. Someone to give us safety and Love, or rather, find safety in Love.
Fear is what keeps us from our true selves.
It is NOT overcoming all the things that scare you. It IS facing the voices in your head and the emotions that once felt too big to feel.
Fear is what prevents you from your potential. Not your potential to achieve and be “great”… for that need for achievement to be seen as “enough” is exactly the voice we have to examine.
Fear is what blocks you from your fullest expression. From being all the Love that is within you, from loving every moment of life, every being on earth, and from truly loving yourself… not for “doing”, but now, exactly as you are
It is by releasing this fear (perhaps by examining each trigger and every way you protect yourself from feeling pain and feeling Love… there is more than one path, this was simply mine) that you can come to know who you truly are and what you came here to do.
It is in this place that we recognize that healing begins in the mind, by unlearning past stories, and recognizing that Love is all that exists. Fear is just a story that is repeatedly retold and projected upon.
We can heal together.
We are not meant to do everything on our own. We’re here with others so we can support one another. Only the ego tells us we have to do it alone, for that is what it learned to survive… when our child selves had needs of love and connection that went unmet.
Emotions are not meant to be felt in isolation, though you may begin with accessing the Love within you to alchemize the fear of the past.
At the core, there is only hurt (confusion) and sadness from feeling separate. All other emotions stem from those.* Fear is that we can never reconnect. To avoid the helplessness of confusion, we tell ourselves stories of “not enoughness”.
*This essay is mainly channeled, with a few edits. I’ve got to think about this one a bit more, but I think it’s right.
Shame is the fear, the belief, you are not enough, that you are bad, that you have done something wrong. You’re damaged goods. This is the fear of the ego, the energy that feeds it.
Shame is a lie, as are more of the stories we tell ourselves. To do something “worthy” is just an act of trying to feel connected to something greater than ourselves, but the type of worthiness based on doing belongs to a false god.
Again, you have always belonged, you have always been enough. Our fear is that we don’t, that we aren’t, and this is how fear drives us. It drives us to be better, to do better, and pushes the lie.
In order to break the lie, you have to stop doing and start remembering, breaking free from the darkness and recognizing the light.
You have to believe in Love and the truth of your own divinity so much that you stop acting in a way that tries to prove your worth because that only strengthens what is untrue.
Remember who you are in stillness. Remember who you are in loving everyone you come to meet. If they respond in anger, they have simply forgotten who they are and use anger to cover up the despair.
Love more. Love is the only healing salve.
We all need to stop and unravel ourselves from the identity of doers, which enforces the ego. We have to stop and be in the stillness, to be here now. To hear the voice of Love that comes with no conditions but pure acceptance.
We are Love. You are Love. Return to it by remembering. Then move how Love flows.
(I write a weekly “Pawsitivity Post” for Higher Running on social media and while I’ve written about being limitless before, https://adogandhergirl.com/2024/07/23/limitless-2/, I thought this was a good reminder… and I don’t know about you, but sometimes I need SEVERAL reminders before something actually sinks in.)
“You ARE limitless.” -Coach Pacer
Pawsitivity Tip Friday!
Coach Pacer is fast, but she’s probably not the fastest dog out there, nor the most talented (she knows other ways to get treats). It doesn’t matter to her, because she knows those things don’t define her. She’s not weighed down by stories of low self-worth because of what she can and cannot do. She knows that her mom, Coach Ray, could not love her anymore than she already, infinitely does. Truly, her energy is boundless, going beyond physical limitations and mental beliefs. And that is what makes Coach Pacer limitless!
As energetic beings inhabiting physical bodies, there are physical limits. Many of us will not run a sub 4 min mile or be the second person to run a sub 2hr marathon, no matter how hard we try (pushing and forcing is usually fear-based). Those aren’t actually limits. First, we could imagine ourselves running those times, and our imaginations are great sources of play. Second, and more importantly, the only thing that actually weighs us down and holds us back from our true potential are the stories we tell ourselves about our worth based on our physical and mental abilities. Once we can unravel ourselves from those stories (which does take work) and we can accept and love the bodies we’ve been given, we become free. We realize we ARE limitless.
When we break it down, when we look at it, the darkness… It’s light too.
It’s hard. It feels scary. But when we take the time to look at the darkness (what I’ll define here as fear, forgetfulness, the things we prefer not to look at, the parts of ourselves we don’t like but may call out in others, and the emotions we try to suppress), we find that it’s just light reversed.
Carl Jung, the great Swiss psychotherapist said ““Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.”
Parts work, shadow work, inner child work… These are all modalities to help us recognize and unravel ourselves from our own darkness. Truly, the darkness is the cage that holds our inner children, children that are screaming at us for attention and love, buried beneath the protections we’ve developed to try to suppress their pain.
Take this for an example:
The other day I was journaling from the part of my own “Internal Punisher”. I know some of you reading this have this part, too. The part of you that will verbally beat you down to a pulp and leave you on the floor for dead… if only you didn’t have a dog and a (very) tiny voice in your head saying “Get up. Go to bed.” At the core, that very shadowy part of me doesn’t want me to feel the unbearable pain of feeling confused, lost, scared, and unlovable which honestly, WAS unbearable for me to feel alone as a child. The difference is that I’m now a safe adult able to be with myself through challenging emotions, and I can sit with these very young emotions that my parents just couldn’t handle when I was small (because my parents were just kids with their own suppressed emotions too). And as I worked with this protecter-firefighter part (to use IFS terminology), the last thing it said to me was, “I’m not bad, I’m not a villain, I’m just trying to keep you safe (from aforementioned emotions).”
This doesn’t make me like or approve of a lot of what is happening in the U.S. But it does keep me from hating the people making some of the decisions, which saves me from feeling the emotion in my body. Actually, it creates some empathy. They’re a bunch of scared kids, unfortunately running the show, yes. But what I know about kids is that punishment doesn’t work. Telling them they’re wrong or bad can make them more defensive/protective (this is true for my shadows too). Understanding helps. Boundaries* help too (my Internal Punisher can still have a say but is not allowed to berate me.). This isn’t the answer, I know. But remember…
Darkness is really just light that’s turned on itself. Fear is Love that’s forgotten its truth. Pain exists only in the places we haven’t allowed the sun to shine. In the end, it’s really all just light.
*Dr. Becky Kennedy recently posted about this. Obviously, its a little different for adult kids, but not that different. “No.” , is still a complete sentence.
Sometimes, when it’s hard for me to have faith, when I don’t believe in God/Love/The Universe or that any Divine Being could ever really have my back, and I feel like I’m all alone in this world to figure everything out, I like to remember…
The sun is located at the exact distance away from the earth to allow for life, for me to breathe and the trees grow. Each day, the moon gently directs the ocean tides, pulling them in, pulling them out. In the spring, the rains will come, preparing the dirt for my favorite mountain wildflowers to bloom by summer. Each fall, the trees turn gold before letting go and the wildflowers will die and winter will come again. That every season, there is a the perfect cycle of rest, growth, thriving, and dying- and always an opportunity for rebirth. Each day, each year, brings perfect harmony between dark and light, allowing for that cycle to happen. And tonight, as the sun sinks down in the horizon, without me lifting a finger, the stars will come out to shine and say “hello”, reminding me that I am not alone. That somehow, through the destruction of a star mixing with the energy of light, with magic, and forged through the sacredness of my mother’s womb, I am here. I am here on this miraculous planet with mountains and rivers and canyons and deserts and birds and elephants and dogs and cows and sunsets and sunrises and people and animals to love and who love me too. And then I think, “Wow. I really am loved” and I don’t feel like I’m alone anymore.
(I of course remember too, that I have the best Pacer ever, a pure being who loves me unconditionally, and somehow, miraculously, we found each other in this big, crazy world-truly, states away-and on a path to me that didn’t really make sense, until it did.)
This season is about the return of the light after a period of darkness. As of Saturday, the days have once again begun to get lighter. Now, the darkness isn’t bad. It represents a shedding, a death, and temporary returning to the void, the unknown, a place of infinite potential. A time to rest. It’s a return to the sacred womb, from which we were all born and have the opportunity to return to so we can be reborn. It’s a necessary phase that can support us in returning to our true selves, to the unfiltered, pure Light that we are. It is from the darkness the light is birthed.
The story of light retuning after a period of darkness is told in various cultures, traditions, and religions. There’s ofcourse the birth of Jesus, a being who preached love and non-judgment while he walked the earth. In western society, it’s also told by the story of Santa, bringing toys, or joy, to (all) the children (not just the “good” children, for all children are good) after a period of recession. In Pagan tradition, the light is returned by the Deer Mother, flying through the night on the darkest day of year, carrying and returning the sun on her antlers.
The light, as I define it, is consciousness, or loving awareness. It’s our nature of innocence and divine love. For us here in this room, it’s a remembering.
If we pause and look around the room, we can be quite certain that many of hold different political and religious beliefs. We have different opinions on women’s rights, animal rights, and climate change. There are different beliefs on the best foods to eat and different definitions of success and what it means to live a meaningful life.
But tonight, none of that matters. Underneath the roof of this Midwest house in America, we have transcended our fear and forgetfulness, what I call type 2 darkness, by leaving our judgments and criticisms behind us, and returning to a unified state of Love.
The question is, will we once again forget? Will we forget the light of loving awareness and return to the realm shadows, illusions, differences, and separateness?
Perhaps more importantly, for what is within us will always be projected out, will we return to judging ourselves for all the mistakes we’ve made and criticizing ourselves for all the ways we believe we’re not enough and could be, or should have been, better?
I think it’s important to remind everyone here that “sin” or”mistake” simply means to “miss the mark.” Mistakes show us where we are out of alignment with our true selves. We only ever make mistakes or hurt others when we are in fear and are not feeling good. And (the human/ego brain is a funny thing) the we think that by punishing ourselves, we’ll do better, but we actually just make ourselves feel worse which makes it harder to act in alignment because our natural alignment is Love!
And I have never, ever, seen anyone, including myself, grow or heal through self-judgement or criticism. I have only ever seen people heal through self-acceptance and self-compassion, for that is when we invite the Light back into our lives. There’s paradox here too…it is only through our imprefections that we can know perfect love. And, if we truly believe that we were created in the image of our creator, or Love, that even in our imperfection, we are all absolutely perfect.
So the invitation here is, not just for the rest of the day, but to the best of your ability, everyday, to look at yourself as you would an innocent child. To look at others like you are meeting Jesus, as Benedictine rule states “Let all guests who arrive be received as Christ.” To look at others as you would a child that holds all the potential in the world if only the are nurtured through love, and treat them with such honor and respect. Because we all hold the potential to be the light.
It’s powerful to remember, to accept, that my soul came here for this exact moment in history.
Yes, but only partially, to be a light in the dark. Mainly, to help everyone else remember, we ARE the fucking light. We are love and light enshrouded in stardust.* We’re not here to banish the dark, but to say “I am stronger than you, and I will rise above.” And then we thank the dark, because without it, we wouldn’t know who we truly are.
If you’re reading this, I know your soul came to be here for this moment, too. Thank you. It feels so good that we are unified together, by what we are made of. Not the false, ridiculous , fear-based love that some church’s tried to drug us up on…but real love. True feminine love that has no place for hate, cruelty, misogyny… not even to those who deal out the devil’s (fear’s) cards. Feminine love embraces all, holding the potential to transmute any fear back into light.
This isn’t a battle to be fought with guns and armor made of fear, but with love and swords made of grace. And it’s fucking fierce.
And it feels good…like shattered glass, no doors, and wind that blows freely through. Only blue sky and sunshine to roam, birds flying by our side. It feels Free. .
*If you’re confused by the stardust theory, I highly recommend Michael A. Singer’s book, Living Untethered.
… the problem is, most of us don’t know who we really are. We don’t know how to authentic or how to trust our intuition.
And this is to no fault of our own. From ages 0 to 7, we’re in a brain state similar to hypnosis, and we’re just soaking in our environment. The message we take in, or the meaning we make about events we don’t understand, aren’t consciously accepted. They become our subconscious. So even as we get older and we reject the fear-based religious teachings passed down to us, or say that our parents divorce didn’t affect us, or refuse to pay homage to a materialistic society … well, that’s great, but the problem is, those things weren’t necessarily the problem (I mean they were, but not in the obvious way). The bigger challenge is the subliminal messages and subconscious wiring, the shame-based beliefs we took on about not being enough, feeling unworthy of love, and being certain something is wrong with us.
The good news is that we can, with some committed effort and adamant love (therapy isn’t required, but it sure helps to have someone on your team that can see you with unconditional positive regard), unravel ourselves from those beliefs, seeing them as stories and not reality. Triggers will often lead us to the wound, giving us the opportunity to re-parent ourselves through fears and big emotions. And in the unraveling, in remembering who we were before love was first invalidated, we return home to ourselves. Finally free of the stories running our behavior, we can once again be our authentic selves.
A Dog and Her Girl 