"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
What is the most loving choice you can make for yourself today?
For your body? For your heart? For your soul? For your inner child? And yes, for your mind?*
My understanding of “love is the answer”, after months of pondering, finally made deeper sense to me today and I was both reviewing a past free write journal entry and starting a new free write. (Society may label me a “slow processor” and call that a bad thing, but really, it is such a gift. When I come to truly understand something, it is at more than just a logical level…its a deep knowing in my bones. I believe it is from that place, only, that I can write and teach about the topic in a way that allows others to understand concepts at an embodied level as well.)
The reason why summer was such a challenge for me, the reason why I was so uncomfortable, was because I had made the choice, to choose and love myself (and Pacer) first. It is the choice I have rarely made in my life…too many times, I have pushed through a race or up a mountain while tired and in pain, studied too hard for a test to get the “A” that didn’t really matter, done the thing to look and feel tough for a moment, or woke up way too early because I believed that is what I had to do to be successful.
But it is only the mental, never the heart choice, to push through pain in search of success.
The uncomfortability was a sign I was on the right path. That I was breaking free. The panic attacks were simply a sign of my ego cracking.
(Personally, my anxiety often first comes when I feel like I have to do something scary or something I don’t really want to do to serve my mind. I have panic attacks when I make the choice to follow my heart…which is basically the pain of my fragile ego cracking and the energy of my soul saying “let me out!”)
Loving myself is resting. Loving myself is not forcing a goal to happen. Loving myself is serving my core needs of acceptance and connection to my own body and soul. Loving myself is not doing the scary or painful thing. Loving myself is allowing beauty and love in. (Other people’s brains may be wired in a reversed way as compared to mine. I come from a society, family, and church that stems from the toxic wounded masculine- control and work, work, work to prove your worth. I know other people who come from the disempowered masculine and the fear of trying something new or putting themselves out there can be paralyzing, which looks like laziness to the untrained eye. )
In this process of asking ourselves “What is the most loving choice I can make for myself today?” we are both starving and serving our minds. Again, the path becomes uncomfortable (anxious sensation in our bodies) when we choose to side with the heart over the mind. However, the mind ultimately wants to be at peace…so choosing what is at first uncomfortable actually leads to greater freedom in the end, once the mind realizes it is now safe when allowing the heart to lead.
While I hope my examples are helpful to some readers, the nuance is that our minds our wired differently and our egos have developed different protection mechanisms, so there is nuance in what might be right for me is wrong for another. The commitment is getting to know one’s truest Self at the deepest level possible.
I have a lot more coming on the topics of bravery, panic attacks, ego, listening to the heart, and choosing joy coming up!
***For those people who have worked hard their whole life, what I’m noticing with a lot of women now (although this probably goes across genders) is that when the person gets a cold or a little niggle of an injury, the body isn’t asking the person to just take a week off, or even a month off. The body (which communicates for the heart once our connection to the heart voice has been blocked) is asking the person to take months, a year, or even years of rest to re-harmonize the body. Once we let go of our resistant thoughts to rest (and keep trying to push through), healing can begin.
*******
This was my Instagram post that preceded this blog:
Recently, Obi-Wan* (my Reiki therapist) told me that even when I’m at my lowest of lows, I’m still at a higher vibrational frequency than most people. I gave him an incredulous look. He had seen me at some of my lowest points and even cried with me in his office (and that my friends, the masculine recognizing and being with the pain of the feminine, is the power that will heal the Earth)**. What was he talking about? How could that be true?
And then I realized he was right. Even when I was just feeling “okay” (sometimes joyful, sometimes still having ego/panic attacks), I had, without almost any effort, called in a 3 bedroom house on 5 acres on hidden piece of land that offers both privacy and easy access to trails (and, most importantly, is perfect for Pacer). I would have never even had thought to ask for such a large, beautiful space. I didn’t think such a space could be within my budget. In fact, I hadn’t even know the space existed in Salida.
The message for all of us: Maybe life doesn’t have to be so hard. Maybe, as Mary Oliver wrote, we just have to “let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” (Translation: To live beyond our ego (human) desires and allow our expansive, open, and vulnerable hearts (the voice of our soul) lead the way.) Maybe, when we relax our grip of control (fear) and allow life to unfold, we will be presented with more love and beauty than we ever new existed.
*I might have to change the nickname for my Reiki therapist as I recently met a man who’s last name is pronounced “Kenobe” and also holds the nickname Obi-Wan.
**Therapeutic cry: Obi-Wan wasn’t taking on my pain, he was simply bearing witness to it. As an empath, I would have tried to make him feel better if I saw him taking on my pain and then felt bad for having emotions. Instead, he simply allowed tears to form in his eyes while he energetically stayed both strong and calm so I could relax ( be messy) and release my pain.
Why do we work so hard to resist who we really are? Why do we hide the gifts that come naturally to us?* Or rather, from the gifts that come from our spirits.
Blatantly put, I am a cancer** sign made of light. My purpose is to bring people back Home to themselves.
The manifestation of this comes easy to me as a therapist and writer. It just kind of flows. To those who know me, they may have unapologetically (okay, maybe a little…I’m still working on coming Home to myself) heard me say “I’m really good at my job”, which is something I rarely to never say.
Of course, I’m also very true to myself as a therapist, writer, and coach. Unique is a very accurate word…unique and a little eccentric, which is why I think my clients like me. Me being weird allows them to be themselves. While I’ve read almost every therapy and spirituality book I have time for, I tend to just blend it all together with a touch of intuition. Actually, I’ve really just re-defined my job as mental health therapist and switched to using “psycho-soul therapist” instead.
Yet I tried, at least for an extended break, to walk away from these “jobs”, or callings. I thought other professions were better and more exciting (ie. more travel, more free time- but free time isn’t the same thing as freedom). Or, at least, they get more validation from parents, extended family, and Instagram followers. My mind believed all of this, even as the rebel in me rejected the office job, nice house, marriage and kids ideals. Really, I simply just trapped myself in another world from the ideals of other rebels and adventurous types, rather than just listening to my heart and creating something new altogether (or, even if it was “old”, staying true to me).
This is what wanderlust is all about…not traveling, not going adventures, not exploring new places. It’s about walking the path that is unique to you and yours alone. It’s unknown, and that is the wilderness.
*Okay, okay. Of course I know the answer, at least partially, to this question. The mind takes over when the heart has been invalidated. Anytime a child has their emotions ignored, goes unseen, is told how they feel or should act, a child’s flame is being dimmed. This goes much deeper than someone telling a kid that their dreams are unobtainable, although that can certainly play a role. We can read all the parenting, teaching, therapist/coaching books we want, but our only job as adults who have kids in our lives is to keep their inner flame burning bright. It’s just really hard to do when our own lights have been dimmed. So we all must ask ourselves the questions “Who am I?” “What are my divine gifts?”, and do the work to get back Home to ourselves.
**Cancer zodiacs are water signs and some astrologists relate cancers to preferring being at or around their physical homes. My belief is that may or may not be true and that cancers are more accurately about connecting their inner and higher selves, which also connects them back to Spirit.
The heart and body are in direct communication with each other. The heart is the voice of the soul. If you are not living in alignment with your soul, your body will let you know.
[In reflection of my own journey and others who share a birthday close to mine, my theory is that anyone who is a Cancer zodiac sign (especially for females), a natural born empath and sensitive (attuned to energy) soul, has in some way been directed towards this message this year, perhaps through an injury or illness, if she is not already living 100% heart centered. (I would love to know if this is true for you if your a Cancer sign!)]
The message the body is revealing may be slightly different for everyone. A good starting point is checking out Heal Your Body by Louise Hay, where she listed out the spiritual message of various injuries and illnesses based on body parts. Then, if you have an injury, you can further explore the message based on what side of your body is injured. The right right side gives voice to the ego (or masculine), while the left side speaks for the spirit (or female).
For some people, the most uncomfortable part will not be the pain of the injury or illness. It will be in the deconstruction phase of the ego as it is the ego-who we believe we are- that block us from listening to our heart. Many of us “think” we know what we want but the heart does not speak through thoughts. The heart speaks through feelings, emotions, and the body, especially when the soul is really trying to get our attention.
The deconstruction phase asks us: Are you willing to let go of all that you think you are?This may be attachments to past memories or labels that we or others have given to us, such as athlete, cashier, hard worker, or even “Type A” person.
The deconstruction phase may represent the “chrysalis phase” of the transformation process (where our insides turn to mush) or it may represent the “coming out of the cocoon phase”, as the ego represents the outer shell.
There is both a letting go and a fight. A surrendering of who we think we are, while also fighting not with but through the ego so as not to turn back, to return to the old version of ourselves that lives from the mind and not the heart.
How do we trust our hearts when most of us have been give the message we must fear love and trust a voice outside of ourselves to gain “salvation”? Yet trust is the essential piece. Every time doubt comes in, we must fight to come back home to ourselves, to trust, to allow the light to shine through. (We don’t fight the darkness, we fight for the light).
When we go through the deconstruction phase, you may literally feel like you want to crawl out of your skin. As others have reminded me, I will remind everyone here: this is a sign that you are on the right path. Growth is uncomfortable. Yet it is in breaking through her shell that the butterfly gains the strength to fly. It is in pushing through harsh conditions and rocky soil that wildflowers gain their vibrancy. This is the message that life gives us, the signs from the Universe that we are on the right path (sometimes the Universe puts up with me when I ask for a “signier sign”).
We must trust the signs, trust ourselves and step into the flow of life. Once we break through the ego, peace and ease will follow. Yet we have to push through the discomfort to allow the joy to come through. If you take my hand, we can make the leap of faith together…
Normally I hate a candid photo, but this ended up being a very authentic photo of me in my deconstruction phase.
When I was a kid, I would use my imagination to escape the fear-based reality given to me by adults. The rules, the sins, the “eat your lima beans or you’re not leaving the table.” Of course, using one’s imagination was deemed inappropriate not long after age 6, reserved only for books* and movies, so I kept most of my day-dreaming to myself. The woods were full of fairies, magical creatures, and talking trees. I was happy to wander for there for hours.
*Perhaps why I have always found solace in books and was THAT kid in school who would be found reading while walking down the hallway.
My own fantasy land right in the middle of the grey skies and the unhappy adults of Ohio.
But now…
…I wonder if I’ve had it all a little backwards.
Maybe my fantasy world IS reality.
And what I thought was reality is all made up. Maybe it’s still in physical, tangible form, yes, but created from the perception of a fear of an unconscious mind.
Are you following? If not, take a moment to let your mind play and your perception shift. (No, you do not need to take drugs to do this. Really, this is what all the spiritual teachers talk about it, I’m just simplifying it a bit in my own way.)
I may not have yet met a fairy, but there are literally butterflies everywhere this summer. I’m also positive that I know several human angles in my life that are supporting me on my journey, allowing me to fall but never break. Obviously, I live with a magical creature (Pacer). And science proves that trees do talk! (Thank you Suzanne Simard and the many other wonderful scientists/researchers exploring the inner lives of plants.) I’ve also got something better than castles…really, why would I need 500 rooms? To hoard more stuff that will only ever keep me trapped? I’ve got mountains, open space, and stars that wink to me in reassurance. Places to run free.
Pacer, the magical Narwhal of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.
Sure, there are some villains and demons out there. Most are in my head. Or created from someone else’s head.
In my college dorm room, I had a printed piece of paper hung on my wall that said “Life is what you make of it.” I think I’m starting to get it.
Reality is what you choose to believe in. It’s not ignoring the bad stuff…I’m still going feel my heart sink each time I hear about another school shooting. I’m still going to vote, donate to animal rescue organizations, recycle, and support women’s rights advocates. Yet I am going to choose to believe in love and joy over fear and hate.
Because when I can sit still long enough, let my thoughts settle, and calm my anxiety, I know at my core that love, joy, and light are the basis of reality.
*I’ve want to give credit for this post to my Reiki therapist, who gave me the prompt for this and then told me “now go home and write the rest.”
I am at a waterfall. I am meant to go through. The answer is on the other side.
Why am I hesitating?
Fear.
Fear of what?
I know joy and peace lay just beyond the water’s permeable walls…
I fear myself. My perceived unworthiness. I need to suffer more- to erase the shame- to prove my worthiness.
I need to walk a thousand miles with bloody knees- no, sweating blood as Jesus did. I need to be so tired and broken- having given every once of myself- to deserve to walk through the falls. I am only worthy when in pain.
Yet my heart (Pacer) pulls me forward, anyway. I dig my heels into the ground, breaking against her pull. She tells me it doesn’t have to be this way. Pain isn’t the way to joy. Joy is the way to joy. Pain simply shows us when we’re not in alignment, when we’re separated from Love, joy, an our true selves.
She tells me, “Those false beliefs that have been ingrained in you, your family- it is your Light that is meant to break the illusion, for you and those you love.”
I remember the beginning lines from one of my favorite Mary Oliver poems:
“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” (Mary Oliver, Wild Geese)
So I let my heart pull me forward. Through the waterfall that has transformed into rays of light. I step through and exhale…
And then for a moment I step back out. “Actually, what if it’s not that good?” I wonder. “What if none of it’s true and there is still pain and suffering on the other side?”
I guess there’s nothing to lose…
I try again, Pacer impatiently waiting (“patience” is her least favorite “P” word).
All there is is light, even as I keep walking. It just keeps going, almost holding me even as I take another step. It feels like safety and I just want to collapse and rest for a bit. And so I do.
I’m not sure if it’s moments or days later, but eventually I wake up. Pacer and I shake out our sleepies together, but I have the feeling she was watching over me the whole time. Suddenly, we’re at the edge of the fall of lights. I can see the blurred other side through the rays. This time, I let my heart (Pacer) pull me forward without hesitating.
It’s all the same, really. Almost.
Just brighter. Vivid. More intense. Yet the colors don’t blind me and the love doesn’t overwhelm me. It feels like Home.
I am the same too. Just brighter. Clearer.
Okay, maybe I’m a little taller too.
Joy, emanating off my form. Clarity. The worry lines on my face have disappeared. Here, I Know.
*I wrote a similar blog post several months ago, but the story came to me again with new words and in a slightly evolved way as I have continued on my journey.
Internal Family Systems (IFS) states, in my own words, that our psyche splits in order to deal with the traumas of life. While I am knowledgeable on IFS, I haven’t done the specific training from the IFS Institute, so I’ll simply refer to this as parts work. With that, another way to explain this theory is that our ego (human self) and spirit self separate from each other. In trauma, this false belief of separation can become so severe that we forget our that our spirit, or higher self, even exists. Furthermore, our ego is no longer just the realization that we are human, but becomes our voice of fear, which further splits into different parts (Chronic Worrier, Inner Critic, Judgey McJuderson, etc.) to help protect our now fragile sense of self.
Breathe. Read that over a few times if you need to. It may take a few reads for the words to become understandable.
Here’s a personal example.
When I was young, maybe 7 or 8, my parents decided to get a divorce. Really, nothing wrong with that (well, maybe accept that we were Catholic). They got married in their 20s and were two very different people. The problem was how it was handled, especially for a sensitive, empathic child.
First, while we were all still living under the same roof, my parents got into a huge argument. For me any my sisters, this was scary, and we all huddled together on our oldest sister’s bed. Then, with one of my parents clearly needing to leave the house, we were told to choose who we wanted to go with. I’m pretty sure I wanted to die in that moment. I think part of me did. I, already scared, could feel both my parents pain. I wanted to please both, make them both happy, and here I was, being forced to leave one of them in more pain. I heard my dad’s pleas that we could go watch Space Jam. I had always been a daddy’s girl. Yet my sisters were both going with my mom. I wanted to be with them.
I can almost still see, or rather feel, the agony painted across my dad’s face as we left the house.
However, experiences are individual. I have also heard a similar told by a man on a podcast I was listening to. For him, this forced choice was empowering. I would say more as to why but I can’t remember his words and don’t want to create false meaning. I just simply know that for me, this unwinnable choice was literaly unbearable. My psyche split, attempting to protect me from pain-or really, the pain I felt in causing others pain (which is something a child believes she can actually do because the developing brain is self-centric), and tried to overcome that by never making the wrong decision again.
Hence, OCD.
(While OCD is most often recognized in people with compulsions, or repetitive acts, the defining point is really the obsessive thoughts. For people who go on to develop compulsions, its simply to soothe the stream of worried thoughts.)
Or rather, anorexia (w/ excessive exercise), which was a coping mechanism for OCD, anxiety, and depression, which were coping mechanisms for the pain and fear within my little body. Or rather, the felt separation from Love.
Furthermore, and I won’t dive into this too deep, but the legal process for divorce and child custody in the 90s (and I believe still does) sucked. I knew exactly what was going on as I sat in the family therapist’s office with my sisters, first with one parent, then the other. I could feel it going better with my mom. I desperately tried to save things during my dad’s turn, trying to illuminate the room with my energy. But it failed. I had failed. I didn’t see my dad cry after my mom was granted majority custody, but I could feel his heart break once again (it’s no wonder why he had a heart attack and triple bypass surgery at 40). The pain was too much for the both of us to carry.
My psyche split into what we call “protector parts”, yet are often cruel and controlling: “Don’t fail.” “Do better.” “Don’t fuck up again Ray.” “Why can’t you be good enough?” Then, when I inevitably failed, either because I was doing something I didn’t actually want to or because some part of me froze in fear (my shooting wrist would actually freeze playing basketball), my only option was to shut down in what we like to call depression.
*While I’ve listed memories that stand out for me, its often much small, sometimes forgotten instances that cause splitting, such as the time a parent forgot to pick us up from practice, or a teacher ignored our wildly raised hand when we desperately wanted tho share. Or, for others who grew up in a religious background, you may have been taught that God, the Divine, was outside of yourself AND should be feared. How’s that for controlling? (My intention here is not to put down any religion.)
*******
Let’s look at this now from a mental health* lens.
While it is now considered normal (thanks to Richard Schwartz and his work around Internal Family Systems) to admit that we all have different parts of ourselves that take on various voices in on our head, we still diagnose the extreme version of this. The extreme version, brought on by severe childhood abuse, is diagnosed as “Dissociative Identity Disorder” (formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder). I would caution that diagnosis here may stereotype a person with DID, further separating them from a connection with their community and their higher selves. (Diagnosis is not inherently bad and may point in a direction of how to treat, but often is used as a label that forgets both humanness and causation.). What is crazy** is when we label others as “different” or “ill” because they suffered from extreme abuse, especially when I consider that my own parts have often made me cry. Really, we’ve all just coped with the fears of life as best as we could, and their psyches needed to do even extra work. The only thing that ever heals (not fix…I’m not trying to get rid of any parts, just make them feel safe) is curiosity and compassion.
*The term “mental health” lacks much of what I do as a therapist. Is psycho-emotional-somatic-spiritual too long to say?
*** This is where I think the use of the word crazy is totallyappropriate.
********
Returning to Self
I’m not going to dive too deeply into this part at the moment, as this is still very much part of my current journey. What I will say is that it has taken me years of therapy, reading, grad school, and being dedicated to my own inner work that’s allowed me even get here… here, to the part where I can even recognize that my soul, or higher self, is always there quietly and patiently waiting for me to recognize myself. It’s taken years of unwiring, becoming aware of and letting go of old identities that were never really me, and detaching from fictional narratives. Still, my ego is fighting like hell to stay in control, but my spirit if fighting like heaven for me to return to myself. To stand in the power of my own beauty and joy. My own Wholeness and Oneness with all that is.
Actually, I’ve been terrified about most major life and big adventure decisions that I make.
My stomach churned the week before I flew to Tanzania on my own at the ripe old age of 23, and I was constipated the week before I started the Colorado Trail. The week before starting grad school, I was nauseous, even though I was starting the school year with a hiking backpack rather than one for books. I sweat through my first t-shirt during the 8 hour drive across the state to see the guy I had a crush on for 10 months, although I had luckily thought ahead and brought a change of clothes. EVEN before getting Pacer, I worried. More recently, before moving into a yurt for the winter, my mind anxiously debated (taking up most of my mental space) for nearly 2 months if it was the right move. Then, after deciding to take a sabbatical (the professional word for an extended vacation) when my bank account was already low in an attempt to hike the CDT with my dog, I often teetered the line between terrified and trusting. Luckily by this time, I had learned some inner tools on what bravery and self-love …but really, I was just at the beginning of the process.
Currently (as of 6/20/2023), I’m petrified (truly, nearly frozen in place) on making the decision of whether to continuing hiking or not. There’s fear of being stuck in the middle of nowhere in Montana with Pacer, or the fear of having no idea what to do or where to go should we return to Colorado, having no place to live and little income to work off of. After being close to a panic attack, I return to three questions:
Am I not trusting myself?
Am I not trusting (the goodness) of others?
Am I not trusting the Universe/Divine?
While it would most definitely be a big challenge, I know I would protect Pacer “Sunshine” and figure it out if we continued on and did get stuck in Montana (should Pacer decide she was done). Yet I don’t want it to be up to Sandi to rescue us (again). More so, I want Pacer to be happy. This brings me to the heart of my fears: the fear of making the wrong decision.
At this stage of my life, the fear is rarely on either end of the decision, but the doubt in making one. The suffering is in the the liminal state between thought and action.
My inner chatter goes something like this:
Am I making the wrong decision?
Am I being dumb for attempting to hike across the country with a dog?
What if the critics were right?
What if my mom was right?
Am I wasting time on a hike that might not work out when I could easily be playing on my favorite Colorado mountains and going to a local winery after?
Maybe I’m not brave, maybe I’m just ignorant.
Am I burdening others with problems I’ve created for being stupid?
If I choose to stop, would it confirm all the above?
Eventually, I catch a beam of light coming through the darkness. I use ALL of the tools I learned in the last 8 months and wrote about in “Light & Dark: Reflections on the Human Experience”. I return to that which roots me: my values, meditation, prayer, and love.
My core values (family/friends, adventure/freedom, growth, and kindness) orient me back to the life I want to create myself, one that does not offer certainty, but does require fully living and offers personal expansion. In the form of prayer, I offer up my pleas for help and guidance from the divine and the spirits who walk withe me. (Okay, often I’m asking for answers and really hoping that an angel comes to me in a vision or I receive a vivid dream where I am given me the specific, detailed, outlined, double-spaced in size 12 font answer… and then I just remind myself to surrender.) I meditate (after much procrastination and googling all possible solutions), coming back to my center in the midst of the chaos of my mind. Slowly, I return to my heart and the new found love (although I can feel its ancientness) I have for myself. Even without the answer, I can trust that whatever happens, whatever decision I make, that it will be okay.
*************************************
I am a big believer in both psycho-emotional-somatic inner work that I do in therapy, as well as energy work. In using both, it almost amazes me how fast things can move (albeit, the rush of intensity of the “negative” energy can be a bit overwhelming before it clears out). I wrote this piece and part two (currently sitting partially in my journal, partially in m mind), in the few days around summer solstice and driving through 3 national parks, using nature and intention to quicken and aide my healing.
A wanderer is willing to face death in order to be reborn. A wanderer respects the power of her emotions. A wanderer accepts her pain. A wanderer honors her healing.
Sometimes, a wanderer stands still.
A wanderer chooses the path of joy, knowing it will require great suffering. A wanderer enjoys good company, but loves her own the most. A wanderer knows how to befriend her fear. A wanderer’s path is a spiritual path. A wanderers best compass is her own values and her heart. A wanderer both awaits and creates.
A wanderer willingly steps into the unknown, but is rarely lost. [If she is, it is only for a moment, for she is guided by her dog. ] A wanderer stays true to herself in the face of doubt. A wanderer is led by her intuition, knowing light will always lead the way.
Not even 10 minutes into my Reiki session, I burst out crying “but why does it always have to be so hard?”
What I really meant was “why does it always have to hurt so much?” I felt like I had been cycling through periods of intense pain over the past several years. Even in just the last 7 months, I had been closely attentive to my body, battling to stay in it though I badly wanted to dissociate, and letting all my emotions arise as they came up. Yet it felt like it was never ending. And I was exhausted. While I never wanted to end my life, I had been ambivalent about living it. The voice inside of me that said “I don’t really want to be here anymore” was no longer unconscious. I heard it. Yet I quickly dismissed it with thoughts of Pacer, living in the mountains of Colorado, and having a loving family.
So, when at the end of the session my Reiki teacher told me the clear message that he had gotten for me was “Fight for Yourself”, I was confused. What did that even mean? I don’t even like using the word “fight”, anyway.
At my next session, two weeks later, even as he explained it again, I still didn’t understand. I would stand up for myself, I thought. I’ve fought against societal norms and resisted living a traditional lifestyle (not that there is anything wrong with that), and I had begun to actively speak my emotional and intuitive truth on social media. Somewhat frustrated, I said “I still don’t get it.” My Reiki teacher gently reminded me that I would, but that my focus should lean towards finding joy and not needing to having the answer. I left feeling somewhat better, less but still frustrated.
It was another week later, when I was listening to someone else tell their own story via a podcast, that I understood. It was that voice in me, that small, unhealed part of me, that didn’t want to live. That was my darkness. Could I fight for my light?
This may be confusing to some. For anyone who has followed me for some time, you’ll know I often talk about the magic and joy of life. And I 100% feel that that magic and joy. But I also can feel the contrast just as intensely (also finally understanding when Abraham/Esther Hicks talks about contrast).
Until that moment, I didn’t understand what a strong hold that part of me, even if small, had on my soul. How, sometimes unconsciously, it could stop me in my tracks. It could make me small and prevent my light from being fully expressed. Actually, I often hid between the shadows of my hermit archetype and introvert labels.
Yet, even as I understood that this was actually the part of me that needed the most healing, that I actually needed to fight to keep my light both going and growing, I didn’t know how. I still associated with this darker part of me. “How do I just make it go away?”, I wondered. I knew, deep down, I wanted to live and to live fully, but I wanted more peace and clarity inside of me too. Less pain, more joy. So then the question turned to, could I believe that was even possible?
It took me awhile to understand this part of me and how it showed up. In the morning, this was the taint I felt in my soul. In the previous years, it showed up as a heaviness in my heart and a shortness of breath that I described as “existential angst.” As I continued to heal and released some of the heart pain that wasn’t mine, it simply felt as if someone had taken a dropper, filled it with a dose of pain, and let it drip into my essence. Like a cloud inside my light, keeping it from shining at full capacity, from waking up in the morning excited about my day, even when I living a life I thoroughly felt grateful for.
Tracing this feeling back, I remembered the panic attacks I had in high school. Waking up early to run but not really wanting to face another day. The times I never felt good enough, the fear I held in my body at every basketball game, every social event. Luckily, I had a few good friends who never left my side and let me be me, but I still kept my pain away from them, and from my parents and my twin sister. We just weren’t a family who talked about these things. The one time, my twin sister, brave enough to say anything about her own pain, I clearly remember my stepdad saying “What do you have to be depressed about?” (I have so much compassion for my stepdad now and can see how he still holds on to and buries his own emotions.) And so, my pain became my secret.
Plus, even before high school, my pain was evident just by looking at my appearance. Anytime you see someone who is skin and bones, or becomes large enough that you can no longer decipher their true form, you’re looking at someone who’s “I don’t know if I want to be here part” has taken over. It may be unconscious, especially for a 13 year old girl, but it’s evident. And then, I was basically put on medication (that I would spit out), sent to various doctors, and a mental health therapist. All this told me, or rather confirmed, was that something was wrong with me. This was the belief I was already working off of and trying to cover up with perfectionist tendencies. (Obviously, I’m all for therapists now, but even if kind, the majority of therapists in the early 2000s were still working off of the disease model of mental illness.)
The origins of the pain were still somewhere underneath that. Contrived somewhere earlier on in childhood when I was punished or unseen, especially the part of me that has always been a sensitive, empathic soul. A gift my parents just couldn’t know was actually to be cherished, for their own world had been made up of harsh realities. They were simply trying to protect me from the pain. So my sensitivity became my kryptonite, a superpower better to be hidden.
The pain started to leak out in my late 20s, first releasing some of the pain I took on from the world. I’d see a video or get a piece of mail about the inhumane treatment of animals, and I’d soon be crying on my bathroom floor. I think it was easier for me to make visible the pain I saw around me than the pain within me. It seemed more acceptable, more honorable. And to be honest, my soul was truly confused and hurt by the created darkness of the world.
So, the battle in my 30s became the battle within.
My years learning to be a therapist, speaking to my own therapists, processing with my graduate school cohort, using my skills to guide others on their journeys… this all was a practice for my internal fight. Still, I hesitate the to use the word fight. With no offense to our military, I can only see the external wars in our world as nonsensical. How truly ridiculous that we kill each other over power, fear, and inflated egos? Yet defending beautiful, innocent people is another matter, and here I lean on the example set by Nelson Mandela and other great peace leaders. (This is too big a topic to dive into in this blog.)
The first part of my own battle was surrendering to my own pain. It felt insurmountable at times, as it had been built up for nearly 3 decades. Still, I continued to be a witness to my own suffering and eventually the edges wore off and I gained more compassion for myself. Yet even as the heaviness dropped away, the part of me that felt ambivalent about life still persisted. I didn’t know how to release that darkness, although meditations focusing on “breathing out clouds and breathing in sunshine” provided some relief.
Then, I had yet another opportunity to practice.
In many cases when I have a decision to make, I’ll stay stuck in a type of anxious freeze mode, and I have a debate in my head about my choices, over and over and over again, not making the final decision until I absolutely have to. Then, every once in awhile, I’ll rush into a decision… particularly around tattoos. It’s not that I didn’t want this last tattoo, I just agreed to a drawing that wasn’t exactly what I wanted before having it sketched into my skin. Actually, to make it worse, I only “semi” rushed…I actually had 2 hrs between seeing the image and agreeing to it, with a full opportunity to wait another week since the tattoo artist was heading out for vacation. For me, this was a perfect recipe of wanting to blame myself. While I’ve mostly trained myself out of negative self talk like “you’re stupid”, “I can’t believe you did that”, “why aren’t you better?”, etc., the internal feelings of shame that look like a panic attack on the outside were still very much prevalent. Could I choose to be kind to myself?
Could I choose to forgive myself for acting too quickly? (No wonder why the majority of time I can’t make a decision, if my other practice is beating myself up whenever I make the “wrong” decision.)
Could I choose, instead, to see the lesson?
This practice, too, was a fight. I wanted to go into self-blame. Being perfect and making the so called “right” decisions was what I knew how to do, how I had learned to protect myself from the fear of not feeling good enough. The hope, from my ego’s perspective, from this protection mechanism was so I didn’t make the mistake again, so I wouldn’t be the mistake.
Stepping away from the shame for a moment, I gave myself the opportunity to realize this was a lesson I had to learn. Humans, yes, are fallible. But is a person, a child, ever a mistake themself? Hell no. We simply become better versions of ourselves when taking the time to learn and gain meaning from our mistakes. The more simply stated, common phrase: sometimes we have to learn what we don’t want to know what we do want.
This tiny step turned out to be a big insight. It opened the door for me to forgive myself for a myriad of other poor (so I had deemed) decisions as well as times I had stepped away from opportunities and my own light for fear of being unworthy.
From this perspective, I could see my adult self giving a hug to the little me wearing a sunflower outfit (hat included) for her elementary school picture, who felt confused by the actions of adults in her life (as well a Catholic school that gave her the message that she was less than for being female). Then, to the high school me, who had learned to push so many people away because she thought her pain made her an outcast. I accepted these younger parts of me, showed them love, and brought them back home in my body.
In other words, I fought for them, and I fought for me. I fought for the part of myself that knew life was magical, a gift to be lived and expressed through my being. While pain, yes, may be a part of living, it doesn’t have to be carried with me on my journey. I was not my pain. I was meant to overcome my pain. To shine my light through it and to realize that my light was the only truth.
As I close, I can’t say the fight is over, the battle is just easier. The darkness is less powerful. I can see it for the fear that it is. I have more say in what I choose to believe and what I give my energy to. I can realize that my light, that I, Ray A. Nypaver, am worth fighting for.
May you always realize that your light, that You, are worthing fighting for.
*******
“I’ve come to believe that there exists in the universe something I call “The Physics of The Quest” — a force of nature governed by laws as real as the laws of gravity or momentum. And the rule of Quest Physics maybe goes like this: “If you are brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting (which can be anything from your house to your bitter old resentments) and set out on a truth-seeking journey (either externally or internally), and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue, and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher, and if you are prepared – most of all – to face (and forgive) some very difficult realities about yourself… then truth will not be withheld from you.” Or so I’ve come to believe.”― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
A Dog and Her Girl 