An Embodied Life
As my summer time travel starts to slow down I’m centering back to my intentions. Supporting others in life, in hard times, in navigating the world, which gives me hope for a feeling future. An embodied life where grief is normalized, heartache is welcomed, joy is celebrated and cultivated, actively. I believe that our capacity to feel the range of human emotions is the window into cultivating compassionate & caring communities. Where mothers, children, & elders are centered. Where ancient and ancestral ways are revived as the norm because the earth and all of its beings insist on it.
I won’t pretend with you that I’m not still in the depths of heartache. My heart aches for so much in this time. While in some ways I show up in this space quite vulnerably, I continually find places I’m hiding, spaces that feel too uncomfortable to share or might make me look weak and untethered. And the real real is my life’s a fucking mess and I’ve really been sitting with what this life means to me, if anything at all. I’m in this tricky place where I am understanding that so much of the chronic illness I’ve been dealing with over the last 12 years has blossomed from the soil of a traumatic upbringing. And I’m aware that I often say : I have trauma and what I really mean to say is I was born to parents who struggled with drug addiction, I had caretakers who were abusive and neglectful, I didn’t have a stable home for more then 6 months at a time and this environment wreaked havoc on my body, nervous system, and mostly my heart.
And I’m witnessing myself recreating the same life (to some degree) I was given as a child and it is infuriating and frustrating beyond measure. I’m watching myself move in circles. A dog chasing her tail, wondering why I haven’t caught it yet. Wondering why I can’t just figure it out.
And so here I am knowing that my physical sickness is a product of something I had no control over and wondering what now?? I’m aware that everything in my reality is on a timeline, that my story has been pre written in the stars by a council of star beings with great care and purpose. And also I thought I would be somewhere different at this point in my life. I thought I would understand more, be more, be better, more productive, lovelier in my 30s but all I find is a mourning of my 20s of the fiery energy that propelled me to start supporting people with their trauma in the first place.
And my underbelly, of course, how can I support others when some days I can barely get out of bed? How can I lift others up when my heart feels it might explode in a million pieces for all the grief I feel? And yet every time I finish a session my heart is filled with love, hope, excitement. Every time I get done with a group I feel my spirit lift. And that’s it : community grieving makes my heart sing. Community care will lift us all in some capacity. && How we relate to one another is how we relate to the world.
So i'm settling back with tears streaming down my cheeks to the remembrance over and over and over again that individual suffering is collective suffering, every bodies hearts ache for what was and what will be and it is through voicing my heart, my grief, my story that the world around me will continue to shift and anything lurking in the shadows is not to be feared, it is to be celebrated.