Tag: shadow work

Broken stillness of the night

I woke up at 3. Shaking, not being able to catch my breath. The vivid remnant of nightmares clinging to me like webbing.

I can still see the house I was in, ransacked, ripped apart. Daylight coming through the cracks in the window coverings, dust drifting through the air. Stale smell of inhabitants long gone – desperately trying to hide things like pictures and journals for safe keeping. Things that prove I existed. Knowing with certainty the zombies were coming. Coming to consume me as they had the things and people around me.

Pain singing through the areas of my body that in waking time is my reality. Only here the wounds are visible, bruising, blood, oozing disease dripping from the bandages.

In this dream I am aware I’ve been battling a long time. I feel my child is still alive in this wasteland. I am hiding these things for her. With hope she finds them, a record of the loving normalcy we had lived.

The exhaustion running deeply, the fear that I am loosing the battles, the outer and the inner.

Waking up, I felt nauseous, unable to shake the fear. My shoulder burning, my knee locked in a useless position. My mind racing to what the todays doctor appointment will reveal.

The deep disappointment of still living with the threat of illness, loss of income in a situation I can’t control. At the mercy of ‘the people out there’. The dream very much a mirror of how the constant hammer of daily life is chipping away at me.

So I am awake. Sitting in the dark of my living room. The sounds of my house humming along as it does at the witching our, the furnace and fridge, low buzzing filling the space. The cat crunching kibble, the puppy sighing and shifting in her blissful sleep. Not affected by the webbing of my dream, the anxiety monsters poking at me.

Me knowing in a matter of hours the people in this house will be up, navigating another day.

Still a slight shake of my hands. The paranoia that I may still yet disappear.

Trying to find, deep down inside the fortitude to face today. Another day of worrisome news, the hard to shake disappointment in humanity. Quick mental math, acknowledging the numbers out there vs the risk of leaving the house.

I must shake this off. I have people to care for. A job to do. Clients to treat, a class to lead. A child to parent. A partner to provide balance too. Friends to support and encourage. A life to live.

It was just a dream. Right?

What to do now

Inundated with the ugly of the world. Images of hate, frustration, disgusting lack of compassion, education and decency. It’s easy to forget that this is not all there is.
Yes, we need to bear witness to these atrocities so we can help change the narrative. We need to be aware so we can be the change.
But the constant drone of the shit becomes defeatist. It can leave you numb, spiteful and slowly turn you into a version of the monsters we are so badly trying to beat back.
So as a reminder of why these things need to change, why inclusion, humility, kindness and love of creation need to prevail I am redirecting my focus today.
Today I am focusing on the good, the inspiring, the beautiful.
There are people out there with things to celebrate
Birthdays
Anniversaries
Hard won accomplishments
There are people out there bringing love and gifts of time, connection and grace.
There are beautiful places in nature, in our neighborhoods, in our homes that bring sanctuary and peace.
Today I turn my attention ( posts and personal notes, calls) to these things. To strengthen my resolve to get back into the ‘battle’ with my heart, compassion and values in tact.
Radical love. Radical compassion. Today this is my armour.
✌🏻💜🥳

Inside war

This morning, I allowed my self to feel some of the anger that’s been bubbling. I looked deep into where inside this is sitting. I am so angry and disgusted with myself. As most of you know, simultaneously my knee and my shoulder have been failing me.
Three years ago I was building a strong body, I had found some relative freedom from my mental monsters. Through life circumstances and a couple of freak falls the physical and mental took a few hits.
The pain is constant, and some times workable. But has chipped away at my physicality.
Yesterday walking was nauseatingly painful. This morning, while I was achey I thought it might be workable. So I tried to stretch, a bit of yoga and a few other things to get moving. The knee and shoulder screamed all the while.
I crumpled to child’s pose and wept. I am so angry that I can not do what I could before. I am so frustrated I have all but lost the gains I had worked so hard for. I am so disappointed I gave into some old patterns. I am broken hearted that I feel so little compassion for myself.

I want to keep trying. I have to keep trying. There are a few things that I have kept with. There are a few things that keep me going. I can do my day to day. But these things were not done for self compassion, these were done for functioning, so I can work, so I can do the day to day. But not done of love of self. This makes me saddest of all.

I see this in others, I offer compassion and uncompromising care for them. Trying to let them know/feel that they deserve better. I have gallons of outward empathy. Yet inward is empty.

What is it that makes us feel unworthy? Being unseen for the beautiful creatures we are? Being told we are too much or not enough? Being discounted? Being shunned when we offer love and compassion to others- setting the seeds that even our best is met with disdain so me must be grotesque.

I am allowing the pain in today. In my body, in my heart, I will not dull with medication so I can ignore it. I will accept it as a part of me, for now. I will try ever so hard to find the compassion for myself that it’s ok to feel what I’m feeling. I will accept my disappointment. I will sit with this. I will try to love self despite these perceived failings, I will try to love these broken pieces too.

This world is hard. We all carry so much. Be kind. Be loving. To all. But most of all to SELF.
❤️

A Moment of Healing

Trust yourself

Place your hands on the warmth of your skin

Breathe, you are here

There is no sting

Pressure of the phantom hand

Trust yourself

Place your hands with compassion, the places once scarred, mark the beautiful start

Breathe, you are here

Place your hands, the fleshy parts, once blue, now rosy pink. There is no harm

Only honour, only love

Trust yourself

Place your hands, over your heart. Offer compassion to the place ruined not by love but by betrayal

Breathe, you are here

Place your fingers on the softness of your throat, the strong vibration of words now clearly spoken, from a place once stolen

Trust yourself

Place your hands upon the place where your soul resides, accepting both the light and the dark

Breathe, you are here

Place your hands amongst the spaces where your power hums heavy, intimately yours, you owe it no access from others.

Trust. Yourself.

When a Trigger is Pulled – Reminders of Sexual Violence

Today was hard.

I teach massage therapy. Starting last year as part of the program we began to incorporate a guest lecture on sexual violence and trauma. It is needed, informative and very important for the students to have. I have attended this lecture other times and was fine. Today was different.

Have been fairly open in my stories and experiences and their effects on my life. I am a rape and sexual violence survivor. I have mental illness that presents as GAD and CPTSD. At times this manifests as elevated pain in areas previously injured by violence. This becomes more apparent the more stressed and anxious I am. Along with other signs of anxiety this can become a self perpetuating cycle. I lose my ability to speak my needs and boundaries. The pain can worsen, affecting other areas of my body, triggering more anxiety. The cycle goes until it burns out, I shut down or am able to use my tools to effectively work at stopping the cycle.

I have been ill longer in my life than I have been ‘well’. It started in childhood, I am now 47. Over the last 25 years there have been ebbs and flows in my illness, but in some form shades my life.

Over the last decade I have been driven to work harder at finding different therapies and combinations to decrease the effects and severity of the monsters that plague my mind and body. As of the last few months I have been engaging in mindful physical and cognitive work, trying to break the feedback cycle of ⬆️ stress/anxiety ➡️ pain ➡️ feeling helpless ➡️⬆️ stress/anxiety and continual looping.

This has been intense work. It has taken me to dark realizations and places. It has allowed for some of the deeper body’s memories to surface, be acknowledged and hopefully dismantled. I believe this can lead to transformation and as much healing as is possible.

Which brings me to the weirdness of today, and things I didn’t consider. I have participated in this class conversation before, yet today it triggered me.

Being the instructor I sat calmly, helped to facilitate and participated in the conversation. I could hear my voice, clear, firm and very much in command.

However on my head there was screaming, knots in my stomach, tears threatening to fall. I felt shaky, like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs, but outward appearances seemed calm. Some of the tightness and pain flaring up in the specific areas I’ve been working on. I did not anticipate this. Although in hindsight I see how I should have guarded and prepared.

I am in a strange place in my head. I feel the ground beneath my feet shifting, the growling and murmurs of the monsters waiting for the shift to show cracks, for me to fall through.

The cold finger of fear trailing down my spine.

I am doing my best to breathe, remind my body it is safe at the moment. There are no hands on me, betraying trust, causing pain. There are phantoms I don’t want to let in.

I must be attentive to my duties. Stay present. Do my job. Be here. The ground tilts. This is a test. A test of the new work, newer tools.

The head detaches.

It’s dizzying.

Maintain my ground. Find my safety.

Be gentle.

There was work done, before class, as part of my plan. I did not anticipate what the day was going to be. It feels threatened to be undone.

The ground beneath me pitches and rolls. The poison rising to be drawn out. The stench in the scar tissue.

Slow the breath

Stay present until I’m in a place I can let the wounds bleed to clean.

Shadow work is hard

Shadow work shows our fragility

Shadow work shows our strength

I honour myself

My work

In time

Muted

It felt like a sigh

But really it was a deflation

To be heard, felt, understood.

This is where heaven lies.

But words had failed

The barbs she tried to pull from her soul

To show, to show what it felt like in her head

Somehow became seen as weapons

Her ugliness rebuked, disdain, failure

Then came the sigh

Wrap the ugliness in the deflated self

A costume again applied

To be accepted to the proper place again