Trauma & Psychedelic Integration Therapist, Writer
It’s time to stop feeding the Shame Beast. You are neither too much or not enough – you are exactly right, as you are right now.
Shake things up and allow the real you to shine through.
You deserve to BE all of you. The world needs to see all of you.
Fight the Shame Beast :: stop hiding yourself and offer the world the gifts only you can offer to change it, to heal it, to make it a better place for us all to live.
xoxo
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We write our own stories.
Yes, we are given lines and plots by our family, our culture, our lived experience.
And yet, these are only plot turns, they are the points in which we, the main character, the heroine, get to decide how we are going to be. We don’t have control over our genetics or how people treat us or life events like earthquakes or rapes or being burglarized.
We do have control over how we respond to each of these events. Yes, we may have the after effects of trauma or shock living within us. AND we have the choice to heal those pains, to become present again, to engage in our lives instead of allowing our reptile brain to take over.
We have control over whether or not we remain stuck in anger or bitterness or hurt. This is not to say we don’t feel those things, rather we allow them to be fluid, to process and pass through and allow the next emotion to come.
With practice and intention, love and compassion will enter into your heart and being. And you will not remain in this place forever either, because again life will happen. And perhaps when life happens again you will come out of it differently, perhaps the anger or bitterness or hurt will pass more quickly.
Regardless, you have the right to write your own story; you have the privilege to be the person you chose to be; and you have the responsibility to take these rights and privileges seriously, to be present for your one lived life, to write your own story and not let others write it for you.
xoxo
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Last week I guided over a hundred women in exploring our power and strength, connecting to our bodies, excavating our stories and digging into who we truly are. It was an intense week and fast paced and rich with ways to dive into our depths. And even with this being true, I have been left feeling like we barely skimmed the surface of this work, that we barely dipped our toes is. That there is so much richness in this work of power and strength for us all to uncover, to become curious about.
During our week we touched on the stories of our mothers. We spent one day of thinking about and connecting to what our mothers brought to us. That day is still lingering within me, simmering. This digging into their stories reminds me again how the more we each know of our own history the more we can make sense of our Self. We can’t ignore the past. The women and men who came before us made us, both metaphorically and literally. Pretending that what they lived has no impact on us only puts up another block for us to overcome to get to our own core and true, whole Self.
Sometimes though we don’t have a way to learn the stories; the people who held them had died or we aren’t in contact or they simply don’t want to share them. And it feels like then the stories are lost, and a part of our Self is lost with them. How can we know the experience of our great-great-great-great-grandmother? How can we know how her children felt? How she felt about motherhood? What her internal struggles were with loving and being loved?
We can begin with our own stories. The ones that live in our heads, real and imagined. We can begin with our own struggles and how motherhood affects us or our relationship with our own mother. We can begin with how we embrace or avoid loving and being loved.
Because all those stories that we have, they didn’t start with us. Our struggles with living and loving and being didn’t begin with our birth. They all began a long time ago, with women we never met and yet are as much a part of us as we are part of our children. We are made of their DNA and with that comes the stories and struggles and sadness and joy of their lived experiences.
So we begin understanding our ancestral stories by beginning to understand our own. By acknowledging the stories we hold. By exploring all those shoulds and have-tos and fears. By examining our daily struggles and getting curious about them. By knowing that we are not the first or the last in our line to experience life as we do, our trials and strife are our threads to our past, to understanding, to embracing our own embodied knowing.
We may never know the specific literal details of the lives of the women who came before us. And we can imagine their internal experiences, the stories that swirled within them, by understanding our own internal stories.
How will you connect with your stories? With the gifts and non-gifts the women before you handed down? Are you ready to dig into who you are, what you are made of, literally and figuratively? Are you ready to grow your mermaid tail and dive to your own depths?
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It snowed today. It rarely snows here in the greater Seattle area, maybe once or twice a year and it sticks even less often than that–maybe every couple years. But it snowed today, big fluffy flakes that slowly fell down to the earth, where they melted and continued their journey down, down, down, into the grass and dirt and asphalt.
I have been pining away for snow. Growing up in eastern Washington we had snow every winter, tons of snow. So much snow that by the time I left my hometown at 18 I truly was done with snow and never wanted to live in it again. Now here I am at 44 aching for the snow, it’s brightness, it’s sparkle, it’s still crispness. I got a taste when we went over the mountains for Christmas, and now here I am, back on the west side of the state, looking at these big fluffy flakes falling down and disappearing and longing even more to the quietness that envelopes a city with a fresh fallen snow.
Looking back at those early years of my life I believe I spent the whole time plotting how I would leave that town of my birth. I felt trapped there, a wild animal caged, and the day I left for college couldn’t come fast enough. When I was five, yes five, I told my mother that I would live in Seattle when I grew up and once I arrived here I assumed that this is where I would spend the end of the my days. This town has fit me like a second skin for over twenty years. I grew up here in so many ways, spending my 20s and 30s here. My entire courtship with my husband was here. The births of our two children were here. I have met most of my best-adult friends here (and many of them have already moved away). I have drunk too much and danced so hard and pushed my life to its fullest in this town. I have lived, and learned to live fully, here.
And sometimes the things we think will be our second skins our entire lives become uncomfortable. Ill fitting. Scratchy. What was once exactly as it should be suddenly feels out of place and all wrong.
This is true for many of us. We live in our stories and they fit so well, for so long, and then suddenly they don’t. This can sometimes leave us feeling lost and discombobulated. We feel the discomfort of ill-fitting skin and yet we aren’t quite sure we are ready to shed it, to allow the next layer to come forward. Yet, eventually, sometimes with a little or a lot of work, it does.
Every year I look back and see how far I have come. How my friends and family have grown. How life shifts and sifts. I am not the person today I was a year ago and that person is different from the one the year before that. I can see my own unfolding, as we all can, looking back and find comfort in the knowing that we won’t always be where we are in this moment.
Sometimes we grow weary of the snow and the cold. And then, at other points in our lives, it is all we want. This is more than the wanting of what we do not have, it is speaking of how we grow and change as do our tastes and priorities. As we do the work of shedding our skins, our layers, of getting to the core of who we truly are and truly want to be, we find we are able to go back to our roots, whole.
And maybe that is the point. Going home, for so many, is about going where we need to wear masks, where we can’t allow our Self to be seen, where we feel unacceptable and unlovable. But that’s not what home is supposed to be, is it? Home is supposed to be safe, where we are loved unconditionally, where we feel cozy and good and whole in our own skin.
Maybe I haven’t been able to feel at home in the town I was born in because I didn’t feel at home with my Self. And as that has shifted and sifted, the calling to go back to my roots is strong and necessary and wanted.
What does it feel like for you to go back to your roots? To visit the place or the people you grew up with? Do you feel uncomfortable, unable to be you? And if so, how is this true when you aren’t “back home”? How can you find ways to be comfortable in your own skin, even when you go back to your roots?
My own journey has been long and windy, as most life journeys are. And part of coming home to me, to getting cozy and comfortable in my own skin, has been in exploring all the stories that are floating in my blood and muscles and mind. The stories about worth and value and lovable-ness. The stories of who I should be and how I should act and how “young ladies” are to be in the world and who I can be when I grow up. The stories of powerlessness and victimhood and smiling and nodding and grinning and bearing it. All those shoulds and have-tos, floating around in each of us, passed down to from our mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers and on up the line. The same shoulds and have-tos that we pass down to our daughters and granddaughters and nieces if we don’t bring them into our awareness and consciously and mindfully expose them and change them.
This work started before the conception of my daughter, and yet her existence, while even still in my womb, brought this work to the forefront. I wanted different for her. And I still do. And now, I want different for me too. And for the young boy I am raising. And for my friends. And for all of us.
I want us each to shed all these “shoulds” and “have-tos” and get into the truth of who we are and how we want to be in this world. I want all of us to feel comfortable in our own skin. To be able to enjoy the snow again. To feel safe and lovable and at home when we visit our roots.
This is my New Years wish for the world, for my family, for me. What is yours?
I write a lot about the (Un)Becoming circle. In part because that is where most of my working focus is right now, in part because I am amazed daily by the beauty of the women in the circle and in part because of my own transformation in guiding and doing this work. It is intense, yes. Each of us has resistance along the way. Each of us come in and out of the work, at our own natural ebb and flow. And there is an energy connecting the women that is indescribable.
What has struck me the most is how each of us have transformed in our self-love and self-care practices. I believe this transformation is in part because of the focus I put on self-care as a guide and in the circle, and also it’s something more. Each of the women are finding their worth, their value in this world. Each are starting to respect themselves in deeper ways. Each are learning the art and science of allowing themselves to be.
This is where the nourishment is: in the being; in the allowing. Yes, it’s in the cup of tea or glass of wine or long hot bath or even in the taking a moment to breath. And yet true nourishment isn’t in the doing of these practices at all. It is in the honoring that you are worth the time of these practices. It is in the giving yourself the respect that you deserve. It is in embodying the truth of your own worth and value. It is in the knowing when it is time to be quiet and allow things to settle within and then in the allowing and being.
So how do we make the shift from the doing to the being? The irony is that we need to start doing the practices to encourage the ideas and feelings and knowing of our own worth to come back out into being. We start to shift when we mindfully and intentionally take the time to love ourselves up, whether that be in a 60-second breath exercise or in a 60-minute massage. As we intentionally do and explore these self-love practices, a shift starts to happen within: we start to allow for the being in these moments; and as our practices expand, the being expands beyond those moments of intentional and scheduled self-love and starts to grow into our daily life, our normal way of living in the world. With time the doing exercises can drop off from being done daily and can instead live within us, to be drawn upon when needed.
This shifting is what my work is about. This learning of moving from the mindlessly doing to the mindfully doing; and then from the mindfully and intentionally doing to the simply being. This shifting doesn’t happen overnight, it isn’t instantaneous, and yet with time and practice and beginning again and again, it does happen. I have watched the women in my circles make amazing shifts in a matter of weeks, even greater shifts in a few months. It always leaves me awestruck when they start to make connections and shifts and then when the being starts, holy wow!
I have witnessed these shifts within myself also. I started my body-centered mindfulness practice with the sole intention of not yelling at my daughter so much and trying and connect with her more. That was it: I wanted a better relationship with my kid. With time I did yell less and then I noticed other shifts in me, in my attitude about our home, my connection to my husband and then the biggest surprise was the deeper connection to my body and feeling more comfortable in my skin and in the world. The shifting has continued on to connecting more deeply to my own embodied knowing and and finding re-connection to my feminine self and to the sacred and Divine. I know these shifts and transformations will continue, and each time I am left in awe and gratitude for this work, both in solitude and in community.
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