Gwynn Raimondi, MA

Activated, softening, or both

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The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one’s own.  ~Willa Cather

If we turn away from our own pain, we may find ourselves projecting this aversion onto others, seeing them as somehow inadequate for being in a troubled situation. ~Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection

Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves. ~Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

We cannot have a world where everyone is a victim. “I’m this way because my father made me this way. I’m this way because my husband made me this way.” Yes, we are indeed formed by traumas that happen to us. But then you must take charge, you must take over, you are responsible.  ~Camille Paglia

Many of us across the globe are staying home in an attempt to flatten the curve of the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.  We aren’t leaving for work or play.  We are within our four walls every day of the week, almost every single hour – with the occasional exception to leave and get groceries or other necessities.  

This can have us all a little stir crazy.  Developing “cabin fever” as we are also trying to manage the stress of the present along with any old traumas that may be activated right now because of what is happening both out in the world and with our own friends and families.

The stress, frustration, and grief centered around the present moments mixed with the same around our past wounding, can lead us to not always being our best selves.  

We don’t have much control over the current global pandemic.  We can each do our own part to try to flatten the curve and stay home as much as possible and to practice physical distancing when we are out and about.  And that is all any of us can do.

This lack of control may have us agitated.  

Add to this all our usual distractions aren’t available to us – sports broadcasts have halted, bars are closed, as are restaurants and retail stores. The ways we avoid, ignore, and stuff down our feelings; the ways we avoid dealing with our past and current hurts, pain, and trauma – they are mostly gone.  

This leaves us almost no other choice than to sit with our own stuff.

This too, can be highly agitating.

In our own agitation we may find ourselves being short with others.  We may find ourselves picking fights. We may find ourselves stuck in a cycle of blame and shame – blaming another for how we are feeling and acting while also feeling shame around how we feeling and acting.

We are in an unprecedented time.  This can be a time of healing – if we allow it to be.  This can be a time to begin to learn to sit with our own uncomfortable feelings (emotions and their physical sensations) – if we allow it to be. This can be a time of learning and practicing breaking life long and generations old patterns and cycles of harm – to ourselves and others — if we allow it to be. 

Many of us are in a heightened state of activation.  This true. It is also true that even with this, we are still responsible for our actions. For the ways we treat those close to us. For the ways we show up, for ourselves and for others.  For the ways we use this time, when all our go-to distractions are unavailable.  

And while many of us are in a heightened state of activation, it is also true that many of us are in a heightened state of softening.  That our hearts are breaking open even more, that the remaining bits of our hard armor are falling away, that we are in this time gently shifting into new ways of being with each other and with ourselves. 

And it is true that for many of us, we are moving back and forth between heightened activation and softening.

As we move through these challenging and unprecedented times, I invite us to come back into our bodies, to be present to the myriad of conflicting and complimentary emotions and physiological sensations we are experiencing.  I invite us to seek out new ways of being with ourselves, to find ways to break old harmful patterns and cycles.  I invite us to soften, to become gentler, with ourselves and others.  I invite us to find ways to inner peace within the outer chaos.  I invite us to nurture, to provide loving care, to ourselves and others. 

I invite us to a new way of being in the world.  One that gathers together in community, even when we cannot physically gather.  One that cares for one another instead of only looking out for ourselves.  One that shares in the abundance instead hoard out of fear of scarcity.  One that guides us to peace and love and joy as well as creates space for feeling, processing, and allowing the flow of upset, loss, and grief.

Let us all be a part of a global revolution of change.  To acknowledge our fear and to do it anyway. To step into the unknown, with open hearts and open arms -for ourselves, for others, and for our planet.  

/../

This essay was originally published in my weeklyish newsletter on April 4, 2020. It has been revised and edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays, subscribe here.

In Embodied Writing :: Relating, relationships, and trauma we will be exploring how trauma impacts our relationships and ways that we can begin to break (often generations old) patterns and cycles. You can learn more and register here.

Breaking open

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To live this life. To live it with wholeness and gratitude and trust. In the pain and the glory. In the mess and the grace. In the sacred and the desperation. This is the stuff of which real superheros are born. ~Jeanette LeBlanc

We are here to love hard and true. Here to give ourselves over to the rush and bliss of it all. Here to offer our patchwork hearts over and over again. Here to feel and fall and hurt and bleed. Here to say yes and to choose wholeness and to break anyway and to do it all again. ~Jeanette LeBlanc

Here you are.
Still standing. Fierce with the reality of love and loss. Wearing the truth of our hearts on your tattered sleeves. And yes, this one very nearly took you out. And yes, there were days when the darkness was heavy and the climb out of that rabbit hole required you to mine your depths for strength you didn’t even know you had.

But here you are.
Broken open by hope. Cracked wide by loss. Full of longing and grief and the burn of that phoenix fire. Warrior painted with ashes. Embers from the blaze still clinging to your newborn skin, leaving you forever marked with scars of rebirth.

And just look at you. Heart broken but still beating. Arms empty but still open. Face raised to the sky and giving thanks for the light, even when it hurts your eyes.

My god, you are beautiful. ~ Jeanette LeBlanc

In preparing, I ran upon an old ACT UP handbook. It reminded me of the ways the “masters tools” are used break movements. Using power over to suppress us.
To shame us
To make us invisible
To mute our voices and our message
To kill our trust
These tools of the master are used to break one’s spirit, to disempower, to confuse, to divide, to immobilize. These tactics are another assault on our humanity.
They will not work.
We must love our people more than they hate us.
Movement work is about healing, building engaging and transforming. ~Desiree Lynn Adaway

Love.  Relating.  Having hope, even in and after devastating heartbreak.

I’ve been writing a lot over on IG the last few months.  It has been in part processing some grief around a specific relationship.  It has been in part confirming my truth in how we need to relate to each other, in all our relationships.  It has been in part me showing up as me, for me, and for you.

When my marriage was crumbling, and even shortly after it ended, I didn’t believe I would ever love again.  I didn’t believe I could ever open myself to that kind of heartbreak again.  I didn’t even know if I was capable of loving again, not in the ways that I had loved my ex-husband.

I kept my walls up.  My armor was on secure and tight.  I started “dating” eventually, because frankly, I wanted sex.

I wasn’t ready for and honestly, I didn’t want to have, a Relationship (with a Capital R).  I didn’t want to “catch feelings.”  I didn’t want to be vulnerable.  I didn’t want to risk having my heart shattered again.  

I didn’t meet anyone who changed my mind on this for a while, several months.

And then I did. 

It is ironic to look back at the very beginning of this relationship.  We texted for a week and I wasn’t overly interested, though in text we seemed like a good match.  I almost canceled our first date.  But then I wanted to get out and we had plans, so I went.

And I met him.

There are so many details I’m going to leave out.  And I knew, I knew, that he would break my heart.  I knew, from that first night, he would break me open in ways I didn’t want to be broken open, in ways I wasn’t ready to be broken open.

But are we ever really ready to be broken open?  I don’t think so.

I knew he and I were probably not going to last forever.  I had lost all faith in happily ever after and ’til death do us part.  I didn’t want a white picket fence anymore (ironically, he actually has a white picket fence at his house).  I didn’t want to be tied down with expectations and promises, mine or anyone else’s.  So I knew, at some point we would come to an end, and when that day came, my heart would shatter.

I wrote this the other day on IG ::

Sometimes we meet people who have profound impacts on our lives and our Self. Just by being them they create space for us to unearth some lost pieces of who we are. They show us what it is to be loved and adored. They teach us what freedom is. We may want these people to be in our lives forever but that may not be how it works out. They may only be with us for a short while & yet their impact is massive & our hearts shatter when they leave.

Hearts are meant to shatter I believe. And then to be put back together. We are meant to love & lose that love. Nothing is forever.

And sometimes relationships come back & start again. There are those in my life who I can literally go a decade without talking to & when we see each other it is as if no time has passed.

There are people who light us up regardless of time or distance.

We can’t “keep” these people though. People are not for keeping. People are for loving, for caring for, for experiencing life with. In whatever time allows us to have with them.

“All we have to see, is I don’t belong to you and you don’t belong to me.” ~George Michael

I am in a time of grief.  It is true.  I don’t know what tomorrow will bring.  I left the door open for the future, and who knows.  And also, in these moments I need to accept the ending of what was.  

This hurts like hell.  My chest literally aches.  I cry at the drop of a hat.  

I’m not miserable though.  I wouldn’t change any of this, because knowing him allowed me the space to get so much of myself back, including my knowing that I am meant to love, and to love deep and hard, without apologies or fear.  I am more me for having known him, even if it was for the briefest moment of time. 

I will eventually move through this grief.  It is true.  While time alone doesn’t heal all (or any) wounds, it does help to dull the pain, and in addition I am processing the hell out of this year and our time together and what it has all meant to and for me.

Here’s a thing though, our love, our wide open hearts, our vulnerability, our authenticity, aren’t only meant for romantic love.  They are meant for friends.  For (chosen) family.  For colleagues.  For comrades.  For our grocery clerk.  For total strangers.

We need to bring love, our whole broken open selves, into all our spaces.  Most especially into those spaces that are about bringing systemic change, about tearing down the status quo, about ending oppression and authoritarianism and marginalization.  

The world needs our wide open hearts.  The world needs us to be willing to risk having our hearts shattered, over and over.  By lovers, friends, family, and strangers.  With every shattering, the world needs us to choose to put our hearts back together and then to enter the world with them wide open once again.  

This doesn’t mean walking through the world without boundaries (we all desperately need those).  It doesn’t mean being a martyr or allowing people to cause us great harm in the name of Love.  It doesn’t mean we are passive.

We can be warriors with open hearts.  I would argue the only way to be a warrior is with an open heart.  With the strength and bravery and willingness to move through the fear and let people in and to hold space for others to let us in too.  

In order to be in the world with our hearts open, and able to hold space for others with open hearts, we have to do our own work.  Our own internal work.  Of healing old wounds.  Of processing old traumas.  Of becoming self aware, self reflective.  Of creating the pause before we react to situations out of anger or frustration or hurt.  Of getting to the roots of the ways we have internalized oppressive and authoritarian behaviors and attitudes. Of getting to the roots of our own blackholes of abandonment, neglect, not feeling worthy or deserving or wanted.  

We need to do this work so we are not only able to allow ourselves to be broken open, but also so we can be in the spaces with others who are breaking open themselves.  We need to do this so we don’t continue to carry the master’s tools.  We need to do this so we can break harmful inter-generational patterns and cycles.  We need to do this so we can create a world where love, not fear, is abundant and the motivation for all our actions.  

We need to do this work for the sake of our most intimate relationships, for the sake of our least intimate relationships, for the sake of our Self, our humanity, our real purpose in life.

Which is to love.  Each other. Our Self.  Our world.

/../

This essay was originally published in my weekly(ish) newsletter on November 18, 2019. It has been revised and edited for publication here. To receive my most recent essays, you can subscribe here.

Shame, complex trauma, & relating with others

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Shame is a soul eating emotion. ~Carl Gustav Jung

Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change. ~Brene Brown, I Thought It Was Just Me: Women Reclaiming Power and Courage in a Culture of Shame

Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike. ~J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

If we turn away from our own pain, we may find ourselves projecting this aversion onto others, seeing them as somehow inadequate for being in a troubled situation. ~Sharon Salzberg, Real Love: The Art of Mindful Connection

When we live with complex trauma in our minds and bodies, relating to others in ways that are not harmful is complicated and challenging. We need to be incredibly self aware, to be able to analyze when we feel activated if what we are feeling is because of the other person or because of our past or some combination of the two. And there are times when we stumble and fail, and our trauma gets the best of us.

We may feel shame when that happens. Shame that we lost our shit, again. Shame that we are “broken.” Shame that we can’t just be “normal.”

In addition to this, many of us carry general shame around the abuse or neglect we experienced. We may feel it was our fault or we could have prevented it somehow. We may feel embarrassed about what was done to us. We may feel “tainted” or “damaged.”

And of course there is the guilt that quickly turns to shame around the harm we caused another person in the present.

Shame is a part of living with complex trauma. Shame for the past. Shame for the present. Shame for a future that only looks bleak.

This shame isn’t ours to carry, though.

It was not our fault, what happened to us.

We are not responsible for the actions of others.

We are only responsible for our own actions.

And.

With this truth that we are responsible for our actions, and any harm we may cause others, it is also true that we need to have compassion for ourselves, compassion for the young children living in us who didn’t get compassion or love, compassion for the ways we are still in the midst of processing and healing, compassion for our humanity and the reality that we will each fuck up.

What matters, to me, and according to Attachment Theory, is not whether we cause harm (because we all will), but rather the ways we work towards repair, atonement, amends.

It is how we handle the aftermath of our “losing our shit” that matters.

Shame would have us hiding out. Pretending what happened didn’t happen. Not addressing the harm. Ignoring it.

Shame would have us defensive. Making excuses. Placing blame on others for our own actions.

Shame would have us causing further damage to the relationship, both with the other and with our own integrity, values, and Self.

Shame, and all the aspects of our complex trauma, causes harm. To our Self. To our relationships. When we are able to connect to our shame, to get to its roots, to find ways to calm it and soothe it, to offer it and ourselves compassion, we begin the vital repair work in our relationship with our Self.

As we are able to repair our relationship with our Self, to find compassion and understanding for the whys of the ways we are in the world, we also create space to work on the repair in our other relationships.

Having compassion for our Self and the harm we have caused another does not “let us off the hook.” We can never use our own traumatic experiences as an excuse to allow us to harm others or to not make the important repairs necessary to rebuild and strengthen our relationships.

This compassion doesn’t make it okay to be abusive, neglectful, or to try to ignore the ways we have damaged another and our relationships.

This compassion does give us a lens to look through, at our Self. To see all, or at least some of, the hurt we carry within us. To see the ways this hurt comes out and impacts others in our lives. To see where our work is, where we can begin the next layer of our own untangling and unraveling.

We will each inevitably cause harm to the people we love. This is, unfortunately, currently part of being human. However, while it is inevitable we will cause harm, it is our choice what we do after.

If we choose repair, with both our Self and the other, we are making the brave, and terrifying, decision to break generations old patterns and cycles, to take down the status quo one relationship at a time. This choice not only brings change within our smaller world, it has ripple effects that will create change in our greater social structure.

The more we are able to intimately, and vulnerably, relate with those we care most about, the more the way we look at relationships with all other humans will also shift. These shifts will also impact and influence others.|

One relationship at a time.

One fuck up at a time.

One repair at a time.

/../

This essay was originally published to my weekly(ish) newsletter on January 20, 2020. It has been edited and revised for publication here. To receive my most recent essays, you can subscribe here.

We will be exploring shame and how it impacts us and our relationships in Embodied Writing :: Too much, not enough, & shame. We begin Monday, January 27, 2020 and registration will close on Sunday January 26 at 10pm PST. To learn more and register, click here.

Safeness & settling into the in-between

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The In-Between somehow makes you feel grimy, like all those sights and sounds and sensations and smells have stuck to you, like you’ve been rolling around in a preschool art class’s trash can. ~Michael Reaves, Mallory Reaves, The Silver Dream

The In-Between place, what I have often referred to as The Goo, can be a very messy, very uncomfortable place. It a place of unknowns.  A place that is familiar in some ways and yet filled with the unfamiliar.  

For those of us with unprocessed trauma living within us, unknowns can be uncomfortable to say the least and at times downright terrifying.  I know in the past I have been a planner.  Well, I still am a planner, but to much less of a degree.  In the past I would have plans A through ZZZ, thinking through all the possible scenarios and back up plans for each scenario or possible derailment to the previous plan.  It was exhausting, and yet it gave me a sense of (not real) safeness.  It gave me a sense of (not real) control.  It gave me space to breathe and not completely freak out if plan A, B, C, or DDD, didn’t work out.

I understand why I was the way I was.  The chaos of my childhood left me in desperate need of stability, consistency, and knowing what the hell was going to happen next in every moment.  I wasn’t one for “surprises” and when plans had to suddenly, unexpectedly change, it would send me into a fight/flight/freeze meltdown.  

I don’t react quite so strongly anymore to changes.  I still have my feelings and depending on what the change is sometimes my complex trauma stuff comes up.  But I don’t need a million fall back plans anymore and I can actually sit in the in-between spaces of not really knowing what will be happening in the next days, months, or years with relative comfort.  Or when there’s not relative comfort I can tolerate the discomfort without freaking the eff out.

I didn’t get to this place by chance.  It has taken a lot of hard work, intention, and a ton of self-compassion. 

Being able to sit in a space of discomfort is no simple task.  It requires us to be able to be present – in our bodies, in the moment, in our environment, with the people around us.  When we have complex trauma coursing through us, all of these things are almost impossible.

Almost.

We can do it.  

And.

It takes practice, commitment, self-compassion, and time.  These shifts don’t happen over night.  It can take months for small shifts to happen.  It can take years for bigger shifts.

And it can happen.  We can do it.

Learning to regulate ourselves, to calm our nervous systems, takes time and energy.  Most of us didn’t learn life-long helpful ways to self-regulate.  When we were children we did what we needed to do to survive – both physically and psychologically.  That generally meant for most of us leaving our bodies, leaving the present, living in our heads.  As we grew older we may have found ourselves constantly stuck in the past or future or both, but rarely if ever in the here and now.  Being in our bodies, being present to our physical sensations was too overwhelming and activating.  

This is not our fault.  We each did the best we could with what we had.  

And this disconnection from our bodies, from the present moment, from our whole Self, can also leave us feeling empty, lonely, and disconnected.  Our relationships, with ourselves and others, don’t go overly deep.  We have our walls and armor that prevents others from getting too close.  

This works for us until it doesn’t.  And when it doesn’t work for us anymore we are left not knowing what to do or how to shift things or wondering if we even are capable of shifting things, of being in the world differently.

We can.  Again, it takes work, intention, compassion, and time.  It takes all of these in combination.  Not one part alone will allow things to shift.  All the time in the world won’t process our trauma or teach us to self regulate if we aren’t doing the work, if we don’t have the intention to do different, if we don’t cultivate some self-compassion.  Because we will mess up, we will fall back on old patterns and cycles; on old ways of being that served us so well for some many years (until they didn’t anymore).  

And.

With work, intention, compassion, and time we will fall back on those old ways of being less and less.  We will find our ways to self-regulation.  We will learn where we end and others begin (a.k.a. boundaries).  We will find our ways to center and ground.  We will begin to understand we are not alone (a.k.a. internal and external resources).  

All things come to an end.  All things shift and evolve.  Whether we want them to or not.  How we respond to the shifting and evolving is ultimately up to us.  We certainly have the choice to remain in our activated states, to remain hyper-alert, to resist and avoid to our heart’s content.  

We can also choose to the do the hard work.  To make the commitment to find some peace for ourselves.  To learn to self-regulate.  To come home into our bodies and the present.  To accept the shifts and changes and evolutions as they come and do our own work within and outside of them to continue our own shifting and evolving.

It’s not easy.  Often it’s not fun.  Often it is messy.  And as I have said many times before and will likely say many more times again, I believe it is deeply worth it.

/../

This essay was originally written for my weekly(ish) newsletter on July 22, 2018. It has been edited and revised for publication here. To receive my most recent essays you can subscribe here.

Feeling our feelings

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We try so hard to hide everything we’re really feeling from those who probably need to know our true feelings the most. People try to bottle up their emotions, as if it’s somehow wrong to have natural reactions to life. ~Colleen Hoover, Maybe Someday

To feel intensely is not a symptom of weakness, it is the trademark of the truly alive and compassionate. It is not the empath who is broken, it is society that has become dysfunctional and emotionally disabled. There is no shame in expressing your authentic feelings. Those who are at times described as being a ‘hot mess’ or having ‘too many issues’ are the very fabric of what keeps the dream alive for a more caring, humane world. Never be ashamed to let your tears shine a light in this world. ~Anthon St. Maarten

For those of us living with trauma, we have spent a majority of our lives dissociated.  Meaning, we didn’t really feel our feelings (until perhaps we had no choice and couldn’t ignore or stuff down anymore).  We weren’t aware of our bodies.  We lived in our heads and outside of ourselves.  

And when we did feel our feelings, we never, ever, under any circumstances shared them or expressed them (except maybe anger).  Those of us living with complex trauma learned early on not to express our emotions, or at least we never learned how to express them in any sort of constructive or helpful way.

So when we start to come to this work of coming into our bodies and processing the traumas that live within us, we all have so much to learn and unlearn.

It is a painstakingly slow process that generally involves many almost imperceptible baby steps mixed with a lot of falling back into old patterns and cycles and finding our ways back out again.

I can say that it does get… less challenging… in time.  With practice, with patience, with self compassion.

Learning to sit in our uncomfortable feelings (and really for those of us who dissociate, all our emotions are uncomfortable, all body sensations can feel like too much) is not easy or fun.  And once we have learned how to tolerate our own feelings, well, now we get to actually feel those feelings and let me tell you I wouldn’t exactly call that fun either.

So if this embodiment stuff isn’t easy and isn’t fun and has us sitting in our uncomfortable stuff, what the heck is the point to it??

I actually used to ask myself this question at least once a week.  I’m not even kidding.

I have many answers for myself (and for you!).  Ultimately, for me, it is all about relationships, and having real, deep, meaningful ones; with myself, with those I’m intimate with, both sexually and not, with my children, with my friends and family.

If we not attuned to our feelings (emotions and bodily sensations), then it is very unlikely we are present in the moment, in our environment, or with the person we are interacting with.  If we are unable to be present with another person, then we are unable to connect with them on a more than a superficial level.  If we are only connecting with folks on a superficial level we feel lonely and isolated and we are also unable to tune into what is happening with the other person on a deeper level.

If we can’t tolerate to feel our own feelings then how can we tolerate to feel another’s?  And isn’t part of being in deep and meaningful relationship being able to hold space and be supportive of and to those who matter most to us?

That’s part one of my answer.

Part two of my answer has to do with our reactions and actions, which also impact our relationships. If we aren’t noticing our little “tells” that we are at the very early states of feeling overwhelmed, flooded, or triggered, then we are unable to do anything to soothe ourselves in those early moments.  If we are unable to soothe ourselves in those early moments, then those feelings build and build.  They may build over weeks, but still with every interaction that activates our sympathetic nervous system that we are unable to reset our system from, then the next trigger feels more intense.  This build up continues until we explode in one way or another.

That explosion can look like yelling and screaming and “losing our shit.”  Generally speaking when this happens we aren’t our best selves and have a tendency to lash out and cause harm to the other person (be that actual physical harm, or emotional or psychological harm may depend on any number of factors).  

That explosion can also look like illness.  Chronic infections, chronic pain, autoimmune issues, chronic colds or flus.  

That explosion can look like self harm, which includes over spending for “retail therapy,” over eating foods that ultimately don’t make us feel good, using drugs or alcohol to numb, and of course what we usually think of as self harm: cutting, binging and purging, suicide attempts, etc.

That explosion can also look like self isolation coupled with extreme amounts of shame and shoulding on ourselves (which can then lead to self harm or illness or “losing our shit”).

That explosion can look like any combination of the above.

None of these explosions are ultimately helpful for us or for our relationships.  

As a species, we humans need each other.  We were never meant to live in isolation or do this thing called Life alone, without any support or help. We are meant to live in community and in relationship.  We are meant to have deep and meaningful relationships where we are accepted by each other (even our uncomfortable feelings), supported by each other, held by each other, and lovingly pushed by each other.

Trauma, and specifically being dissociated, prevents us from being in community and in relationships.

And so.

Becoming embodied helps us relearn what to experience being fully human.

Being fully human has some very messy and uncomfortable parts to it, as well as some amazing and joyous parts, and everything in-between.

So, my short answer to my question above of why I do this whole embodiment thing, and why I support others in their own journeys to embodiment, is so I can be in deep and meaningful relationships with others and with myself and so I can experience all that living as a human has to offer.

It is a conscious choice.  It is made multiple times a day.  It is not a one and done.  

I am so much more embodied and present in my environment, relationships, and Self than I have been at any other point in my life.  Even so, I still fall into those old no longer needed survival skills of dissociation and isolation.  Even so sometimes my feelings sneak up on me when I’m not paying attention.  Even so I cause harm in my relationships, even though that is the last thing I ever want to do.

And.  I am also able to express my emotions to others, often without exploding.  My relationships have grown deeper and more meaningful.  Those closest to me see more of me than they have before.  I am able to get past defensive anger and get to some of the deeper emotions that are bringing up my armor relatively quickly.  I am able to laugh more freely and also cry more freely.  I understand myself so much more.  

I am able to receive love. To be seen. To see that others accept and adore me as I am.

And I have developed a deep compassion for myself and others that wasn’t there five years ago.

This work is not easy.  It is not generally speaking fun.  

And even so, I believe it is so deeply worth it.

/../

This essay was originally published in my weeklyish newsletter on April 15, 2018. It has been revised and edited for publication here. To read my most recent essays you can subscribe here.