The Annunication

In The Annunciation, when Mary is asked to be the mother of God, she is being asked to allow her heart to remain open in a world that is simultaneously joy and pain.

Keeping an open heart through life's trials, some involving persecution, abuse, is the greatest challenge of all. Can you remain open to it all? Can you let yourself feel it all?

Can you look for the innocence in others? Can you believe if they knew how to behave better, they would?

I've been thinking and talking a lot about trauma with people in my life recently, and the journey from being somebody with low self-esteem who lets others walk all over them, to being traumatised and seeing the world as baddies and goodies, abusers and victims, which is a necessary step.

The final one being able to feel inside a sense of wellness and protection no matter what and seeing the humanity of those who hurt others, acknowledging that sometimes we are the one who does the hurting and we are no better than anybody else. It is a process of cracking open and being humbled.

In the stories of the life of Jesus, Clark Strand and Perdita Finn who wrote "Way of the Rose" encourage us to see ourselves as all the characters when we are meditating on the mysteries. Sometimes we are the Jesus being flogged and sometimes we are the one holding the whip. How good are we at surrendering to what is? How good are we at refusing to punish and persecute others, even if that is only in our own heads?

I think about this in relation to the birth world, a place I rarely engage in these days. So many traumatised women trapped in the second stage of recovery and either bullying each other or playing victim while also trying to rescue women from the system. I have been that person.

I'm not interested in trauma olympics anymore. Everybody has been traumatised, everybody. We are all in this together. I am here to hold compassionate space for that. I'm interested in how you are able to hold everybody's humanity and keep your heart open to feel it all.

- my progesterone always drops around day 22 and then I can't sleep and want to write.

Lessons from the eight of swords

Lessons from the eight of swords

One thing I've noticed with traumatised women and dating, is the hyper-vigilance and tendency to cut and run at the first glimpse of reality, that their lover is less than perfect. It is something I've struggled with and I've witnessed in friends. I only became ready to break the cycle when I decided to date a good friend of mine who I knew had my best interests at heart and was fundamentally good and decent. It didn't work out but I am forever grateful for the lessons I learned.

I was talking about this with a friend the other day, and how we confuse legitimate human experiences with red flags. It's okay for my lover to have conflict with myself and others sometimes. What is important is how they speak about the others involved - do their words and actions show a fundamental level of respect? Are they seeking more to understand than to be right?

Conflict can teach us so much about how somebody values us. The healing of the repair makes us grateful for the rupture.

Traumatised women are so scared that if they allow their lover to be human there will come a point in the relationship where they are trapped and can't leave. This is a story they have lived through where they felt there came a certain point in a toxic relationship where it was perceived it was impossible to go. It becomes so much easier to cut and run to not have to face your own lack of self trust. No relationship is binding. Do you trust yourself to walk away when necessary?

If you never let yourself feel uncomfortable you're never going to fall in love. If you want a relationship you need to be able to honour the humanity in another and hold them in grace.

- thoughts on a Saturday morning

I’m Having A Big Feeling

How to feel a feeling

I stopped saying the word "triggered" months ago as I reached a point where I was pathologising my expansive emotional experience. I am not irrevocably damaged. I am a human who feels. I am a feminine woman whose gift is to feel keenly everything. This is not a disorder. This is human experience.

"I'm having a big feeling" makes a huge difference to me.

I had insomnia last night and I was feeling ALL the feelings. Prayer didn't work, meditation didn't work, writing it out didn't work, and I'm not sure how much sleep I ended up getting. I spoke to friends.

I bundled the kids off to school this morning and sat and spoke to myself. I tapped the release points on my body and said what I was feeling. I feel abandoned, I feel unloved, it's okay, I kept saying what I was feeling. It's okay that I feel like this. I acknowledged a huge part of me knew it was "unspiritual" to feel this way but right now I didn't care. The child part of me wanted what it wanted - the easy solution. I wanted somebody to make it better.

I let the tears flow. I knew if I had what I wanted it wouldn't solve my problem because the longing came from somewhere deep inside that cannot be filled by another human.

I prayed on it and asked for a sign. I said that I was willing to see it differently. I cried and cried.

Then I started feeling really angry. My favourite part of my morning is my fifteen minute dance break and this morning was one that left me breathless. Animals shake to release trapped emotion and we have a huge need as humans to consciously do it. Allowing the emotion to come up through the body and letting yourself move however you want to. Even if that is more stamping and punching than dancing.

This whole process took an hour and I might have to repeat it later or tomorrow. Our emotions are like pressure valves and what gets released the amount we are able to deal with at the time.

So now I've flopped down. My head hurts, my eye makeup is smudged, but I feel peace and calm starting to creep back in. The knot feels less. Nothing has been forbidden or left out.