Holistic Health & Emotional Healing – Page 6

The Voice of Reason

In a recent discussion with a therapist it was suggested that I was, at times, too reasonable(!). Not only that, but by being too reasonable I was actually hurting myself.

My husband raised his eyebrows when I told him this, clearly he did not agree!

But I have been sitting with it; churning it over in my mind and of course as a result I have had the most unreasonable couple of weeks I could ever have imagined.

Everyone and everything has felt desperately unreasonable.

One days notice from a teacher at school that the cake ingredients rules have changed as I prepare for my child’s birthday. Unreasonable.

Car insurers wanting me to provide information that they know better than me. Unreasonable.

My child wetting the bed twice in one night. Unreasonable.

My babysitter cancelling a two month standing booking less than a week before. Unreasonable.

The resident permit zone being arbitrarily changed so that our property is no longer granted a permit. Un-bloody-reasonable.

And then there’s the bigger stuff…

the school mum throwing her unmet needs in my face
my husband having a ‘moment’ and wondering if I’m really the right one (yes that happened!)
my mother refusing to take any accountability for her behaviour

These are the bigger life hurdles when someone else’s choices can feel so utterly and desperately unreasonable and yet I am very good at making them reasonable. I am very good at looking behind the gauze and finding the reasons, the pain, the whys and the because; and understanding why everyone’s behaviour or choices are the way they are.

A good skill? Compassionate? Able to hold the bigger picture?

I need to segue a moment… when my friend Kim was dying, we talked about the emotional trauma that may have contributed to her illness. Kim was utterly reasonable. She always found a way to walk on a higher plain, she didn’t want to stoop to the level of those who had wounded her so deeply. And that is so honourable and so ‘right’, right? Except that all that justifiable anger and pain stayed inside and perhaps it is what killed her…

So I have sat with my flair of fire, this rage of witnessing the unreasonable and I have held it in conflict with my desire to be so thoughtful and measured and kind.

And then I exploded.

My husband lit the touch paper and I vomited out my rage at all the holding I do for everyone else’s ‘unreasonable’ choices.

And he held me there.

He held me there when I poured out my anger, my grief and my own unreasonable demands.

And he listened, and he heard me. And for the very first time, I felt safe.

It is the hardest thing in the world to hold someone in their pain, just hold them, not fix them, not wrong them, not right them or join them. But just to listen and be with that flow of emotions. And I love him more than ever for being courageous enough to do so.

Because sometimes the emotionally healthy thing to be is utterly unreasonable.

I needed that exorcism as part of my own healing and now I am calm again and able to bear the weight of all of life’s reasons….

Dumped On

So I was recently dumped on.

Emotionally speaking.

This week I have had three hugely frustrating conversations with various customer service representatives from three vastly different companies. All of them were unable to satisfy my enquiry because of company policy/beliefs. And with one I got a bit arsey until I brought myself into check and reminded myself that he is simply the spokesperson or, frankly, not even that, the automaton for the company. It was not his fault.

And then it happened to me.

Someone had issues with the bigger cogs of a wheel I was representing and took me out in their frustration. Everything that I was doing was wrong and causing them distress. And then they got personal too and started the whole ‘other people think this too’ about me. That I’m not doing things in the best way, that I’m not diplomatic or something enough. That I am too abrupt.

Yup. I can be. And I have spent years beating myself up on ‘not being enough’ and I spent a few days holding this energy that was hurled at me; dumped on me.

And then I remembered that I’m ok. That I am a good person, even if I am sometimes abrupt. I am kind even if I not ALWAYS diplomatic. That I am allowed to be human and flawed and that when someone is dumping, that is their shit to deal with.

As Tosha Silver said is her fabulous new book ‘It’s not your Money’: ‘This event may indeed have been Divinely orchestrated… I was even grateful to the curt lady who’d hurt my feelings. If I’d hated her, I would have missed the whole point.’

And this was me, I could hate the woman for dumping AND feel shit about myself or I could take the opportunity to recognise my vulnerability to this sort of judgement, take a deep breath and restore my soul.

All of it is a gift. All of it is a lesson worth learning.

And breathe…..

The Death Temptation

I am writing this from a basis of my truth, something that is deeply true to my beliefs and understanding of the world and also knowing that this is not a place or a belief for many people. (It maybe wiser for some to stop reading now…)

I believe that sickness nearly always has a deep emotional cause. To be clear this is not karma or punishment, it is not that we have done anything to ‘deserve’ our sickness, but that events or situations that have created trauma in our system are the roots of dis-ease.

Therefore as part of healing it is important to treat not only the easing of physical symptoms but also an awareness of the energetic emotional block that is part of the whole story.

In this vein, I recently stepped into a curious space of feeling myself manifesting dis-ease within myself.

I had stepped into the Death Temptation.

Despite my classic moments of crass insensitivity, I do also empathetically resonate to others’ pain; tears well easily to stories of heartbreak and I feel others’ fears of loss and sadness deep within my system. So it should be no surprise to me that at times I carry the energy of my friends’ and loved-ones’ dis-eases too.

I am nearing mid life and as such, conspiring with the heavy toxicity of our western lifestyle, there is cancer and illness at too many doors right now. One in two the statistics say. I have been holding the fears and news of many and it has been hard not to hear the ‘what if’… knocking at my own door.

But the death temptation is not just about carrying the fear of physical death it is, thematically, a more deep rooted emotional block. It is a reaction to disappointment, heartbreak or loss; a battle against life itself. Death in this form is a, conscious or subconscious, power struggle towards self destruction. The message is that death is perhaps the only thing that could end the pain and exhaustion.

And this is where holistic medicine works so brilliantly for me. In the last few years I have experienced two enormous heart breaks, I have heard myself speak the words out loud ‘my heart is broken’.

Twice.

And for two very different reasons. I remember the ‘heartbreak’ of my teens and twenties, all boy related of course (!), and they were real but oh so very gentle compared to this grief that has consumed my body and soul.

And I thought I had processed them well, and I had, but not enough. I have reasoned my way through these processes and not allowed myself to acknowledge the true depth of pain they have caused within me. So when my body started showing me signs of physical discomfort that resonated with all this fear and reality of dis-ease around me, I took myself to my extraordinary and wonderful homeopath who treats the soul and heart alongside the body.

And she enlightened me to the Death Temptation, this space of choosing death over life because the pain has been to much to bear.

And she showed me another way.

ReBirth.

It is time for me to rise through the pain of loss, to claim my rightful place in the world; to live, to learn, to teach, to love.

I have faced the temptation of death and I choose transformation instead.

As always with endless gratitude to Anne .

Today Only

My kids, like all kids, are moment to moment peeps. If they are in the middle of a game, or need to put five cars in a bag, or plait their hair before going someone, those things take priority over and above the consideration of being on time and potentially missing something that they really don’t want to miss. No matter how much I explain, the movie won’t wait for us, the party will already be started… using things that would be important to them ‘in that moment’ none of it is going to take them out of THIS moment.

It drives me absolutely potty AND I want to be like them.

Today Only

Yesterday I was talking with my incredible homeopath & friend, running through the anxieties that were causing me physical and uncomfortable symptoms. ALL of them were anxieties about the future. Do I need to do x now in order for y to happen then?… what if I don’t feel like this when that happens?… etc

And she reminded me so beautifully that every choice that I am pondering and worrying about is a day to day decision. Today, does it feel right to be in no contact with my mother?; today, does it feel right to be cosleeping with my children?; today, does it feel right to be living in this country?; today, does my relationship feel right?; today, am I doing the best that I can for myself and my choices?

Those are the only decisions I can consider. The future it unknown. Life happens. And suddenly I feel the energetic release from my body as I realise I don’t have to know who I will be in 20 years from now, nor even tomorrow.

All I can do is Today Only.

Radiant Glory

I am struggling with the continued dialogue around the toxic masculine predator. Whilst I agree that consent needs to be clear (though hopefully without killing every last vestige of romance and spontaneity), I believe there is a place for female accountability too.

I have stood as a disempowered woman who has said ‘No’, provided the body language of discomfort and rigidity and not been heard or respected. I have had a man’s hand at my throat for not fulfilling his needs; I have said ‘no more’ to the boyfriend I was leaving but he still took more; I have walked away from too many situations feeling unclean, unhappy and abused. And I have had a part to play in that dynamic occurring.

Yes there are the rare but horrifying psychopaths whose terror we would have no control over, but so many of the ‘me too’ stories are women asking for men to define the scenario, to be respectful, healthy, wholesome no matter what they are confronted with. We are again giving away our power by asking them to be solely responsible for holding women safely.

We are asking for men to be brought up to respect women, to do things differently, but why aren’t we asking for women to make this change too? In every relationship dynamic, we can never expect our opposite to make the change, we have to create the change for ourselves and perhaps they might follow our shining example!

Why have we been meeting film directors in their hotel rooms, instead of insisting on a space we are comfortable with? Why do we choose to drink away our inhibitions at frat parties? Why did I stay in the room when I ended a relationship, after I had said ‘no’ to one more time? Why did I not get up at leave, why did I not set my boundaries clearly, why did I not honour and respect myself enough to do what I needed to keep me safe?

We are asking men to respect us, but do we respect ourselves? When do we say ‘No’ with clarity, strength and follow through. I’m not talking about the ‘life in danger’ scenarios, I’m talking about the every day abuses that I hear women happy to rage about but refuse to take accountability for. Yes men have their work to do, but so do women. Should a man take advantage of a inebriated woman, absolutely not. Should a women be inebriated in a circle of people she is not safe with? Are we treating ourselves with respect as we stumble and slur? Are we treating ourselves with respect when we stay with a misogynist boss for the sake of our career? I can hear the thousands of excuses being hurled at me as I write this, the shunning of blame straight back to the men, the justifications for staying when your body was screaming to leave, the fears. I hear them all, I acknowledge them all, I honour them all AND still there is space to take back our power for ourselves, not from men but from the ether where we left it. We don’t need to lord over the masculine, we simply need to claim back the feminine in all its powerful and radiant glory.

Robert Moore lectured to the effect that the uninitiated man becomes an unwise aggressor and the uninitiated woman a victim.

Initiation (the supported process of shifting the psyche from child to adult) helped me find my strength, my clarity, my respect and my ‘No’. Not since my initiation have I encountered these myriad dynamics of abuse that I previously encountered daily, because my energy and perspective has shifted so significantly. It is in my power to deign to let myself become victim or instead to hold compassion for those who act out their wounds and place my boundaries firmly between us.

I will endeavour to raise my son to be a man of self respect and my daughter to be a woman of self respect. I know that if I achieve these aims, they will mirror that respect out into the world through their actions, words and deeds. That is also the choice I make for myself.

I stand in my power and say and act ‘No’ when I need. That is enough.

Every Possibility

Social Media is both friend and foe; I love the connection I can maintain with International and long-ago friendships and I don’t love the constant barrage of thoughts, opinions and information that fill me up with a mixture of curiosity and confusion.

What is fascinating about it, and also a little frightening, is the window into the trends and views of society on a global scale. Despite my childhood not being that long ago… it was a different place of understanding then. My world was much smaller.

One of the gifts that this explosion of world-wide connection brings is that the doors of taboo discussions have been flung off their hinges. Everything is on the table, there is every possibility laid bare.

And with that comes a curious place that I observe, that of fundamental disempowerment. This overwhelming irony that these global conversations ‘should’ offer a space of empowerment for everyone to speak their truth with validation (and criticism!), linking support networks for minority groups and bringing them to the front stage.

Yet what I am witnessing is the ‘never enough’ response. Seemingly no matter how big the platform or how vocal the support, the complaints of mistreatment and disrespect are only escalating on an exponential level. In this place of demand for equality (even though the world is not equal and never shall be), parity and even positive discrimination, compassion, understanding and forgiveness have been left far behind.

So what I see from this is that it is not the world, or the corporations, or the communities holding anyone back, it is ourselves. In a place where every possibility has become acceptable, it is finally the inner shadows that can no longer hide behind the walls of unfairness or injustice, what is left are the core beliefs of the individuals who are unable to empower themselves. The constant striving for the next righteous march or debate is an internal striving for a feeling of wholeness and self belief; for when we hold ourselves with absolute knowing and integrity there is nothing that can stand in our way of simply being our very best selves. It is not the ‘troll’ on twitter that inhibits a person’s happiness or life choice; it is not the governments’ discrimination that stops anyone claiming their passionate life, it is only ourselves and our woundings that may have broken our spirit.

It is time now to pull back from externalising our shadows, from blaming everyone and everything. There is now every possibility offered in the world; to heal, to work, to explore, to expand, to become, to be. Take it. Take what you need to shine your best self, to model totality and to bring the tranquillity of self knowing. Everyone’s opinion is their own, hold yours for yourself, I will hold mine for myself and let everyone just be.

In the absence of

I wrote a meme on Instagram recently reminding the world that boys are beautiful too. This came after my son had told me that he must be ugly because everyone told his sister how beautiful she was but no one ever said it to him.

No one had ever told him he was ugly, but in the absence of compliments that he witnessed his sister receiving, this was the conclusion he had arrived at. It was heartbreaking to hear, something to counter as best as we can at home, and also enlightening to realise what absence can create.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I sat in circle with women to train and learn about holding space for the mother-daughter connection as our daughters move into puberty and early womanhood. One of the aspects we explored was how our menses was presented to us as we reached that stage, what messages had we been given through this process. Many of us had received very pragmatic, seemingly healthy, non threatening, non shaming, black and white details about our 5 day bleed; but what we realised in this discussion is that there had been an absence. An absence of honouring, welcoming and ritualising this transitional passage. How differently we could have felt about our years of bleeding, about birthing our children and about the final rites of menopause if there had been a deep acknowledgement of the magical nature of our wombs.

And then there has been the research into why the African American community have higher dysfunction statistics, particularly for their young boys. A strong correlating theme is that so often there are absent fathers. Absence again.

I can see how easy it is to think we can ignore a vacuum, replace it with other, or simply paper over the empty space; but what is becoming clear to me is that absence brings its own complications and is just as important to consider, in order to create balance and happiness, as presence.

The loss of our rituals and spiritual practices as community, the absence of connection in the busy-ness of modern life. These are creating impactful dynamics that are having significant and long lasting effects.

A friend has recently become aware of the absence in his life; missing music, creativity for its own beauty rather than purpose or monetary intent. By consciously bringing back these elements the pendulum of his life shifts and the pressure and negatively that spirals into depression is weighed up more evenly, more gently.

I remember that well from my own educational experience; a solid private education with all the benefits that academia ‘should’ offer for a successful life. And yet in my 20’s I craved the exploration of creativity that had been deemed so frivolous and unnecessary for our modern world.

Until the lack is restored, there will always be a hole that needs filling, an ache, a feeling, a passion, a rite, a love. Absence is a piece missing; a part of the jigsaw of whole.

Know Thyself

I have just finished the first series of ‘The Sinner’ staring Jessica Biel and I was utterly triggered, re-traumatised and mesmerised by the storyline and intense portrayal by Biel. Her portrait of a young woman, innocent to the manipulations of darkness and yet cognizant of the power of her sexuality, resonated deeply with me and, with it, compassion, shame and sadness for my own young woman.

The story is multi layered with the explorations of characters swinging across the pendulum of shadow life, but to me there was one powerful theme that struck home hard.

Know Thyself.

Side stepping for a moment, there is a phrase I use with my kids frequently when they are struggling with hearing another persons perspective on their own story. I remind them to ‘know your own truth’. In their terms this often relates to incidents where their friends have colourful versions of events perhaps placing blame in unfair quarters, this is the phrase I whisper to them as they struggle with their righteous anger when their characters are being maligned.

It has felt important to me to equip them with this knowledge; that we cannot control another person’s opinion or perception but can only remind ourselves of what is true to us and our own soul and values.

Watching ‘The Sinner’ I saw with perfect clarity how Biel’s character became entangled in a deeply toxic relationship from that simple place of unknowing. She did not know who she was, or even who she wanted to be, she was wide open to another’s interpretation of her and followed blindly down a path of self destruction based on the power of someone else’s opinion.

I remember that vulnerability so clearly. Flashbacks of short lived love affairs and countless first dates. As a most innocent example, I recall being obsessed with one man when I was 17 who finally finally finally asked me out and then I had absolutely nothing to offer him in conversation because I had no value in my own story. It is an excruciating memory and a salutary lesson.

The more painful picture was that I was easily able to capture a partner by primal sexual fever but I could not sustain a relationship because I offered only a veneer of personality entirely created by what I thought they wanted. There was no part of me that believed my true self had anything to offer and worse than that I didn’t even know what my true self was. Was I witty, sassy, smart, ditzy, fierce, gentle, interesting, boring? A bit of everything?

Julia Robert’s in Runaway Bride was a more lighthearted versions of Biel’s trauma; but she too evolved through her partners rather than herself, at the end making eggs numerous different ways to see what was her true favourite, previously being whatever her partner’s was.

At the darkest edge of this all is the possibility of where one might be led. I was taken to places by family, friends and lovers that deeply hurt my soul and spirit, that have left scars and also golden lessons, but that I don’t wish for anyone else to experience. I have believed the truth of myself that has come from other’s mouths and I have thought myself to be the worst type of human, the most unworthy and the most unlovable. It has taken decades to unravel my truth from theirs.

I am writing this from the female perspective but, in this time of gender dysphoria, this is truly an issue that is gender neutral. It is of critical importance for every human to be in deep and loving connection with their own soul.

If we don’t know our own truth then we leave the door wide open for someone to create that ‘truth’ for us and whether that comes from an energy of love or darkness, the end is nearly inevitably despair.

Whether we are gifted it from a healthy childhood or have to spend the rest of our life exploring it, knowing ourselves is the key to our personal treasure box of happiness and a vital piece of our healing.

Like for Like

When I was a teenager, my mother and I would get into vitriolic arguments, on a not infrequent basis, and I remember very clearly reaching a place where I said to myself ‘I will not let her see how much she hurts me’. I quickly learned how to respond to pain with a cold, hard exterior.

She was no longer able to see the effects of her words and actions on my soul, as much as they still wounded me internally. I felt more protected, safe and in control when my shutters came down and I could bat away the slights.

I needed to do that then, I didn’t have any other tools and it was a question of emotional survival. But during the recent weeks of upheaval in my relationship, I have realised how ingrained that technique is in my psyche and how disconnecting and triggering it has been to my partner.

As my awareness on this grows, I’ve noticed how many people hold similar traits, how natural our defensive hard stances are in response to perceived attack. I observe how the current representation of feminism seems to echo this too. Our societal responses are cold, hard and super boundaried.

And I get it, I haven’t been cold and hard to my partner because he’s an innocent bystander, we have created a dynamic between us that ping-pongs back and forth between our defence mechanisms. It is understandable that we have wanted to protect ourselves, sometimes from real threat, more often from projected theories, but it has not helped us to grow, to learn and discover our heartfelt truths.

In these past weeks when I’ve been unable to even pretend to protect my raw feelings, when my heart has been cracked open, I have also been seen and witnessed with restorative love and gentleness. As my defences fell, so it allowed the whole structure of defences between us to crumble and for total vulnerability, total truth, to be revealed and explored.

The mirror of our souls is a tenant of my belief, that like reflects like, but that is easily forgotten when it feels so natural to create protection from harm. If my walls are up, I may be safe but I am also disconnected, so it becomes a choice to risk the pain, risk the vulnerability, in order to have the chance for a more magnificent life than one that is simply safe.

Our Natural State

My husband and I are in the very midst of ironing out some of the bumps and grooves that appear in any long term relationship. To add to the fun, we are both in our early forties and hitting that developmental stage (yes, adults have them too!) aka ‘ the midlife crisis’ where all of our childhood wounds pop up with varying stages of intensity, to be faced and dealt with. To top it off, we are just through the very very early years of parenting, which is just one big fog, and now that the kids are at school there is space to face the shit.

It sucks. It’s hard. And mostly it is bloody painful. I think I have cried more in the last 3 weeks than I have in the last 10 years. And with this ironing, unpicking, rebuilding and connecting there have been some sweet and tender times, a second honeymoon of sensitivity and kindness. But mostly it hurts, just like any wounds do. We are digging out the detritus that has been left in over the years, the bits causing sores and infections, cleaning them out and suturing them up.

So whilst I have swung between grief, rage, love, hope, fear and happiness like some sort of rollercoaster on hyper drive, my grounding has been the understanding that our natural state is love.

This is the state we come into the world, pure love.

So when my own or someone else’s behaviour, actions or words appear unloving or hurtful, my faith in humanity and our core state, helps me to understand that these come from a wounding that needs to heal. That our natural state of love is our instinctive place to wish to return to and our intentions are drawn from there. It is so easy to hear and be the worst of things, to use anger and coldness as a crutch for survival, but true connection, true living can only come from love; no matter how much it might hurt to get there.