PACKING AND UNPACKING... UNFOLDING TRAUMA AND INTEGRATING

So often I go throughout the day living in the outer world while simultaneously exploring the inner world; with periods of checking in to see where am I and am I “safe.”

You see, the outer world for most of my childhood and adolescent years were spent in terror and fear of my surroundings. I lost touch with my inner being who was much bigger than all of that but somehow I lost connection with that. In some ways, it was beaten out of me. Literally and figuratively.

Because of all that trauma, I developed a hyper vigilance and low level inhibition based nervous system. This heightened my abilities to assess and survey my daily scenery. Meanwhile, there was and is this little boy still present within this adult body and mind. This level of response from my nervous system was based on being overwhelmed which caused me to shut down. Now I look at it like my super power where my senses are sharper and faster since a lot of density of trauma has been removed and I can see clearer than before.

My past has helped shape my present but it doesn’t have to have the same gravity on my future as I once thought it had.

Over two decades of unpacking what was packed and stuffed within me, at such a young age and for so many years, I continue to unfold in my process into wholeness. The only way out is in. I once expected the world to do something for me but over and over again it has reminded me that I am loved infinitely and unconditionally but that I must rely on my inner being for what I had been seeking.

Gauging the moment, I traverse my daily paths and notice what reflections offer gifts for me to see myself into wholeness.

My seeking has stopped but my embracing of the many pieces of me, that I once thought were fragments, are remembering their place in the wholeness of me. This is the process and journey of my life that continues to just be that, a gift.

With or without a partner, which is a deep yearning desire of mine, this is work that must be done if I am to free myself from suffering. In fact, the reality is that we aren’t meant to “do it” alone. Just like finding a good therapist to meet where we are at, we can find a friend and/or partner to be the best support and reflection of us to hold presence for our unfolding.

Personally, I feel that relationships offer this as a quicker means of self-exploration because from my experience I feel that the two most potent types of relationships that can pull on heart strings the fastest are immediate family, and intimate partners. On occasion, you have a best friend that also plays this role as well. (Like my bestie.)

This all serves in my favor as I come into wholeness by integrating all my pieces into sovereignty.

Sometimes I get wary and exhausted with moments of this process. Sometimes I am simply tired of it all. Yet, a force within me continues and here I am still. It’s not time to go it says. That’s just another escape. I recently was reminded that in these moments of utmost tiredness and feeling like I’m over all this “work” that the reality is that suffering comes from me resisting feeling into the feelings, which is fundamentally a resistance to what is in the present moment.

You see, for so many years I couldn’t feel. I wasn’t allowed to really feel. I became numb. I lost my voice. I was just a slave to what I was told and to whomever was doing the programming.

I’ve been undoing these programs by remembering more and more who I am. I continue to learn that as there are infinite stars in the sky, so are the many facets of who I am. I could choose to either focus on one part of me or see this one part not as separate but as a wholeness of me. For instance, recently I’ve had some awareness around shame and it use to take me down because my narrow vision of it was that it defined all of me.

I am supported now in remembering that this shame may not go away, maybe it doesn’t need to because it is just a part of me but not all of me. It’s much better to entertain the possibility that maybe the shame wants to be held. Not judged. No story to be told around it. Simply just held with a loving presence and accepted as part of my wholeness.

My identification with it has and continues to shift, slowly but surely (though sometimes it may not appear that way when crippling fear takes over), but I know that as the more subtle levels present themselves that the work can only go deeper at each level. An important awareness I have around such things is to remember to “drop in” and allow the “bigness of True me” to hold the space for all this to unfold in a safer and expanded way. I can even take the feeling of “contraction” and soften into it with the bigness of me.

I tried the other way, which was to identify with the contraction and convince myself that I was trapped, but clearly for me that can only bring more suffering. If I allow myself to soften into the feelings with my bigness then the landscape of my reality becomes different. What the pattern was before, continues to shift. I am loving who I am remembering to be.

I continue to unpack and unfold. Sometimes it’s messy but that’s ok too because the bigness of me doesn’t focus on just one star but all the stars in one cosmic sky!

It’s getting easier to hold a space for the joy in my life, along with the sadness, triggers, reactions, impatience, anger, deep sadness, losses, gains, grief, fear, exhaustion, contraction, and expansion!

Here’s to life! Here’s to unpacking each moment as I embrace a bigger me and feel lighter, freer, fiercely vulnerable, forgiving, compassionate, and loving more fully.

Only love can hold fear and help fear to soften!