From numb to feeling
I’m not a robust, boss babe, powerful in the typical sense, kind of woman.
I lead with my heart
I feel things deeply
I choose to be cracked open and humbled by life pretty consistently.
I’m not afraid to say when I’m hurting.
I’m definitely not afraid to admit when I’m wrong.
I lean IN.
Because I would rather be completely obliterated by life and love
than pretend I am somehow untouchable.
It hasn’t always been this way though.
In fact majority of my childhood and early adulthood I did whatever I could NOT to feel.
Attachment trauma had me feeling as though my body and feelings weren’t safe
Combined with 0 education around my soma growing up
And I did everything I could to resist being vulnerable
I shoved emotions back down my throat and dissociated repeatedly out of feeling.
I formed a relentless social calendar of events to keep me distracted and used alcohol and drugs as a scapegoat repeatedly.
Some truly intolerable struggles in my life I numbed through hard drugs and partying.
Layered within all the chemical highs, travel and adrenaline rush’s were periods where I felt like a shell of a human.
As a result of my chronic dissociation I remember very little from my childhood up until the age of 25.
Family dinners today are filled with memories that have me listening like it’s someone else’s life they’re describing.
I had no idea at the time, the compiling effects my perpetual numbing was causing.
It wasn’t until my late 20’s when trauma became a thing and every struggle in my life was instantly validated.
Since then it’s been a continuous journey of creating safety in my body and leaning into, not away from my feelings.
It’s taken years, despite theoretically understanding my overwhelm response, to actually resource myself and choose differently in those moments of freezing.
Ironically the more safety I have found in myself over the years the more of my history life has offered to be felt.
All the memories and pain that I simply could not meet back then, finally met with loving care and attention.
I say all of this to share that this journey of inhabiting myself has not been a walk in the park.
As I have widened my capacity for pleasure and surrender, I have measured my capacity for anger, grief and intolerable heartbreak.
I wouldn't change any of it though. I wouldn't trade the heartbreak, I wouldn’t erase the grief.
Because in these moments of despair I touch grace in the same way I touch it in states of abandon and bliss.
In the process of opening myself to be ravished, destroyed and transformed by life
my world and soma have been decorated with exquisite beauty, magick and meaning.
So much so that I adore my sensitivity.
I love my vulnerability.
I know my open heart is a gift.
And I’m devoted to dancing this life dance and all it contains
