my story, for now

I’m in a chapter of transformation. A death and rebirth that feels like a most significant transition, perhaps only second to my actual birth into this world. The seed for this particular awakening, for there have been a few, was planted when I got pregnant, and I believe it started sprouting the moment my son was born.

My natural birth experience was traumatic for me, and the post-partum chapter of my life introduced me to the shadowy beast that depression really is. A part of me died during this time, and I entered the cacoon.

As I sit here writing this, I’m still in the chrysalis. It’s a little dark, but no longer scary. Mostly just that mucky feeling that seemingly makes no sense, but is always making us. I’m in a chapter of unbecoming. Shedding old layers and labels and identities and entering a state of near-constant contemplation.

I don’t know who’s going to emerge from this chapter. What the butterfly will look like, or what it will feel like to see that I can fly. All I know right now, is that it feels vitally important to stay painfully present for the muck. To slow down. Wallow. Turn inward. Contemplate. Process. Write. Laugh. Cry. Connect. And feel, feel, feel.

As I begin to shuffle in the cacoon, seeing what happens if I attempt to stretch and wiggle, I’m feeling inspired to revisit my story. Not every nook and cranny of my human story, but the story of my trauma, and the wounds that served to block me from what I am.

When we’re wounded by this world, we start to layer up. We layer the spirit of our wholeness with protection. We retreat, hide, and distract. Which catalyzes the emergence of anxiety, depression, anger, frustration, and irritability. Some layers try to control. Some manage. Some ruminate. All protect. We flee from our hearts in favor of the seeming comfort of our thinking minds. We think that if we stay there, perhaps we’ll stay safe in a world that makes no sense.

At this stage of my life, I’m able to see that I was karmically born into a depth of knowing that the world around me innocently could not hold space for. This is no one’s fault. It might be what I chose.

I was deep as a child. Contemplating my existence and the breadth of the cosmos. I thought constantly about time and space, and life and death, and the seeming meaninglessness of it all. I would walk through the trees near my home and the halls of my schools, taking in the rocks and the sand, the floors and the ceilings. Wondering what it was for. What’s the point? I felt I had been dropped onto a planet where I didn’t belong.

The painful parts began when I was old enough to start verbalizing what was living in my mind and body. I tried to share my existential thoughts and questions with whoever would listen. The limitations of language blocked me from communicating clearly. I could never articulate my felt experience in a way that felt genuine, and I was often met with blank stares, awkwardness, or clear physical discomfort as the other person listened to my young attempts at contemplating existence.

This part of me was never well received when I was young. Especially by the church. When I revealed my truth, it was dismissed or met with confusion. I learned quickly that this curious part of me so in touch with what I now know to be my Truth, was not a part of me the world wanted to see or know.

So I began to retreat. I began the long and arduous process of layering up. Covering myself with patterns and colors of inauthenticity. I learned to be more palatable. I became a student of the world around me and prided myself on getting straight A’s in this class called life. I learned how to morph and shape-shift into whatever the world seemed to want me to be. And in so doing, I began to lose track of myself.

I covered the wild. The deep. The spiritual. Anything physical that felt not-good-enough. I screened myself. Said less than I wanted to. Listened more than I spoke. I tried to wear the right clothes. Do the right things. Be more here. But less there. It was mentally and emotionally exhausting. And at some point I stopped sleeping. My mind wouldn’t let me rest. It wasn’t safe. When you’re asleep you’re seen. You’re vulnerable.

A big part of my young pain became a toxic relationship with food and my body. I cycled through self-starvation, physical and mental restriction, diets, food control, violent binge eating, and excessive exercise. I was tormented by the body I was in and its seeming insistence on fighting me every step of the way. How do I kill this appetite? How do I kill this body’s desire to live?

My trauma was not related to a single incident. I am profoundly lucky and deeply privileged. I had parents who showed me they loved me. But feeling unseen by the world is its own kind of pain. Feeling like what you are is wrong or unwelcome creates its own kind of wounds.

My pain was a sort of deep and constant churning of fear. An unsettling absence of safety. A cloud of mysterious darkness that lurked in and around me, threatening to overtake me at any moment. It haunted me, and I responded by leaning more desperately into playing the part. Restricting more. Loving less. And retreating into a life ruled by masking and pretending.

The problem with masking yourself is that your soul gets a little testy. Beneath all the hiding lives the sweet little self who wanted to be seen in those early days of our lives and who still wants to be seen. The self never goes anywhere, because we can never push our-SELF all the way away.

What I understand now, is that the energy of our authenticity will always fight to express itself. The world teaches us to hide, but our spirit isn’t having it. The more rigid and controlling we try to become, the more new parts of ourselves will emerge to fight back. Control leads to chaos. And rigidity leads to compulsion. If we hold our breath for too long, we will eventually have to gasp for air.

We struggle with what looks like mental illness, depression, anxiety, compulsions, bad habits, substances, binge eating, reckless spending, addictions to sex, drugs, work, or gambling… because we are hiding ourselves. We are pushing away who we are. Trying to be what the world demands. Covering our trueness. Our thoughts, feelings, emotions, ideas, and voices.

But it never really works. The hiding leads to churning. Our spirit aches to be seen. We long for an emergence as ourselves. Most of us are living with this desperation. This yearning and calling to come back to ourselves. This desire to live fully and completely free.

Eventually, the energy build up that is created by this pushing down, becomes too much. It has to be released. It has to go somewhere. So it begins to seep out as the chaos and compulsion. If our compulsions and anxieties are huge, it just means we have done a really good job hiding and are now reaching a point where our spirit is no longer having it. I’M DONE WITH THIS, it says. Something must change.

If we choose to, I believe we can live freely. Perhaps it will happen in this lifetime. Perhaps in the next. But we do have control over choosing when we want to begin the hard process of healing. Which is really a process of remembering. Who lies beneath the conditioned self?

I am at the stage of my life now, where living beneath the layers is no longer an option. I’m done fighting my spirit. Spirit, you win. Over the past decade or so, this shift began to happen. That subtle shift from energetic layering to energetic emerging. And then when my son was born, it was if it released the flood gates of everything I had been pushing away. Becoming a parent was the moment my insides said, NO MORE. It is time to heal this. So now, instead of layering more on, I’m continuing to throw the layers off. In the same way you might shed layers of blankets when you wake up sweating in the night.

I can no longer live as anything but myself. It’s too hot. Too stuffy. Too restricted. Too enclosed. The fear of living as myself now feels far less frightening than the fear of living out my days smothered by the unnecessary rules and restrictions doled out by a toxic world. But I know this is a process.

Emerging is scary. I don’t yet know exactly what it will look like or feel like as each new layer is shed. But I’m finding that the more I lean into my wildness, the easier it is to connect with others who are doing the same work. I find comfort in knowing that deep within every person I meet, stirs the energy of their authentic self. I may not always be able to see it, or hear it, or feel it. It depends on how many layers of pain are serving to cover it up… But I know that it’s there. I know they are there.

I think in writing this I am choosing to remove one more layer. I think I’m finally here for the ride. Thanks for listening. ❤️