From a numbed-out existence and back to life…

As I look over the past year, it has been one of enormous growth and change, so slow but so profound that I barely noticed it until I realized that I was significantly changed:  more joyful, more relaxed, and less awash in shame.

 

I have learned to trust the process because the process trusts me. Who knew I had a healing nature and a biology that was working toward my greatest good, if I could only get out of the way?

 

The very first thing I learned was to stop overefforting.

 

As a child, I learned to overreach; to stretch to the point where it made learning hard and needlessly painful. I was fierce and forceful in my approach to healing — taking one self-help course after another, but never fully marinating in the juiciness of the experience.

 

In my life, I’d learned to stay in constant motion; to never rest to avoid feeling whatever emotions and whatever memories lurked beneath that I feared would be too overwhelming to touch into.  Plus, I felt I didn’t deserve simple and sacred rest nor did my nervous system have the bandwidth to luxuriate in it.

 

This year has been a gentle but nonetheless powerful opening…a culmination of all of my work I’ve done all of my life.  I am in the process of saying goodbye to my therapist of 20+ years, in large part because I no longer need him to help me push away the cobwebs of shame that were superglued to my psyche.

 

At the beginning of our class, one of my classmates said, “if I don’t get anything out of this, it’ll be okay.”  That statement stuck with me because, of course, it would have been impossible not to get anything out of a learning experience.  Could it be that if I simply relaxed my grip, I might get a grip on a new way of being?

 

Turns out, that’s exactly what happened.

 

Having been disconnected from myself for so long, I started to come out of a lifetime of freeze.  I started to feel real in a way I never have.  Lately I’ve been quoting from Pinocchio because, in a sense, I now feel ”like a real boy.”  I’ve brought myself back from a numbed-out existence and back to life by participating in this extraordinary group experience.

 

One of the other changes I noticed early on in my learning is that I began talking to myself in a new voice.  Upon waking, I would say things to myself like, “okay darling, time to get up” or lately, asking myself “how can I be good to myself in this moment?”

 

This has led to a sweet reconnection with my body.  I realized that I’d been armored up with tension to protect myself for so long, I’d forgotten the true purpose of my body and its parts.  Now, it’s natural for me to appreciate my body, its various systems and their true functions.  Sometimes, I just spend time hugging myself, deeply appreciating the reality of my being.

 

I’ve been doing my personal work for a very long time.  I think what Rena’s class really helped me do was to allow everything I’ve ever learned and worked on to land in a new way.  A softer landing that enabled me to incorporate it all at a deeper more effective level.

 

I am so grateful to Rena, my Joy-mates, and to myself for having taken this magical journey into myself.  I am truly forever changed by it and feel like I embody much more of my innate joie de vivre having done this de-shaming work.