Normally I tell the story that I’ve been on an intense inner growth journey for the past decade. I say that the birth of my son prompted a good, hard look at my life. That one day I looked down at the little infant in my arms and had a veil-cracking thought, “I know I deserve this life I have because of what I’ve done -” (so I believed), “But surely he hasn’t done anything to deserve this.”
The above is all true, but there’s also more. All of the trauma from my relationship with his father buried parts of my past self so deeply that I couldn’t remember them anymore. But, as I said above, I have spent the last decade learning how to heal and become whole again,
First, some quick context: these last two months I’ve been working on accepting my shadow self (my traumatized self, really), with all her flaws, and all the gifts and skills she brought me. Most recently I’ve been staring down the crux of the loudest pain I feel day to day - my parenting. It’s an odd place where attachment trauma, relationship trauma, and the trauma of quitting ADHD medication all overlap,
Today I had a session with my good friend Maelle, a transpersonal relationship coach, and we finally got to the heart of the situation and I saw the parent I wanted to be, and what I needed to do to get there (namely: face the damn fear and process the painful feelings). A funny thing happened this evening though - I couldn’t sleep. As I lay in bed, I began to remember that everything hadn’t been all-bad when my son was little. (I know this cognitively, but it’s often very distant), Specifically, I recalled that I used to take my son hiking in forests on a daily basis, and in the forests I would be so happy with him, that I would make up songs for us. This may seem benign, but - at least for me - that ability to create music and to sing is tied closely with the experience of aliveness, openness, and safety.
I’d make up songs about dandelions, and old rock walls, and living in apple trees. I’d also rewrite lullabies that I disliked the lyrics of. Around this time, I realized that sleep was futile, and decided to shower and give myself space to sing one of the lullabies, and see what came up for me. I could barely sing a line without my voice catching on tears, so I slowed, and sang the whole thing through once. The I let myself cry (or try to, it felt strained), and I let myself speak whatever floated into my consciousness, as if I were in the room with my somatic practitioner.
After I was done, I sang, cried, and spoke again. And then again. My words started as remembering how hard I’d tried to hold on - to not lose myself - in the midst of everything my ex did, and how long I fought to get back to feeling like myself. At some point the memories shifted back, to before my son, to when I was in college for glass art.
I became aware suddenly that I hadn’t been on this journey for just 10 years, and I hadn’t found my way into somatics as a result of it. Before a cross-educational deal was closed, I’d planned to go to Australia for a Masters in Art. I don’t recall the details now, but my thesis proposal had to do with using the hotshop studio in a therapeutic way, to bring people confidence through new experiences and engaging with the unknown - it would be entirely about the process, with no tangible item to bring home afterwards. This my friends, is somatics. It’s entirely about the process, the unknown, new internal experiences, and leaving with an inner shift instead of an outer object,
Those words I’ve just written sit rather bizarrely within me. I recall reading in the past, someone saying that your life seems quite random, but one day you look back and realize it’s been on a very specific path all along.
It isn’t just the unknown and the helping people that threads back that far though. Another important part of somatics is the ability to withhold meaning making, and to attune to and really understand what your client is talking about - these both have to do with language. I am quite aware that I love language, with a faint recollection that many of my projects in art school revolved around language. Tonight though, it dawned on me that it was not just language and communication - it was attunement and meaning making. Specifically, I recalled how I’d cast words in glass like, “NEVER” “ALWAYS” “FOREVER” “LOVE”. Then, rather morbidly I suppose, I’d hot sculpted little tiny human figures, tied nooses around their necks, and hung them from the words. I suppose it struck me as notable that the meaning of a word could be so powerful for some people that they’d kill themselves over it. Less intense, I also have a memory of listening to Alan Watts in the stone wheel room, and how I’d cast hot glass into bell peppers because I wanted to make negative, intangible space, visible.
So tonight I realize that I’ve been lying about my story (though really I’m being dramatic, because a lie generally infers (1) conscious intent to deceive, (2) for one’s own gain). This very peculiar path that I’m on did not start 10 years ago, it’s been driving me since college. And the faint ideas of my teenage years that I can grasp now suggest that I’ve been on this path longer than I can understand.
And there’s something to this idea of being driven, not in fear as we’re all obsessed with focusing on, but being driven towards a unique way of being that perfectly suits you. That awareness pulls at something deep within me, but that thread I’ll let rest for now.
