Shifting focus
A piece from the vaults, edited for today
Humans are social beings. We evolved in community and our neuropathways crave connection. Yet the systems we live under, the ones that traumatize us each day, have spread the myths of rugged individualism, the nuclear family, and scarcity and lack.
We all live with trauma running through our DNA and nervous systems. When it comes to emotionally intimate relationships, we are all wild wounded animals, desperately wanting someone to come close and help us while hyper-vigilantly protecting ourselves from future pain and wounds by keeping anyone and everyone away.
We are all wandering around, hurt, wanting, and searching for someone to understand us, accept us, love us, while hiding behind masks and old (untrue) narratives of our worth, value, lovable-ness. We focus on our hurt so intently we can hardly imagine what it is to feel safe, nurtured, nourished, unconditionally cared for or loved.
We need each other. We want each other. And we have no idea how to connect with each other.
What if, instead of solely focusing on our pain, we looked up for just a moment to feel the sun on our face?
What if, instead of obsessively trying to heal our wounds, we let them be for a bit and turned our attention to those curious, playful, undamaged parts of ourselves?
What if, instead of buying into the lies that we have to do it all alone, that we are a burden to others, that we are too much/not enough, that no one wants to help us, we reached out to someone we know we can trust and openly and honestly tell them where we are at, allowing ourselves to be witnessed and held?
What if instead of repeating a story that we are bothering people by saying hey, thinking of you, we sat with the truth of how good it feels to us when/if folks check in with us?
A thing I’m learning more and more is how much we actually appreciate each other. How when we can be held and witnessed, when no one is trying to “fix” us (including ourselves), when are accepted as we are, we can feel the kinds of connections we have always been meant to have with each other.
Being able to both hold and be held in spaces like this, relationships like this, invites us to do both the inner and outer work of healing, shedding, risking, accepting. It is often so uncomfortable, especially at first. It will feel wrong. It may even make us feel literally sick! And yet, this is how we build the kind of life, relationships, world, that has always been our birthright.
I invite us each to reach out to someone we trust, to move through the discomfort of allowing ourselves to be seen as flawed, imperfect, human, and give them the opportunity to hold us, witness us, allow us to be who we are without trying to fix anything.
Can we allow ourselves to reach out and be reached out to, to make this living more bearable, and perhaps, in moments, even delightful?
/../
This was originally published in September 2023. It has been slightly edited for publication here.
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