The edges

Frayed, rough, hidden.

The edges of who we are live deep within. All along and inside and outside these edges live other women, men, people, their lived experience, their pains and pleasures, their knowing, their secrets.

We may sometimes find ourselves deep in the wondering and wandering who these other people were, who they are, how they live in us. Perhaps we have been hearing their words and voices in our own: the sharpness, the sadness, the wanting. Maybe we have feelt the wails and roars and yearning and pleading. All of them rumbling and stomping and dancing within us as we try to make sense of who we are and what we want and how we are to be in this world.

Are we their happy ending? Are we the end to this long line of disconnecting from our children, our legacies (human or not)? Does the self-hatred and doubt end with us?

Probably not.

Maybe.

Most definitely yes.

All of the above.

The coldness. The frigid. The crispness.

The stoicism. The always in control. The tamed.

How to shake it off? To shake it out? To loosen those super glued edges and allow them to fray and unravel?

Looking in and out and around. Spiraling, always spiraling, never a straight line or direct path.

All these words swirling. They are nonsense and all sense. How do we put concrete words to ethereal sensations?

Brene Brown once said:

If you own this story, you get to write the ending.

Yes. Own the stories. All of them. The ones that are theirs and the ones that are ours.  The ones that are true and ones that aren’t. The ones that are facts and the ones that are fantasies. When we own them, they become ours and then… then they can be shared. Then the generations of isolation can come to an end. The the centuries of secrets and the unspeakable will be spoken. Then…

At the edges. Where words aren’t enough and are too much. There is no definition and it is so clearly defined, no finite and also no infinite. Where there is struggle to stay held together and to let it all go and the battle rages on.

Expanding out to the edges. Learning the stories that live within, hearing them, allowing them to be witnessed. Sharing them. Moving them out, giving them breath and birth and life and death. Letting the secrets be told and the shame be shifted. Allowing love, hope, peace. Allowing wildness, expansion, unencumbered dancing and flailing and howling.

Always coming back to the howls. Back to the wails. Back to the grief.

Back to it and not staying there. Allowing it, embracing it and then changing dance partners. Trying out silly and loose ends and untamed being.

Pruning the dead ends, the numb limbs.  Creating space for regrowth, rebirth, (un)becoming.

Opening our throats, reminding others to open theirs, and letting those howls, those wails, those roars out. At last. Again. For the first time. Always.

And so we begin again. We dip our toes into our wildness and feel what is beyond. We dive into our untamed being and experience our embodied knowing. The communities, chosen families, collective, forming, expanding, growing. The roars and howls and wails rising up and demanding to be heard.

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This was originally written on my blog in February 2016. I have edited it for publication here.

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I am now offering material from my Embodied Writing and Embodied Relating courses to my paid subscribers. Currently I am publishing material from Embodied Writing :: Too Much, Not Enough, & Shame for paid subscribers. The first post was published June 13, and there will be 1-3 posts a week exploring this topic through an essay, embodiment exercises, and stream of conscious writing prompts. To have access to this material, become a paid subscriber for as little as $7/month. This material will be available to to paid subscribers for the lifetime of your subscription and is available to all new paid subscribers once you join.

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Ways for us to connect

Embodied Relating/Trauma Informed Embodiment on Insta

Gwynn Raimondi Writes on Insta

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