…That’s what releasing all the trauma is about, is about being open enough, vulnerable enough to do the work to tell the truth about your own life. And I think when you can stand in the truth of your own life, you then get to rise to the highest, truest expression of yourself as a human being.
— Oprah Winfrey, Armchair Expert
The amazing podcast episodes released during the pandemic have saved my life. Is that hyperbolic? Maybe. I at least want to express my gratitude. On the days when I wasn’t sure how to keep going, I grabbed my shoes and the dog, headed for the creek near my house, and expanded my world. I still do.
In addition to inspiration, I find solace in the voices of those who so bravely have shared the truths of their lives, often with each other. Oprah Winfrey. Brene Brown. Resmaa Menakem. Glennon Doyle. Prentis Hemphill. Tim Ferriss. Rod Owens. Tara Brach. Gabor Mate. Kristen Neff. Richard Schwartz. Terri Cole. Sonya Renee Taylor. Terry Real. Brandi Carlile. Ashley C. Ford. Rachel Kaplan. And so many more. When we learn how to find them, the wises ones and helpers are abundant.
So I decided, why not stand in the truth of my own life? I am here to practice Glennon Doyle’s bold claim: it is my job to trust my vision, even in the midst of a midlife unraveling. There is both no time to fuck around and no time to rush. Bring on the paradox.
These days, clarity about my own truth has come from inquiring into the impacts of growing up in an authoritarian world. Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey wrote,
We elicit from the world what we project into the world; but what you project is based upon what happened to you as a child.
While participating in an intensive training on developmental injuries, an image emerged of a five-year-old child, with her hands on her hips, facing a bulldozer. With deeper insight into how young children make maps of the world that are based on their intergenerational family patterns and immediate landscapes, I began to honor the lifelong fear I’ve carried in my body. I understood that little girl faced extreme physical and emotional harm if she did not obey the rules of the adults in power and perform the role of a good girl perfectly. Anxiety and de-selfing became my primary ways of sustaining relationships and salvaging some semblance of safety. They were ingenious adaptations rather than inherent defects. In some contexts, these strategies still work.
As I brought compassion to the fraught blueprints I inherited, my struggles with trusting the friendliness of the universe made more sense, as did the association between vulnerability and powerlessness. So I began to honor rather than shame the shakiness in my body that arises when I am feeling vulnerable in relationship. What began as an awareness of a force pressing down on my neck and shoulders—a force that resembled one of those wall-mounted can crushers—released into a trembling when I could stay with it. With adequate safety, that quaking could complete. And liberate.
I recently had a hard conversation with loved ones and, instead of engaging in the tried and true habit of suppressing the trembling, I quivered—from my jaw to my toes. And I said to my beloveds, with the confidence that comes only from having mindfully experienced these sensations many times before, “This is what fears looks like when it’s allowed to move through and leave your body.” That was a moment of agency, not weakness. I have been savoring the shit out of it. With each passing day that I practice staying connected to my body, fear has a little less stranglehold over my life.
With the help of a therapist, I also realized that my nervous system immediately settles when a trusted person places a firm hand on my neck while I feel afraid. It’s like magic. Pediatrician Claudia Gold wrote,
What makes stress toxic is the absence of a safe, secure relationship to protect the developing child from the effects of that stress. The relationship acts as a buffer...this safe, secure relationship is one in which the caregiver has the capacity to hold the child in mind, one in which there is a process of mutual regulation. Stress and adversity are ubiquitous. Adversity becomes ‘trauma’ when it is compounded by a sense that one’s mind is alone.
Eddie
So connection is beginning to replace the limited and limiting strategies of self-reliance and grit, which I have used to get through hard things by myself. That hand on my neck, hugs, words of affirmation from trusted loved ones—all of these gestures and additional ones, too—are allowing that missing experience of mutual regulation to happen. My cat’s adoring eyes and warm body on my lap also work, as does imagining an ideal parent.
And when I am adequately regulated and resourced, my adult self offers that love, compassion, and listening presence to younger parts of me. Every time I can do the latter, I actually feel self-trust grow in my core. It’s like the mercury in an old-school thermometer moving upward as the temperature rises.
When we stay with ourselves, we earn our own trust.
Glennon Doyle, I am here for it!
Despite years of therapy, I needed to arrive at midlife to understand the outsized role that shame continues to play in my life. The pervasiveness and sophistication of the “there is something wrong with me” narrative is downright astonishing. In a recent podcast episode, I heard Gershen Kaufman’s definition of shame for the first time: “the breaking of the interpersonal bridge.” My 45-year-old self was finally ready to allow shame to be seen as the relational injury that it is.
The other day, I went on a hike and was mired in self-blame about how imperfectly I stood up for myself. I managed to use the sacred pause. Understanding that his mean-spirited voice in my head was trying to protect me from re-injury, I asked her, “What would you have to face, feel, or experience if you stopped beating me down?” As I have learned to do, I waited for the response to come from within. From stillness and patience. There was nothing to figure out. Held by the natural beauty surrounding me, the bright, clear truth shone through before long: “If I let my true self be seen, I will be punished, rejected, or abandoned.” Grief immediately replaced the shame. With tears streaming down my cheeks, my Self replied, “I will do none of those things. I am here to love and protect you, and I promise I am not leaving. I am with you ‘til the end.”
Fierce self-compassion is gradually replacing that shame, and the Boundary Boss Bill of Rights is growing muscle on previously exposed and brittle bones. It’s a process. As I often joke with clients, healing is not like ripping off stripper pants. It is about paying closer and closer attention to how the things that happened to us impacted what happens inside us. Abundant creative resources now exist to support us on this journey. For example, Margaret Paul offers this pearl of wisdom that has changed my life:
…at any given moment, we have only two choices regarding our intention:
* The intention to learn about love — starting with learning to love yourself so that you can share your love with others.
* The intention to avoid pain through various forms of controlling behavior.
To hold the former intention, we first need to build safe-enough internal and external containers. Then the alchemy of healing can manifest. With a strong enough foundation, we can remember this:
Reclaiming the Selfie, as Sonya Renee Taylor Invited Me to Do
Who you are is so much more than what you do. The essence, shining through the heart, soul, and center, the bare and bold truth of you does not lie in your to-do list. You are not just at the surface of your skin, not just the impulse to arrange the muscles of your face into a smile or a frown, not jut boundless energy, or bone wearying fatigue. Delve deeper. You are divinity; the vast and open sky of spirit. It's the light of God, the ember at your core, the passion and the presence, the timeless, deathless essence of you that reaches out and touches me. Who you are transcends fear and turns suffering into liberation. Who you are is love. (Major bow to you for this poem, Danna Faulds.)