That’s what healing is. It’s a love offering to the world.
What a fucking ride. I keep wondering what U.S. historians are going to say about this particular chapter. More often, though, I wake up early and journal to find out what the hell is going on inside this jumbled body. What hasn’t happened in the last three years? I am one of the many clawing my way back from loss, betrayal, and an oversized sense of threat.
I also am incredibly privileged. I own a house in a close-knit community where I currently do not have to fear violence. I run a small business and, for better and worse, my services are in demand given how many people are currently traumatized. I also have generous friends, loyal family members, and a rockstar therapist who have held me through the multiple tidal waves of late. And last, but not least, I have a seven-year-old daughter who demands that I tap into my resiliency. EVERY. DAMN. DAY.
Along with all of these good things has been a lot of emotional pain. Like tons of my fellow Americans, I have known acute loneliness, including within what are supposed to be my closest relationships. And I have chosen a profession that, when I do it well, calls on me to sit with people through their darkest hours and meet them with compassionate curiosity. So what is my point? Simply, this: On the other side of the pain, if we can bear to go through it with grace and a fair amount of surrender, is wholeness. And light. And joy.
I used to be so afraid of my own pain. But this past year of adjusting to divorced life and simultaneously tackling sensorimotor psychotherapy’s rigorous (brutal?) certification process slammed me headfirst into present and past pain. I could have escaped. Lord knows this society peddles endless flight routes. Instead, I started buying nonalcoholic beer, gathered all my favorite teachers, and chose to go inside.
There I discovered a sexual assault I had never named as such. I learned how my body impulsively curls inward like a roly poly when I feel terrified and how, sometimes, to collapse and shake and cry is exactly what helps the most. I realized I felt not only different from so many people I love but actually unpalatable to them. And I experienced a therapist sitting next to me, silently and with their hand resting on my thigh, as I let the waves of agonizing grief pass through me in front of what felt like a stadium of people (it was more like five).
I also had my own Good Will Hunting moment with my therapist. Instead of telling me, “It’s not your fault,” until I fell into her arms sobbing, she said, “You are trustworthy.” At least EIGHT times. And I began to let that message penetrate, imagining her hand on my back while she said it. She also helped me to see how shame often acts like an 80-pound blanket, effectively smothering all the insights and goodness from view. But they’re still there, underneath it all. One day, she ended our session by saying, “You are exquisite,” and I only partially cringed and turned away from her. A total victory.
I got to see some of my clients in person again and receive the best hugs at the end of our sessions. My daughter and I had private Taylor Swift and Katy Perry dance parties, and I held her tight in my arms when she felt overwhelmed by the first grade social scene. I planted more colorful perennials and got to watch them bloom. I fell in love and laughed my head off. I co-created a playlist that unapologetically indulged my sappiest side. And, most recently, I took the armor all the way off and, standing there naked, risked saying aloud to a couple of my fellow highly sensitive friends, “I am love. We all are.”
Yes, healing brokenness hurts like hell. But there is so much more than the pain, both along the way and once it is metabolized. Healing is a lifelong journey to be sure. The losses, failures, and heartbreaks keep rolling through. But at some point, when we commit to sticking around through whatever comes flying to the surface or (perhaps more frequently) refuse to leave things buried, the courage regularly overshadows the fear. And the desire to live our life and love out loud triumph over the impulse to shrink, hide, and guzzle despair.
Since I just delighted in Taylor’s Folklore documentary for the second time on this frigid November night, I am giving her the last word on where to begin: “If we’re going to have to recalibrate everything, we should start with what we love the most first.”