A particular story from my past has been bubbling up to the surface lately.
While it’s not a memory that I’ve repressed or feel uncomfortable talking about it’s definitely one that holds a lot of pain and what I am coming to realized, a lot of shame.
Lately I’ve been feeling the call to heal my childhood trauma more than ever before.
I’ve been witnessing the pieces of myself I have been disconnected from and they are taking the form of my younger selves.
These are different ages connected to moments in my life where I felt rejected or as if someone completely took their love away from me.
The me in this particular story is a little older though. So this memory, this trauma, is not an original one. It’s merely a replica of one that happened when I was eight.
But when I think about it, this one is SO much more painful.
I was 21 years old and three months into a relationship that I have referred to in past blogs.
The emotional scars left from this one tend to surface when I find myself in a new relationship.
Because to put it simply, that shit messed me up.
But it affected me so deeply because it was tied to a very similar memory from when I was 8 years old.
This is how it works. We have some trauma from our childhood and it often times keeps getting pressed on over and over again from new moments that remind us of the original.
Let me just say that this design is really fucking frustrating. I’m not a fan. But also, it makes sense.
In this particular memory my boyfriend at the time completely shut down after a simple fight we had the night before.
I had went to sleep telling him he was being ridiculous (because he was) and woke up to a complete stranger.
He was cold. He was detached. He looked right through me.
It was SO painful. I mean excruciating.
The reason why isn’t just because he was acting horrible to me. It goes deeper than that.
The reason why in that moment when my boyfriend rejected me I felt like I was being strangled and could barely breath is because it replicated a memory I had when I was much younger.
And this trauma of my childhood doesn’t feel like a big messy thing. It was pretty simple and at times I feel like I don’t have the right to even call it a trauma. Because I know that so many people have had really intense and painful childhoods.
But that’s not how it works. My trauma is my trauma. And it affected me how it affected me. And me discounting it because I don’t qualify it as “intense enough” is simply a defense so that I don’t have to feel it.
I truly believe that the reason why we call in these replica experiences which trigger us and feel so damn painful is because it is this piece of ourselves asking (sometimes begging) to be healed.
The thing is that while just because you have the awareness and can make the connection all the way back through the labyrinth of childhood memories doesn’t mean its healed. That’s just the first step.
What comes next is the deep dive. Feeling the feels. Allowing these feelings to be seen and heard and truly experienced.
That is the hardest part for me. Because feeling these kind of feelings are SO damn uncomfortable. This is why we look outside of ourselves for ways to anesthetize and forget.
But to sit in these feelings. To allow them to shift, expand and open and breath, yes BREATH. Well this is where transformation take place.
It’s not that we have to actually do anything at first. That comes later. First, we just need to feel it. There is something so powerful in feeling. So healing.
In a society that is always telling us we need to DO something the most precious moments in healing are sometimes the ones where we are doing nothing more than being present. And often times this is the most difficult thing we could do.
That’s where I am at the present moment. Trying to be with it. My feelings. My heady thoughts. My fears. My hopes. All of it.
Just watching and feeling. Listening.
I’m writing this on Monday the day before the lunar eclipse. Astrologer Jessica Lanyadoo, spoke about how this eclipse is simply asking this of us. To “let go of the narrative and be present for the feels.”
I’m going to do just that.