Rest Is Enough
Since sharing more of my story on this blog, all of my “parts” have been shaken up. As a Childhood Sexual Abuse Survivor, or as I like to declare, an Incest Survivor, I take on many roles. I feel activated on many levels because- I have learned how to be adaptable in order to survive. In my very first blog post, I talked about Grace. I talked about being moved by grace, and feeling it in my life and in my body. I’ve known since I was a child that this abuse in my lineage would stop with me. I’ve always understood that hurt people hurt people. That I haven’t wanted to continue that cycle. So for me, healing my pain means being with it, at the deepest levels inside my body, so that it can dissolve there, through my compassion and gentleness with it. If I do this, it doesn’t have the power to hurt anyone in my life. This pain was never mine to begin with. It was always my fathers, and his fathers, and his fathers…etcetera.
Even though I feel a very strong connection with this frequency of Grace and Compassion, I still have the other parts of me that get scared. And I have no idea when their fear will flare up. I call them, my little children, sometimes, or my “parts”. I can feel really really good after making a big step like creating this website and platform, for myself. I can feel really big and brave and in my warrior stance. That unstoppable accomplished feeling. Like I’ve made another dream come true. Feeling all the happy goose bumps feels. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, days, sometimes weeks later, I can get HIT with anxiety. Oh Shit, did I talk this over with my parts? Are they ok with all of this? I think I did, ‘I thought we were all on the same page. I thought they said they were ready to be seen more. Then, i’ll start to feel REALLY REALLY EXPOSED. I will start to feel really raw, in my skin. The sun will even seem blinding to me. I will feel like a new born baby, unsure of a safe place to land. There are so many parts of me at work in the world at all times, and some of them, as I described can become over loaded with all of the new sensations they feel. It’s like they are suddenly released into the wild world where they are free to feel, and take in their new environment and their like….where the heck am I ?!
These instances are very precious and precarious time for me. I don’t have memories of being an infant, but I imagine it to feel similar. I’m very vulnerable and It feels like I’m feeling everything all at once. Being so in my body, that I don’t know where I end and someone else begins. Like a child that’s gone “loony-tunes”. They don’t know what the boundaries are. All they know is, “my body wants to do this now….lets go this is FUN!!” So this is what these parts feel like. Except that they’ve been hurt before, so they are cautious and don’t know who to trust. They are looking for clues in their environment, and from individuals around them. Is it safe for me here? Can I be myself here? Will I be loved and excepted in this new space that I’m in. Where I’ve decided to come clean, and be seen for all of me. Well, more of me anyway. I’ve been so conditioned to keep these parts that have learned to survive with alone, to myself, that its taken me many many years, to even let them speak and share in this way. And like the new born baby, that really does very little, because its body and brain are working so hard to develop, I’ve realized how crucial this idea of REST is.
Even when I’m resting, I’m moving a lot within me. We have such an aversion to slowing down in our culture, particularly in the west. This message is calling to me very strongly. REST. REST. REST. What is rest to me? It feels like deep internal baths of windy breaths. I feel the earth holding me in her canopy of bone wombs. Spaces that are timeless. Where I have no agenda. Rest to me feels like a great allowing. It’s one of the most natural states for me to be in. Rest is saying, I’m here…as long as I need to be. That I honor where I am . There is no need to get ahead of myself. I can luxuriate in my own energy here and now, because it feels good to do so. This is the message my body is giving, as I navigate more of me being on the “outside” of my body. This is survival for me. This is, HOME.
