Stop slamming the part of you that wants to look good. Be beautiful. There’s nothing ‘spiritually noble’ in punishing that part of you. This part needs a lot of tenderness. It’s the part that was bombarded with you’re not pretty enough. Well-dressed enough. It was battered with shame for not looking a certain way. Not being ‘presentable’.
It was shamed, ridiculed, ignored, alienated, put down, left out, neglected, forgotten and blamed even for not looking the part. It was the target of a lot of abuse from both within the family and from the outside world.
Of course she wants to look good. Get that nice jacket or those nice shoes. It’s not all “bad”. If that’s the word even to describe it. But your psyche is describing it in that way. It’s not all twisted. But it’s also not all “clean” either. But not in a punishable, falling short kind of way. In a I need love here kind of way. Love and acceptance. Not a trying to wipe out it’s very existence because there’s an idea that spiritual people don’t care about how they look. This is bullshit.
In this culture, in this society, how you look meant survival. This is what you’re dealing with. The desperation of trying to survive. It differentiated on a racial and socio-economic level between those who live in squalor (who don’t get basic human respect) and those who had it all (authority, power, respect, social status aka safety). And this conditioning is so intense here. It’s rabid.
It’s nothing to sneeze at. Nothing to spiritually bypass as superficial ego stuff. No. This was survival stuff. It’s embedded in the psyche as this is how I can survive here. This is how I can get people not to prey on me here. I need to look good. I need to present myself in a certain way so that I am not preyed on. It was a survival mechanism. And in a way it became your research project. It shaped your interests, hobbies and ambitions. Both healthy ones and unhealthy ones.
And even so, you were still a target of abuse within your own family – who saw this as mere vanity not as survival. And they hid behind the veil of religiousness – that was their survival mechanism. And in that mechanism, your inclinations were seen as vain, superficial, egotistical even. You were judged for it. Made wrong for it. Alienated within your own family for it. And outside the family, you were loved for it, liked for it, recognized for it – that contradiction is super confusing.
Super challenging to wrangle with both extremes within yourself. And of course you chose to go for the love, for looking good, for the attention – so natural, who wouldn’t? Even if it came at great cost to you because it did. It was no picnic either. Genuine suffering there too. Believing that looking good meant survival, love, attention. The desperation of it. The agony of that struggle, that my life depends on this! So hard. So challenging. So filled with conditioning on each and every level; cultural, sexual, female, racial, socio-economic and probably more you can’t even see. It’s not just a small thing. ‘Shopping’.
Mercy on this part of you. This intelligent, savvy, extreme, self-protective, to-the-death part of you.
Believing that tears mean ‘there’s something wrong with me‘ adds an additional layer of suffering that is unnecessary.
You don’t know why you’re crying.
And you don’t need to know either.
Just cry.
You don’t even need anyone by your side.
Crying alone is in itself what’s needed.
Without someone there to justify or intrude upon the natural flow of tears.
You with yourself crying, mourning, grieving and even more than that.
You’ve been taught by the world that when you cry, that means something is very wrong.
And so crying becomes something you’re trying to hide.
Ashamed of.
Something to keep in. To hold back.
So you can go about business as usual.
But business as usual has gone out the window some time ago.
Business as usual was always a superimposed layer on the tears that want to flow.
Days for crying are beautiful days. Just for you. You by yourself.
Ask those around you to leave you be. To not intrude or impose their relational needs on you. To leave you to cry your heart out. Without trying to come and save you. Or even feel with you. It’s not what you need. It’s a time for you, your tears and your solitude to be honored – bowed down to. Left alone.
Sometimes you just need to cry alone. Totally alone. So you can be honest with your tears. And so that your tears can be honest with you. So that your tears can bless you in your aloneness.
The kind of honesty that comes when you’re by yourself. The kind of let go that comes when there’s no one else around.
Crying days are sacred days that need to be honored.
You can cry your heart out.
You can cry till you can cry no more.
And the mind will try to come up with reasons for why you’re crying.
But it doesn’t matter, does it?
The tears are the fact.
There’s no need to add a layer of understanding on top of it.
What can we understand anyway. Not much.
So be with your tears and honor them. Let them clean you out. Let them take you where you are alone in the solitude of your dark. Without needing to explain or worry or care about anyone else, anything else, anywhere else.
Let your face be an expression of the pain you feel. Don’t try to mold it into an amicable expression to soothe or appease your nearest and dearest. Trying to communicate on some level, “I’m okay, it’s okay, nothing to worry about”.
No, fuck that. You’re not okay. And in your not okay-ness, you’re okay. More than okay. You’re beautiful.
You don’t need to make anyone feel better about themselves by masking your pain. A saccharine smile, or a slight nod or gesture to re-assure them all is well. All is not well. And that’s okay.
Pain is not a mistake. Pain is not a sign that something is wrong. That belief makes an enemy of pain. A shame of pain.
You’re not here to make everyone comfortable. That’s what weighs on you because you believe you need to hide your pain. To take on a role. And you can’t. You don’t have it in you. You no longer have that capacity.
Be in pain. Don’t make an enemy of pain. Let it be on your face. In your eyes. In your relating. The more you try to hide it, the more painful it gets.
And cry. Cry without making the tears wrong. Without holding back. Without putting a time limit on your tears. Without making tomorrow a day for ‘being better’. Because in that, there’s a subtle demand for the tears to come to an end today, sooner rather than later. And in that, a sense of hurry – speed past the tears, rush by the sobbing and the heartbreak. Be a mess today, but business as usual tomorrow.
No. Throw out this old and dusted instructions manual. And be here today crying, sobbing, in pain, in heartbreak, in inconsolable sorrow. Let the pain pierce your bones, your heart, your gut, your skull. Give it permission to totally touch you, unhidden, unashamed, untangled from the belief of wrongness.
Bless you in your pain, in your tears, as it is, as you are without anything needing to change. Amen.
How small that is, with which we wrestle, what wrestles with us, how immense; were we to let ourselves, the way things do, be conquered thus by the great storm,—we would become far-reaching and nameless.What we triumph over is the Small, and the success itself makes us petty. The Eternal and Unexampled willnot be bent by us.
Rainer Maria Rilke
There’a a a great undoing at my root. It wrestles me as I wrestle it. Or is it the other way around?
Compassion says, go slow, slower than a snail even. Regress if you must. You don’t really know where you are anyway.
You can’t understand what you can’t understand. You can’t undo what you can’t undo. So what is there to do? What is there to understand?
All you can do is be quiet. And even that you can’t do. You can’t force. You can’t will. You can’t pretend. You can’t hold onto.
There’s an imbalance here that is revealing itself to you and wants to set be straight. Wants to come into balance. Into coherency. Into clarity and truth.
And it’s showing up as this fear. This trauma. The fear is the trauma. The trauma of the terror of feeling unsafe in your own family. Feeling like living your life is an abomination to them.
In the past, the expression of your own autonomy, sovereignty was severely punished. You were punished for speaking your truth, living your truth, for doing whatever it is you needed to do to cope. Punished by those who were meant to be your closest allies, your dearest. And all in the name of family.
And so the fear is a friend. The terror is the body speaking to you. It’s shaking you up. Waking you up. Saying, hello hello, mayday, mayday! We’ve been here before and it was hell. Safety needed. Pay attention here.You’re needed here. In the body.
And the body itself is confused. Because when family are the one’s who are “dangerous” – it’s a mind fuck. Because it’s the most seemingly familiar being seen to be the most foreign. It’s “home” but something know this is not what home is supposed to feel like. It’s all you’ve ever known but what you’ve known is hell on earth. It’s the biological pull to be in the safe arms of family and the intelligence of the trauma pushing you to run be as fast as you can. And this is confusing as hell. For the body and the mind.
So let’s bring real kindness, real gentleness to this fight. This agonizing struggle. The mind fuck of it. The heart wrench of it. The panic of it. The one that wants to run and the one that feels pinned down. Let them both be here.
And really look, what was really happening. What is happening beneath the guise of family. What’s really going on here. Why do I feel so endangered around these people? Am I in danger now? Why does the body feel like it’s being ambushed now? Why is it activating fight or flight? There’s intelligence here that needs a deep listening to.
Is this the ambush of feeling ganged up on… Act this way or else. Do this or else. Stay in line or else. Or else. Everyone’s getting their ducks in a row and you’re in the way. What a problem you are. How rude. How impudent. You think we have time for your childish feelings. Your imagined sovereignty. Your unacceptable behavior.
And you feel it, the more you speak your truth, the more this fear is activated. In this interaction and in that interaction. You speak from truth, you act from truth and it’s not well-received. So something in you wants to run. Feels unsafe. Because in the past you were unable to create that safety for yourself and neither did you have it. Nor did you have an understanding or capabilities to discern what was going on.
And there was a hierarchy that you believed in. The family hierarchy. Mom, Dad, older brother, older sister. I’m the little one. The child. Treated as such. This constellation.
A software update needs to happen internally and is happening. The update of seeing through the guise of the family. Dismantling the hierarchy or having it dismantled for you. Undoing the sense of ambush. Seeing through others wanting you to do their bidding under the guise of them doing your bidding.
The stigma around setting boundaries and living from your truth is what activates the fear of being ganged up on. Because in being the family scapegoat, in being the one who carries the burden of the family’s collective unconsciousness, you’re a problem – for them. And so you need harshness or diplomacy, a tugging or a pulling – you need a strategy in order to be coerced into doing, saying, acting in a way that is ‘beneficial’ to them.
But this is not real ‘benefit’. Real benefit is acting in accordance to your innermost knowing in the moment. And finding the whatever it is you can find to anchor you to the earth, ground and breath. So that you’re not sullied by the attempts at coercion, the stigmatized beliefs around speaking from truth. So that you can hold your own amidst the stormy weathers of the family ambush.
You don’t have to leave. That’s the trauma. It wants to run.
Your true yearning is to be able to hold your own. Stabilize and resource yourself enough so that confusion, manipulation, distortion don’t color your vision.
It helps to rest. To digest. To let whatever is revealing itself, coming in or going out – integrate, land. Use your resources for this. Learn to rest.
Your true nature is quiet dignity. It reveals itself in relaxation. In resting back. In slowing down. In taking your time. In not rushing to do, say, or act.
The trauma wants to tell you what you need and what you don’t need. But you don’t know what you need. And that is a blessing. To think you know what you need is in a way a limitation. A narrowness.
The trauma is for healing and digestion. It’s for integration. It’s not for deciphering needs.
In a way your focus is resourcing the body. Learning what it needs. It’s cues. Providing safety, rest and space for it to unwind. Unravel. For all the seeds that were planted, are planted to rest in nutrient-rich soil. To be watered.
Your focus is to breathe. To breathe deeply. To breathe into. Into the gut. Into the clenches. Into deeper and deeper rest.
To admit your vulnerability, your humanness, your trauma-ness, your wounding, your little child-ness. And to find shade under big trees. Teachers, guides, friends on the path.
There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s no shame in that. It’s not about teacher- student. Lesser than or more than. It’s not about becoming someone who knows things too. It’s not about that. And it’s not about collapsing on the one who knows either.
It’s about the quiet joy of feeling connected to yourself. Of understanding your priorities. Not mentally. But in your spine. In your alignment. In your gut. Your root. Learning to trust yourself. Of not letting your movements inner or outer be dictated by others whims and fancies.
And it’s about being able enough, humble enough, wise enough to be in need of help, ask for help, get help and be gracious enough to be able to receive it. And not know anything of it, above it or below it.
Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to. Don’t try to see through the distances. That’s not for human beings.
