Moving Through The Layers Of Grief
Allowing ourselves the space to grieve is a paradigm shift in a bypassing culture.
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Lately, I have been sifting through another layer of my own grief — that of my childhood. This layer feels different from other grief layers in the past.
It is slower. It is softer. It is more still.
It is asking me to rest.
Revelling and revealing, I am finding solace within the embrace of grace.
The Messengers Within
Our memories are capsules of timeless magic. They are precious and sacred.
At times they align to the wisdom of the body, and other times they do not. A memory of our childhood could be joyful in our body. A memory of our childhood can also be tense or fearful in our body. Our present day triggers are an insightful pathway to understand the information our body offers.
Our body holds much truth. The messengers of the body have sensations and feelings similar to a radar to help better understand ourselves, almost like the body is a map of where the energy of our experiences have been stored.
When the body speaks to us (and we really listen and feel in safe spaces) whether bad or good, there is great medicine to learn.
In June, I had a sinus infection for three weeks, an unusual occurrence for me. It slowed my typical active movements down quite a bit. It felt nice as the heat and, what I consider uncomfortable, humidity crept in at the start of Summer. However, once I was fully recovered, my drive to return to my routine had changed. As I tuned into my body, feeling a sense of lackadaisical sweetness wash over me, I realized I needed to slow down.
I widened my inner ears to hear and expanded my inner heart to feel. In doing so, my grief revealed itself to me.
Like the pulling down of the comforter for sleep, I climbed right in.
I could almost hear the melody of raindrops and because I have been given access to many of the Clairs, psychic spiritual senses, I could smell the soothing scent of water caressing the Earth.
It brought me even more into the present moment of my experience.
I nestled a littler further under the blankets of emotion, feeling the coolness upon my skin and the support under my body.
I knew I could be here.
I’ve worked hard to know what a safe and nurtured nervous system feels like in my body. With great care and compassion, the many years to welcome the waves of my grief are now like a dear friend whom I cherish, knowing that soon, she will leave.
It wasn’t always like this though.
Befriending our grief is a journey of repair and deep self compassion.
Childhood Wounds
I was taught very young to give my power up. It was either taken from me or I unknowingly gave it away. And when we lose our power, like all loss, there is a grieving, even in the reclaiming of our healing.
Similar to others, I was shown that to receive love and connection meant that I needed to set my emotional needs on the sidelines. I needed to adhere to the needs of others first. Once I learned this system as a means to survive, I became very good at it. I had to in order to have some sense or an idea of connection — to feel emotional, mentally, and physically safe.
It was the only way I knew how, then.
While many parts of my childhood were wonderful there was also much suffering and pain. My adulthood became driven by coping mechanisms from my childhood and adolescent traumas. In my own healing I learned that many of my choices and decisions were informed by my attachments, aversions and misconceptions of my wounded self.
As a mother, I know that parenting is hard.
As a practitioner and healing being, I know that my parents did the best they could with the baggage of unresolved trauma that imprinted upon them. And yet, the emotional, physical, spiritual and mental harmful patterns still bleed though.
When I grew up it was recognized as normal to spank or yank a child by their arm across the parking lot with aggression. Imagine a grown man or woman doing this to another grown man or woman. Would you think it physical abuse? Would you feel a sense that something is not aligned to the greater good here? What feelings arise in your body as you envision or sense this?
It was recognized as normal to gaslight, stonewall, shame, neglect, name call, scream, invalidate and power over children’s feelings or thoughts. This may be easier to imagine today as we see and know grown adults to communicate still in this manner of emotional and mental harm.
It was recognized as normal to force religious views on children with fear based threats, punishments and consequences. Is it possible that now you may consider this spiritual power from one person to another as harmful?
How come it was normalized to treat children with such disdain and harm? How is it that adults would demand respect from their children, yet they were unable to model the very essence of respect towards their children?
Then, and sadly even now, children were to “be seen not heard.” Their voices were considered inferior and of lesser value than adults.
This is collective grief. It runs in all of us.
Why is this important?
Because when our nervous system does not know the emotional safety of rest, we cannot fully thrive, create or step into our own life force. We develop coping strategies to not lose connection with our caregivers, our parents. We learn that we must disconnect from ourselves to keep connection with another.
In so many ways, and this may be hard to take in, our parents can be and were our first bullies. You see, when we believe that trauma is culture we normalize behaviors that are harmful, even abusive.
How often have you heard or yourself even said, “It happened to me, and I turned out ok”?
But have we?
When we believe that trauma is culture we stop questioning familial, social, political and economic systems. And when we stop questioning and remaining open, the patterns move to the unconscious realms of our being, becoming more etched into our unconsciousness — becoming a continued wrecking ball to humanity.
The harm, the abuse, the hurt lives on.
The cycles of generational trauma continue until someone picks up the wrecking ball and says, “this stops with me.”
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