Childhood, Caretaking, & Feelings

If you were a child who expressed feelings in proportion to those around you. If you contorted your emotions into the shape and size that could be held. If you disappeared and squeezed and repressed what couldn’t.

If your role as a young person was to take care of other people’s feelings, to hold them in your small hands, to weave them into the fabric of your family, to make the unokay acceptable.

You might struggle to believe your feelings are worthy of care. You might struggle to believe there is space for you. You might struggle to believe that your feelings get to exist, regardless of another’s capacity to hold them.

If this is your work, know that it is not yours alone. So many of us are untangling and re-working and weaving these old threads. We are wilting before we remember it’s safe now to bloom. We are foresaking our feelings as a precious survival strategy. We are flashbacking deep in our bones to other times our whole selves weren’t held.

And still. We are showing up in these news ways, trembling. Be gentle in your ferocity: this takes time.

take your time

I tell my clients after a session: take all the time you need.

Healing can take a lot out of us before it gives back to us and time is a gift we all need. To rest deeply, to process what’s unthinkable, to move through what keeps us feeling stuck.

It doesn’t happen quickly, this healing journey, that much I️ know is true.

So this is my wish for you, in a life that rushes and with people around you (and maybe even the person that is you) fastforwarding your feelings—

Take all the time you need.

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Jess Jackson, Soft Path Healing

Soft Path Healing is trauma-informed bodywork and nervous system nourishment in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Curious about working together? Feel free to be in touch.