If being in your body feels hard

We live in our bodies. Our nervous system is housed there. So, of course, when a traumatic thing happens, and after it happens, it can feel hard to inhabit your body, and hard to partner with your body in healing.

It can be challenging to connect with body sensations, and I get why we wouldn’t want to connect with body sensations. They're not always pleasant. So many of us live with chronic pain (always and perhaps especially now as covid continues on).

So many of us are taught not to be with or in our bodies by capitalism and even just our own sheer survival strategies (one of those things is brilliant, the other keeps me up at night, okay they both keep me up at night but you get it lol).

But what happens when we're healing and we're told to be with our body and listen to our body? When we're asked what we feel in our body and where and how we know this and we come up short, fuzzy, blank?

If connecting with your body is a goal that feels impossible to reach, but you know it's a critical key to your healing, I want to offer this:

Yes, it's hard. Yes, it's possible.

There's nothing wrong with you if connecting with your body feels frustrating and fruitless.

There are wise reasons for this. Maybe it's that disconnection is an effective survival strategy. Maybe it's that so many people whisper yell at you to feel your body without offering any baby steps to get there.

If you want to connect with your body and you also know that very topography and inner landscape often feels both tender and tumultuous, I want to offer that there are so many doorways into connection, and often our hand on the knob is acknowledging we want to do it and we don't know how yet.

There are many paths to partnering with your body in healing (without bypassing that sometimes we feel less like pals and more like frenemies). Here are a few from me to you.

I've opened a few Somatic Resourcing Session packages if 1-1 sessions to connect with your body (and all that can come up along that journey) sounds like what you've been craving (and maybe a lil apprehensive about - that's welcomed, too!)

​LAND, the Somatic SSP Experience, is enrolling for 2 new cohorts. One beginning mid-July; the other in September. The SSP (Safe & Sound Protocol) is also a journey of being present with your body and sensations, and music is the doorway. If you're intrigued, you're welcomed to read more and even apply for your spot.

And for my babes and buds with businesses, I'm elated to hold space for the spreadsheety-markety-systems piece of having a business AND the somatic experience, too. Being in biz is a lot, especially these days. I wanna support you! That can happen right here.​

Okay friends. So glad you're here. Sending you and your body some tenderness today.

Jess

P.S. This was written while listening to Joan Shelly radio. Highly recc The Push and Pull and Haven.

Corrective experiences can bring up so much grief

If you receive the very thing you’ve always needed, the very thing you didn’t get that is inextricably linked to a traumatic experience, and this corrective experience brings you to your knees, you are not alone.

If you witness someone being treated the way you’ve always needed to be treated on a television show or in a book or a passing conversation with a friend, and this opens the griefy floodgates, you are not alone.

If you have experienced sexual assault, and someone lovingly and respectfully checks in with you for consent, this can be a corrective experience.

If you have lived through abuse and manipulation, and someone is kind to you, this can be a corrective experience. There is absolutely nothing wrong with you if these experiences bring up big emotions and overwhelming grief.

If you were not protected, and someone offers you protection - this can be a corrective experience and it can bring up so much grief, resentment, anger, and sadness. Because the protection might be hard to receive. For the times you needed it and didn't have it.

Sometimes waves of grief and sadness emerge when we experience hurts similar to our past experiences. Sometimes pain and sorrow visit when we directly experience or witness a corrective experience. Corrective experiences can include receiving kindness, love, validation, attentiveness, and consent when we haven’t previously.

If you are treated with kindness and it moves you to tears, you are not alone.

If what “should” be a healing experience brings you grief, you are not alone.

Healing can be complex and layered, just like we are.

Jess

Even if we can’t get the apology or acknowledgement or accountability from the person who harmed us, we might get those things from other folks in different situations. And while it’s not like the math works out where that makes it all okay that we didn’t get it from the person who we really needed it from, it might still feel really healing to receive it. Corrective experiences can be really tender, they can bring up a lot of grief and resentment - and they can touch into the parts of us that have been desiring and deserving a certain response or way of showing up. It can be healing to know that this sometimes can happen. It can be tender to be with the grief of the times we really needed it to happen and it didn’t.

If it was as simple as letting go, wouldn't we all have let go by now?

I’m sure a lot of us can relate to this one. Working with a practitioner who seems to think it’s as easy as loosening our grip. Seeking support from someone who tries not-so-gently to unfurl our fingers. Sharing our story with someone whose words roll their eyes at us - why aren’t we over it, by now?

(See also: what’s specifically wrong with us that we aren’t over it by now? And you can bet folks have some ideas about that, and maybe even a solution they could sell us. See also also: We should really be over it by now, by yesterday, by months ago.)

And here’s the thing. Our beings are so fucking wise. We let go when we can, and not a moment sooner.

Our choices are powerful, mindset can matter, and so too does the nervous system woven through our body - and this world we’re living in. These things often dictate our choices, help us to know when it’s safest to let go, and also when it’s safer to hold on.

In this world we are living in, safety can be hard to come by and letting go isn’t as easy as just deciding to do it. We are powerful, yes, and so are the systems we live in.

Being rushed to just let go can bypass the wisdom in holding on.

Being rushed to just let go might assume we can make this choice in a vacuum.

Being rushed to let go can assume a level of safety that may not exist yet.

Today I’m wondering if we can hold space for the brilliance in grasping as well as the release, not rushing either one, just trusting that ebbs eventually flow, and flows might stand still at an ebb every so often.

And what if there is wisdom in the tide going both ways?

And what if there is wisdom in us going both ways, too?

And what if the letting go is a thing we grow towards, all the while holding tender the parts of us that are holding on?

What might it feel like not to be rushed?

What might it feel like to be trusted in our timing, our holding, our grasping and the slow unfurl of releasing?

Asking the big questions gently,

Jess

Healing Can Be Destabilizing, Too

In the beginning, healing can be so destabilizing. It can exacerbate symptoms, heighten anxiety, make space for big overwhelming emotions.

So if you feel like you’re going backwards, know that this can be part of the process.

It can feel unfair to be met with shaky intensity when we’re trying to recover from a traumatic event that destabilized us. But healing can be cyclical, spiralic, a swirl of beginnings, middles, and ends that aren’t even ends. So the intensity isn’t strictly the stuff of beginnings.

You might periodically feel destabilized, sucker-punched by waves of grief that take the breath from your lungs and drop you to your creaky knees. These dips and rises might not change, but our ability to be with the dips and rises, our ability to be gentle with ourselves, to turn to our tools and ask for support - this might change, and can make a hard process a little easier.

Keep going. Keep resting. You’re doing great and it’s so normal to feel like you’re not.

jess

On Not Rushing Someone Through Their Grief

There can be so much comfort in another human witnessing our pain and grief. Witnessing where we are without trying to change it. Loving us through it without pushing us through it.
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Sometimes we don’t need the situation to be fixed. We don’t always want advice. It’s often not helpful (and can be hurtful) to be redirected to a silver lining when we are in a storm.
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Though there is a time and place for advice and positivity, not every time and place calls for this.
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So when a witness to the painful moment we are in is what we are needing. When a hand to hold through the storm is what we desire.
When companionable silence and taking our time with our story is our deepest wish.
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I wish these things for you.
I wish these things for me.
I wish these things for all of us.

⋒ For more support in compassionate listening, check out my virtual guide, It’s Not All Good! ⋒

I AM NOT A HEALER

I️ AM NOT A HEALER.

I’m a spaceholder, facilitator, sometimes-guide and more-often follower, and deep deep listener.

But I️ AM NOT A HEALER. You are your own healer.

We don’t need anyone else to heal us (even though I get that it’s tempting) because how could they?! Other people are not you. Not in your body or life experiences. And everything you want to heal from is trying to show you something. Maybe in the most irritating or heartbreaking or life-disrupting way, but it’s trying to show you something. And that message is for YOU.

In my client work it’s so important to me that I’m not in this holier-than-thou I️-have-all-the-answers-just-pay-me-and-you-can-have-them-too place. It’s really not about me. I️ mean, I’m great, but I’m great in that your session is about YOU. Your body, your sensations, your story. Your pace. Your process.

I️ AM NOT A HEALER, I️ am a witness as you reach for healing. I️ am stepping back so you can do your sacred work. I️ am this lantern next to you as you stumble along your path, but it is YOUR path and guess what - you’re the fucking moon.

You are your own healer and you’re the fucking moon.

Take care, self-healers. You’re doing the damn thing. Don’t forget it.