Recovery

It has been one year since I was out on stress leave and almost one year since I launched my blog. As I reflect on what has unfolded in the last 12 months I find myself in deep gratitude and awe. If I had told myself a year ago that I would be free of my chronic anxiety and muscle cramping stress by next summer I would have been like, cool how?

Well let me tell you.
Radical self-care, firm boundaries, and grieving.
Slow, consistent recentering of what actually matters most in my life.
Taking ownership of what is mine and giving back to others what is theirs.
Letting go of my savior complex and the lie that I in some way hold the responsibility of everything (crazy I know!).
Making consistent time and space for my own needs to be met.
Meeting my own needs instead of phantasying that one day someone else will do it for me. Something I would have rejected anyways due to my lack of trust in people and my fierce independence that perpetuated the lie that I have to do it all on my own.
Finding my truth and speaking it. Writing it. Sharing it. Loving it.

You know that sensation of relief and gratitude that comes after you recover from a cold or maybe COVID? That moment when you realize your body has returned to its natural, healthy state and you don’t feel like shit anymore? That is kind of how I feel.
There is another moment that soon comes, however, where you stop noticing how horrible it felt to be sick. As your body and mind create homeostasis again it almost has an amnesia effect in which we are given the ability to refocus all of our energy back into life as normal. Allowing the pain of the memory experienced in our body to slowly dissipate.

The difference between a cold and trauma or chronic stress, however, is that the virus doesn’t move out of your body but rather gets trapped in the form of a memory. One that is linked together with a series of associations that are more commonly referred to as trauma triggers. While time creates some space and separation from the pain of the experience it doesn’t dissipate it but rather elements of the experience get stored in the mind and the body. Out of sight, out of conscious mind.
Then an anniversary happens and the stomachache returns feeling totally out of place and at times dysregulating. For a person in recovery this provides an opportunity to process and digest the physical, mental and emotional experiences (elements) that were not safe enough to be acknowledged at that time. This is due to the fact that the person is no longer living in an activated state of survival (fight, flight, freeze), much like the recovering body from a cold, the power of homeostasis allows the energy reserves to be utilized in a productive manner rather than a defensive one. More importantly the body is able to reprocess the material from a safe state as well as a more evolved and self-aware one.

This was the work I had to do in the month leading up to my one year anniversary of my stress leave. This is the residue I am still working through today.

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For the majority of my “adult life” I haven’t known how to live a healthy life. I judged those that did from a place of envy and gave greater value to the glorified party life to help disguise the self-abuse that was occurring within it. I fluctuated from insanely responsible, to disconnected self-destruction in a desperate attempt to stop myself from either imploding or completely losing my shit. This proved to become a petri dish for burnout. Much easier to sustain and ignore in my 20s, free of children and the immense responsibility that comes with being a therapist.

As I have gotten older and wiser and more self-aware, I have realized my struggle hasn’t been in tolerating emotions or wanting to avoid them. The truth is I am pretty darn good at feelin the feels! Hence me becoming a therapist…
My problem has actually been in believing the lie that I don’t have the time to. That MY emotions are not top priority but rather being on time to the meeting or finishing my notes or holding space for a friend was MORE important. The compounding nature of this that occurred when I became a mother, even more so when I became a working mother (oh also not just a working mom but one whose work is to hold space for OTHER people’s emotions), was crushing. It literally sucked the air out of me and left me as withered kindle primed for the fire of an all consuming burnout. I truly did not think that there was time for me, anywhere. That was until my body initiated the shut down for me. Which, by the way, I still scheduled and delayed in a mindful way so as to minimize the disruption of OTHER people’s wellness or needs (i.e., My Clients). Insanity.

The truth is when your feelings come they become the MOST important thing. It is the repression of emotion, for any reason, that leads to mental health issues and physical ailments. It’s the self-neglect, self-abuse, self-hate, and self-deprecation that eats people from the inside and creates a world full of the walking wounded. Burned out zombies that are covered up with bonuses and Instagram filters.

The only way to live IS TO FEEL. It’s literally hard wired into our brains and nervous systems (check out the research by Jaak Panksepp on Affective Neuroscience). It’s as fundamental to human survival and wellness as is food, water, and sleep. Three things which, by the way, also have a tendency to be neglected and manipulated in a burn out culture that values productivity and infinitely increasing profit margins over human wellness.
When I first went out on stress leave I sat in the park one day and mindfully tuned into my body. I asked her what it was that she needed me to hear and this is what she said, “You don’t eat enough, you don’t drink enough water, and you need more sleep.”
Gagh! I was so offended! No way was I that uncaring and disrespectful. I am a friggin therapist that preaches self-care and tending to your own needs. How could I have become so insanely neglectful of my very own most basic needs?

It was because I had believed the lie that they didn’t matter the most.

As my life began to shift and change, as one’s life will do, I found myself becoming increasingly out of balance and uncertain how to fix it. As a therapist I work with people every day on these very things. Processing, healing, and integrating the impact of trauma and eradicating the self-abusive lies that have kept them in sick cycles of struggle and misery. Yet here I was, drowning in my own and ignoring it because my lie told me that I just had to figure it out. On my own. And that I needed to be “strong enough” to just deal with it. These lies get amplified, by the way, all the time in mothers and in therapists…

The truth is I can’t help someone go to lands I myself have not yet been courageous enough to go to. It would be like a T-ball coach attempting to train someone for the major leagues. Even if the player was naturally gifted and capable of going far in the journey on mere talent and passion, we all know they wouldn’t reach their fullest potential. It is in the coach’s ability to provide the wisdom, structure and discipline needed to help evolve the player to that next level. In the case of a T-ball coach it is just simply lacking. And nothing against the T-ball coaches or people who only wish to play at that level! When it comes to trauma work though, we are talking major leagues.

Therefore, I have an ethical obligation to do my healing if I am going to be a healer. I have a spiritual obligation to integrate and evolve myself if I am going to be the mother that is capable of raising my daughter to be a woman that walks in her worth and fearlessly speaks her truth.

So here is the TRUTH:

I matter.
You matter.
Feelings matter.
Your BODY matters.
Your needs matter.

I know this stuff has become new hot topic words and social media memes but it’s only because it’s TRUE. And the collective consciousness is stirring as it catches whiffs of words that bring calm awareness to things that have for too long felt unknowable.
This isn’t the stuff that the self-destructive psyche wants us to know.
That the patriarchy wants us to know.
That the capitalist machine wants us to know.
That abusers and naysayers want us to know.

This stuff is powerful and it’s what destroys defense mechanisms and moves people out of a state of survival and into a deep knowing.
A deep life.
Into love.
Into themselves.
And back into owning what has always been rightfully theirs.

Your power is yours.
My power is mine.
And it’s time to take it back in a real way.

It’s time to raise our children in knowing WHAT it is, HOW to use it, and how to NEVER give it away. To teach them it is okay to set their own boundaries, mandatory to respect others, and assertive ways to hold people accountable when boundaries are violated. Whether they are theirs or someone else’s.

The biggest lessons I have learned in this last year of recovery is how to truly, authentically, and effectively take care of myself. As I write this I am sitting in a coffee shop on a Wednesday morning while my child is at daycare and I am on a paid mental health day. Like canceled my client sessions, skipped the meeting, not at work on a work day, kind of mental health day. I am putting myself first and learning how to utilize the time I set aside for ME to meet the REAL needs that I have.
The need to be alone, to read, to write, to ponder my thoughts/feelings/body, to meditate, to pray, to have ceremony, to cry, to grieve, to dance, to be still, to connect.
To myself. To my Creator. To my Mother Earth. To my family. To my child. To my loves.

This whole self-care thing…
I am getting SO much better at it and I am really fucking proud of Myself.
I am finally in service to ME and it feels soooooooooo good.

I am rising from the ashes. Shaking them off with clear eyes and an open heart.
I am not being re-born though. I am being unborn.
I am returning to what was before all the scarring.

I am initiating myself and YOU into an unbirth ceremony. A returning of you to your natural state, your true essence. Your un-wounded, un-worried, un-fearful, un-questioning, un-seeking, un-being self. It is time before and time throughout. It is God and Goddess, Masculine and Feminine, Mother and Child, Sinner and Saint, Naive and Wise, Dark and Light, Unknown and All Knowing.
It is you.
It is me.
It is us.
Untainted.
Undone.
Returned.
Recovered.

Rising.