Dear reader,
Thank you for opening another Within letter.
A click of the ♡ button makes a difference. So does sharing these pieces.
Nature sees you, listens to you, contains you, and heals you.
Life is a series of beginnings, but we are often too focused on the endings to notice the lush possibilities ahead of us.
The inability to sit with ourselves, immerse ourselves into our own hearts, and process every ending is due to contracted energy in our body that causes our mind to seek solutions. This seeking state takes us straight into survival mode, which leads us towards a quick-fix solution to ease our discomfort. But these so-called solutions only perpetuate our disconnection and delay the healing process. More contracted energy builds up, which leads to high-functioning anxiety, something I’ve spent most of my life battling with until I began processing my trapped emotions and traumatic imprints, and connecting with nature and community.
When we go through emotional overwhelm, mainly in childhood but also as adults, it is the lack of immediate support that causes the trauma. The absence of connection with others when you need it the most; feeling unheard, alone, afraid, and invalidated, creates traumatic imprints in your cellular memory. When you have to suppress your voice, not make a scene, and protect others, it causes you to feel as though you don’t matter. This is the injury. This is the wounding we need to process and heal from.
More so, because each time these feelings get triggered in the present moment, we relive the experience all over again.
But first, we need to understand that it was, and is, safe for us to be who we truly are. Because, in those moments, we received a message that it was not safe to be our authentic selves. In those moments, we unconsciously repressed parts of ourselves and remained “small” to stay safe and receive the love and acceptance we needed to survive. But “staying small” created beliefs that limit us. And repressing parts of our true essence diminished our power and caused us to feel (and continue to feel) fragmented and power-less.
Why? Because our authentic self is our esteemed self, our power, and our unique spark.
Embodied healing and root cause therapy involve bringing the authentic parts of yourself back into the light – going back to earlier events and giving the younger version of yourself the safety and connection they needed in moments of overwhelm.
But we can also set the intention to start giving ourselves the validation we need in our lives right now.
We can turn to nature for a connective experience, a relational repair. We can root ourselves into the Earth's holy, unconditionally loving ground and learn to be with ourselves again. We can process our pain in a space that can hold it all for us, a space that invites us to discover what happens in our body when it rests in the arms of something innately safe and familiar as nature.
We can align with the greater rhythm that all living things know: the source of life deeply embedded into the very thing we've grown to view through a veil instead of through the felt sense of communion.
We can take off our shoes, stand for a few moments with our feet pressed into the dirt, gather the nourishment, and keep ourselves rooted when we want to run.
We can learn to breathe through our pain as we witness the branches moving in the breeze and the birdsong rising in our hearts.
We can return over and over again, noticing how everything, after years of wilting, breaking, and renewing, is simply being as it is.
And we can eventually come to see that the untamed Earth we’re standing upon is asking nothing else of us but to be ourselves.
Within is a weekly (news) letter. Please feel free to share parts of the letter that connect with you on social media, or send to someone you love. To find out more about my books and my healing work, visit my website.
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Ugh! Needed these healing words today my wise friend❤️
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