Saturday, May 15, 2010

Scared Little Girl

I am up early to edit my book.  Looking forward to start my day writing.  As I write that, I realize that I love to write.  I am just owning that as I write it!  It feels good.  I also get that I process and connect in the process of writing.  Very often I do not realize what I am going to say until I write it.  Same as when I speak.  It is in the act of communicating that truth is expressed through me.  I have read that these are the characteristics of a "clairsentient" intuitive, and while I could relate to that through my speaking out loud, I am now more deeply understanding and owning this about myself as I write.

Today feels like a quiet day on the inner front.  I actually started my period yesterday.  I say actually because I am in perimenopause so I never know when or if I am going to get it.  It actually caught me by surprise.  Earlier in the week I had been feeling a little pre-menstrual in how I was eating and that I was very content to have a quiet day inside working up on my bed all day.  No need or desire to go outside, be visible or be active.  So, really -  I am not that surprised that I am bleeding.

I feel like I had my first real hot flash last night at dinner.  We were having a late and lazy dinner, hanging out and talking with our 16 year old daughter when all of a sudden I had to pull my hair off my neck, unbutton my sweater and create space between my body and my clothes!  I felt like I was a furnace and just oozing heat from the inside out. 

I am a perimenopausal woman who is healing the split in her belly and between her self and her Soul. 

Watch out!

Yesterday I went to talk with Christiane, a local wise woman who has created and offers a beautiful, rich, deep body of work called the Re-Wilding that requires courage to even consider .  And I am seriously considering it.  I have known Christiane through our children going to the same elementary schools, and recently came across her work when she was recommended to be on our radio show.  I was so moved by what she was doing so after our interview, I contacted her about working together.  One of the points that caught my attention was that so often, we are "ashamed of the shame."  When Christiane mentioned that, I felt the truth of it in my bones - actually in my belly. 

As I have mentioned in an earlier post, my shame is sheltered, hidden and kept safe in my belly, and I am so ashamed of my belly.  I am ashamed of my shame.  I have hidden my belly and what's inside of it for my whole life, even as a little girl.  Especially as a teenage girl.  I celebrated it during my pregnancies because now I actually had something in my belly that was beautiful and full of life and love and was not "me".  My belly's roundness and fullness was to celebrated, not hidden.  For 36 months of my life (out of total of 614 months so far) I got to celebrate my belly!  And then as soon as I gave birth, I felt ashamed of my belly again.  It was too big, too flabby, too ugly, the skin was too stretched, and the feeling of something dark, black, thick in my belly was back. 

I hear the saboteurs saying to me, "You are being so dramatic.  Just give it up already.  Get over yourself.  My god, girl - just who do you think you are?  Just get on with your life and stop all this drama."

And this is what I have done, time and time again - gotten on with my life and packaged up the feelings and the shame into a nice neat box with a pretty bow, and a smile on my face.  Actually, I have put the feelings and the shame deep into my belly, hidden away from anyone who might see it, hidden even from myself. 

Until it oozes out through the split.  I can't contain it.  It won't stay hidden and tucked away.  It comes out when I least expect it, when I least want it, at the most inopportune times.  It takes me out of what I was doing.  I leave. I don't return to the next class. I check out and become very vague about what I was doing or what I had committed to.  I return to feeling safe.

The split.  The portal of my belly.  It can feel like an open, gaping wound.  What is its role and its purpose?  It is like a crack in the bowl.  Nothing can be fully contained.  It allows that which is inside to leak out.  It allows that which is external to come in.  A feeling that it is so difficult to have boundaries and to say NO and to mean it.  To even know what I want to say no to.  A feeling that it takes so much will force to say no, to mean no, and to keep saying no.  All the doubts and concerns for saying no come in and I am often pulled out of my no, out of my clarity and conviction, and am convinced to say yes and I acquiese. 

When I birthed my babies, I hemmoraghed each time.  Here I had given birth at home naturally with no drugs and as soon as the baby was outside of my body, the contractions stopped and I bled out.  I lost all the power and energy that I had generated through giving birth.  It's like it just seeped out.  I couldn't contain or hold this energy to nourish me as a mother, as a woman.  I remember viscerally the feeling of the life force slipping out of me, and my not being able to contain it in any way . 

You know the line from Marianne Williamson's poem, "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure."  I know that this is true for me. And if it's true for me, I know that it must also be true for so many others.  What if we leak out our power and our true force out of this deep fear?

Back to the split.  It also serves as a leak so that I cannot contain my power, my strength and my true force.  Not only can I not keep that which is outside out, I also cannot keep that which is inside in.  Again, the image of a sieve comes up for me and the words, LEAKY BELLY. 

The plus side of all this may be that the shame doesn't get locked inside of me either.  Locked in, it could create disease.  Yet it gets to move around, ooze in, leak out, but maybe there has been a level of status quo with it because of the "sieve system."  Now that I am messing with system through my intention to heal the split and the transverse exercises, everything is getting heated up.  I am challenging the status quo.  I am literally getting heated up and getting hot flashes for the first time, and my period for the first time in over 3 months.  I just got this image of the shame being fuel for the fire of my transformation.  This just sparks so many thoughts and images that are converging.

I know that it takes heat to transform our cells and our DNA.  This is the value of fevers.  Our bodies heat up so that the fire can literally burn through our DNA and cause us to evolve.  What if my body is now heating up as I close the split because of a self-balancing mechanism in my body?  My body is operating out of a homeostasis that has learned how to handle the shame at a certain level.  If it gets too much, it will leak out through the split, or through bleeding (both after birth or during my monthly cycle), or it will burn it off through a fever or hot flashes.  My healing the split is challenging the homeostasis on all levels, so to regenerate balance, I get my period, I have a hot flash, and I initiate a relationship to heal the shame through deep, profound body centered work. 

What I am appreciating here is that my body is really supporting me to create health and balance.  Yes, there is shame in my body , but  that is not me or my body.  My body has learned how to keep it in check through the split.  My body actually split from the inside out.  I chose the split in order to survive the shame.  I split.  I chose to split in order to survive.  I can feel this truth reverberating in every cell of my being.  I chose the split.   I am responsible for the split because I didn't know how to handle or be with the shame.  I can feel this scared little girl inside of me who felt so alone, so ugly on the inside and that not knowing what to do or who to go to, she chose to split off from the pain and the shame. She was terrified.  And so she split.  The scared, ashamed little girl split off so that she could be the happy, good little girl who fit in and was loved. 

There have been quite a few moments of breathing and being with what I just wrote.  It's one of those moments where you know you have known this - where I have known that I have known this, and I have just re-claimed this knowing on a much deeper level of the spiral.  Also, that I have been attempting to heal this from the outside, but how I can heal something from the outside when I split from the inside out.  I can so appreciate that the physical process is such a wonderful catalyst for the inner work, but to focus only on the outer work leaves the same energy imprint  to split again, perhaps in a different way on a different level, but to split again all the same.

I keep coming back to La Camina.  This is my soul's journey - this is the way, the healing I came in to do.  I committed to heal the split on every level of my being, for myself and for all.  I feel as though I am creating a template for healing the split.  I am committed to healing the split on all levels, on all dimensions, on all timelines, in all worlds.  It is my soul's work.  It is my body's work.  It is what I came to do.  It is who I am.  Because what I know is true is that there is no split, no separation.  There is only the way, La Camina, to which we all return to take the next step forward, the next breath.

Thank you for being a witness to my journey.

Suseya!
Sahara 

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