There is nothing that needs to get done!

I used to be afraid to slow down, but I didn't know it consciously. I meditated and spent a lot of time in silence. So it made no sense to me that I was afraid to slow down. But on this deep nervous system level I was terrified of this inner stillness. I didn't know what would happen, or who I would be, if I wasn't doing something (even meditation was "doing" something).

One summer day when I was 25 the depth of this fear and the pattern of always being busy really hit me. That beautiful summer day in the Pacific Northwest town of Bellingham WA, I was puttering around my apartment cleaning and doing other "necessary" stuff. I remember looking out the window at the luminous blue sky and feeling the warm breeze roll in through the open window. I remember thinking how I should really just stop all my chores right then and go swimming down at Locust Lane Beach, one of my favorite swim spots, but I just had "so much that I needed to get done."

Sound familiar to anyone reading this?

Almost 20 years later I can honestly say that in my 300 sq ft studio which took all of 15 minutes to clean, there was very little that needed to "get done". But my nervous system, which had used busyness as a way of keeping myself safe in my developmental years, was still learning that I would be okay if I just went to the beach. Though my logical mind knew differently, my nervous system really believed I needed to keep doing things in order to be okay. At the age of 25, even though I was already meditating daily, going to therapy, and diving head first into my healing work, I was still light years away from understanding how my childhood trauma compelled me to keep doing, doing, doing. I had no idea yet that I was trying to keep myself from feeling all the deep pain, grief and fear that I did not yet have the full capacity to feel.

In the almost 2 decades since that sunny day, I have been slowly learning to slow down in a way that allows me to fee safe. I have learned to be present with the pain and grief. I have learned to be.

Reparenting ourselves into healthy adulthood!

Most meaningful therapeutic work involves some degree of healing and reparenting our inner child. And rightfully so. Tending to our inner “little one,” as I like to call her, is an opportunity to heal old patterns, learn to love ourselves, and to become for ourselves the stable adult so many of us lacked in our actual childhoods.

But what I think a lot of pop culture inner-child work has gotten wrong is the idea that tending to or loving the inner child is enough. What I have found in my own healing, tending to my inner little one, and from years of study and practice in the realms of alcoholic and dysfunctional family systems, trauma work, and healing codependency, in tending to the inner child it is important that she grows into a competent adult who does not need to stay stuck in the grief and trauma of childhood.

Learning to parent myself, in ways my actual parents were unable to, caring for my own inner little one and helping her learn to feel safe, have been so transformative.

But eventually, my inner little one had to grow up. I, the adult, had to teach me, the child, the adolescent, the teenager, the young adult, how to feel and express her emotions, ask for her needs to be met, meet them when others could not.

I, the competent adult had to meet myself at each necessary developmental stage with the same quality of attention, boundaries, structure, and discipline that I would have received from competent parenting, so that I could learn important social, emotional, and material skills like earning money, self-care, emotion regulation, achieving goals, healthy relating, and all the things I did not learn from the parents who birthed me.

This is important, because had I continued to tend to her as a perpetually neglected child, had I not met and attended to her through each of these developmental stages, I the adult, could not have stepped fully into my own power. And this is critical to full adult development.

So often, when we are not appropriately met (or are not able to eventually meet and support ourselves) through the appropriate stages of development, we run the risk of remaining in a collapsed, disempowered state of helplessness. We might learn enough to get by in life, but it is not enough just getting by.

Just like we did as actual children, our inner little child (and emerging adult) needs love, acceptance and present attention. We need to know we are good enough, and that we belong. But in that same way, our inner little one also needs structure, healthy discipline and boundaries. We need to learn that in taking chances and growing competence, we grow confidence. And as our confidence and our sense of belonging in the world grows, the more safe we feel in stepping more fully into our power.

So as we learn to connect with our essential goodness, inherent value and worth, as we heal and tend to the untended or unseen parts of ourselves, we must also do the work of developing the kind of developmentally appropriate structure and boundaries that help us grow into healthy and competent adults, caring for our inner child while being responsible for our adult selves in present time.

A SELF LOVE STORY, in 4 parts

Alternatively known as…

Kissing that old pattern of looking for love / acceptance / proof of your worthiness in all the wrong places GOODBYE!

Part 1 : NEVER AGAIN

Let me tell you a story about looking for Love, Acceptance, and proof of my worthiness in all the WRONG place. Actually, let me not tell you about it, because it is long, painful and messy. But I will tell you this: I ran that pattern into the ground until there wasn’t any part of me left. Somewhere in my late 20’s, I realized I couldn’t find myself anymore because I had so thoroughly abandoned myself in the search of everyone’s approval. And after another challenging relationship in which I gave myself over to someone who was never going to see / love / accept me. I woke up one morning and decided NEVER again. Never again would I abandon myself, or look for my value in places it could never be found.

Part 2 : SEEING IS BELIEVING

The first time someone pointed out that I was looking for love in all the wrong places, I was like “No way, I am a grown-ass, Independent woman”. But thank God I had already been practicing meditation for a while, so I was able to get curious and take a good long look at what I was doing. And I’ll be damned, there it was, staring me straight in the face… all the people-pleasing, abandoning myself, and approval seeking I had been doing. And I saw all the harm it had caused me, and all the harm I had caused others, as a result. It was an ugly truth. But by just seeing it, and seeing it for what it was, it became a freeing truth!

Part 3 : LOVE THE FOOLISH LOVE!

To begin to heal this pattern, I had to remember that I learnt these behaviors in a dysfunctional family system where most if my basic needs were often not met. In the absence of parental stability, safety, and secure attachments, I had internalized the belief that I was fundamentally NOT okay / good enough / valuable / worthy. I learned how to abandon my own needs so I could get what little love was available. I had to remember that I learned these behaviors in my childhood as a trauma response, but now as a “grown-ass independent woman”, I could source my value from a much more nourishing well… within myself. I no longer needed to abandon my needs, do other people’s emotional labor, or seek approval. But, I had to start with compassion. I had to have compassion for myself just as I was, and love & accept myself, despite all the foolish love I’d chased.

Part 4 : REALIZING I AM “THE ONE”.

Now, this is where the Self Love party really got started: The more curious I got about this pattern of looking outside myself for love and validation, I started to notice (among many other unsavory behaviors) that almost every time I saw an attractive man, It would trigger this really painful pattern of wondering “did he see me, does he think I’m attractive?” or even worse “is he the one?”. Sometimes, I would even position myself to be seen by him, as if on some level, it would heal that part of me that felt so completely unseen. It is embarrassing to admit, but, it’s the frank truth of how empty I felt inside. I was so desperate for approval or love. I will say more about this on the next slide, so keep scrolling sister…

Post Script: I LOVE ME. AND I LOVE YOU.

”Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape” – bell hooks

You see that was what I was doing. I was looking for love and approval outside me, so I didn’t have to feel the pain of my aloneness inside me. I was looking for somebody, anybody to make me okay. To make me good enough. To make me worthy. But I had to find that within myself. And it took me finding that love and acceptance within myself, to understand how to love someone else without using them. To love them for who they are, not what they can do for me. So these days, I love me first, and that is what allows me to love you.

To be embodied!

What does it mean to be EMBODIED?
What does it really mean to BE in your body?
To come home to, feel alive in, thrive in your body?
In your body just as it is?

So many of the women I work with know what it is like to NOT be in their bodies. They know how far from home they feel in the bodies they occupy. Many of the women I work with feel so disembodied because their lives have been affected by illness, pain, trauma, injury, abuse, or the so many other things that signal their bodies are not a safe place. And as a woman who has survived various kinds of emotional and physical trauma, I know personally the pain of feeling unsafe in my own body.

When I begin working with a new woman, I commonly hear, “I want to come home to my body again.” Because I know personally the courage it takes to want to be alive and safe in your own body, we start right there, simply by acknowledging the desire and longing for embodiment, aliveness, and safety (because I, and likely you too if you are reading this, know all too well how much easier it sometimes feels to not want more).

So, this becomes our work together… helping each woman I support learn how to come home to her body in a way that is safe, appropriately paced, and secure. Almost always, this is a process of supporting her in re-authoring and reclaiming her sovereignty and authority over her body and being. The work is often slow, tender, and vulnerable, especially when the trauma has been severe. But that is totally appropriate.

Sometimes we begin by just being present in a place, or with a sound, or with a scene. This helps the nervous system learn, slowly and safely, that this body can be here. That in this present moment, this body will not be hurt. That this body’s needs will be met. And over time, as each woman begins to feel safe, in a way that is right for her, we may begin to bring the attention a bit closer into her body. Maybe by feeling some sensations, or by one hand holding the other, so she can learn how to be present with and regulate safe touch and connection.

Being embodied is not about being that wild, vivacious goddess our social media often makes it out to be. Being embodied is more often the experience of learning to be in relationship with your body, on its terms, as it is, with the ability to be present and available for its needs in that moment.

Being embodied is to be, to feel, to know.