Mornings I wake often struggling to breathe. I am back in the car with the insides crushed around me and caved in by the knowledge that I am trapped and paralysed here just as the children in my dream are locked in in stocks by a wicked jailor woman. This dream image came to me today during a body work session where I was working with the sensations to understand and find the freedom and the ability to breathe that was taken from me by so many events of my childhood, adolescence and early adult life. In the dream a demonic women had the keys to the stocks hanging from a belt and I was not brave enough to take the keys from her and bust the children loose. It was shortly after this dream many years ago I abandoned my first attempt at healing.
Drowning the pain of trauma and loss under a bottle of wine or scotch was the way I chose to try to pretend to forget the difficult truth that had to be revisited after years of being lost and numbed. Accidents that paralysed me in my quest to escape back and resume what fear aborted trapped me in post traumatic freeze, its a place I still visit at times and am learning to recognise one of two responses to trauma that the nervous system organises to protect those of us who have endured life threatening trauma.
Only lately am I realising how much I hold my breath. In the realisation is an awakening of my power to understand that I do have the ability to breath out in order to take a deep breath in but it takes me all my courage. This wont make much sense to anyone who doesn’t suffer from PTSD.
Sometimes, lately, I sing and the words of the song will be the words of freedom what I need to be real, true and authentic, to speak of a pain others at times find entirely too uncomfortable in order to find liberation. This is my song sung in the middle of the night or early morning that puts energy into my body and soul to propel me forward, out of this prison.
I must not be silenced. Pain must be spoke not matter how much we are shamed or dissuaded from expressing it. Some will cast us out or run away, others will try to shut us down. Stand strong and true, sweet brother and sister have the strength to find your authentic voice.
These days I am finding those strong souls who have the power to recognise and affirm a truth that will be the soul’s liberation. It might mean leaving a lot of people behind but its better to be where you need to be even if it means you have less company. Its so important not to be exiled from your soul, dark as it may be at times.
Lately I am recognising the price of changing my truth and my shape is entirely too much to pay. Healing takes courage and it takes courage to be real and authentic. I would rather be alone in this authentic place and the web gives me a place to voice it. I will never belong to the mainstream and the price of exile will be the price of my freedom, just as long as I am not exiled from my own soul
Living for me was not true life, for many years it was like drowning for so long. I did not know I was drowning and then the ways in which I drowned myself, now I am learning to surface from underneath this wall of water like the siren or the mermaid who has a unique song to sing that is not just personal but archetypal.
This is just stream of consciousness, unedited flow tonight prompted by reading another blog and by an intense bodywork session where I revisited old painful places and found in the pain compassion for myself and an even deeper recognition for the ways I suffered and in suffering was abused. This is not victim consciousness. It would only be if I did not have the power to visit the pain which encourages me to reach for authenticity and truth. It doesn’t matter who understand, its just flowing out of me tonight while Venus moving backward meets transiting Mars revisting the 12th house while both planets square Natal Neptune in the third. I am revisiting the amniotic fluid for a while to remember how it was to be so lost and forgotten and to launch on a quest to retrieve the sacred jewel from where it was buried, so many years ago.
Emerging From The Dark Night 