I am unsure how to put into words what I am feeling. I wish I could just play a song, that way you would feel it and hear it clearly, there is nothing quite as direct and emotion-driven as as music. For someone who has a hard time crying, the tears have not stopped flowing, it’s as if I had agreed to let the rivers of grief and repressed sorrow permission to flow. My husband has been gone on and off for work, it’s been me and our boy, roaming through the forest, making cakes, drinking tea, reading stories, dancing, and snuggling. I noticed how often in my motherhood journey, I have held tears back and not worry my children. Perhaps I feel so tender because winter is coming to an end and there is an emerging energy of resurrection. Perhaps it’s because for the first time in my life, I established a boundary with my mother, perhaps it’s because I am sober and forced to feel everything. Man, it’s hard to feel, how I wish I could just escape my body for a moment of forgetting, but I know that leads to a certain kind of death, a certain flavor of mediocrity and I’m just not going there ever again. I signed up for healing, for alchemizing the stories of pain lodged in the cellular memory of my lineage. I promised my children a new imprint, so here I am, doing my best to stand on my feet, to feel the ground beneath me, and to remember that I am held in love and acceptance. The truth is that healing is painful, there is a lot of grieving, a lot of crying for the life I could have had, the person I could have been, and the childhood I could have remembered. The hardest part at the moment is owning the places where I am still reliving my past, and how it lives in my nervous system. I thought I was being gentle with myself and then I realized how hard I judge the days when I feel frozen, my husband lovingly suggests that I remain calm but what I truly need is the space to let it all out, in a roar of fierce feminine rage. Today a migraine forced me inward. I implode and resist the nauseating waves of pain that pulsate throughout my head. I surrender to the motions, it’s as if I was afloat on a boat with no captain and no direction, panic strikes from time to time, I wonder if it will ever end. Will I ever reach the shore and rest on solid ground? All that is unspoken, all that is swept under the rug drowns my voice in the infinite ocean of potential, of wasted opportunity. I swallow the bitter taste of regret for I understand the emotional price of inaction. An unlived life is death to a soul that thrives on meaning. The antidote is to act upon my values and honor what I bring to the table. How easily I dismiss myself, and how willingly I overlook my needs to accommodate others. I must forgive myself for I know that my upbringing conditioned me into accepting the bare minimum, I was led to play small to avoid the dangers of being noticed. Nowadays however I crave to be witnessed, cherished, acknowledged. Nobody talked to me about the constricting pain of outgrowing one’s codependencies. Nobody mentioned how uncomfortable taking the lead is. Freedom holds a certain weight, as all valuable things often do. I often ask myself. who would I be if I felt deserving of prosperity? How would I move if I stood on a strong foundation? What would my art look like if I loved myself unconditionally?
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