Near the beginning of the summer I had the chance to do a plant medicine journey with the wonderful woman who has worked with me on some of my challenging issues and helped me begin my own process of assisting others in this work. Joining us was another apprentice who was also learning from her. My intention was to better understand how I might more fully show up in this work, how I can help people, what my unique medicine is to share with the world. I decided to do an 11:11 minute session on the vibroacoustic sound therapy bed, and chose for myself the program "Connecting with the Higher Self." Wow. When I finished, I could not believe it had only been eleven minutes, because I felt like I traveled far and received some beautiful visions and insights. In the vision, my soul's essence was a fairy. And my work was to go around to everyone I would meet and all the people in my life and sprinkle them with my fairy dust. It was love and joy and delight just sprinkled everywhere. And I felt so fulfilled doing this. Like SERIOUSLY, this is my higher self? Yay!!! It was really beautiful and so affirming.
Then it shifted to David, and I saw him as a massive, beautiful tree. The most intricate and amazing bark patterns. Gorgeous, strong, twisting branches. A canopy that seemed almost neverending. This tree was truly magnificent. (Sidenote: before I'd left for the day, we had somewhat challenging discussion, so things were a little rocky between us.) I could sense people walking by and admiring various things about this tree, making comments about how impressive it was. Others were hanging out under its shade, content but not really noticing the tree. Other people had plans or desires for the tree, thinking of how it could be useful for them in some way or another. But only the fairy truly SAW the tree. And loved the tree just for existing. The fairy knew all the nooks and secret spots in the tree, and where the birds best liked to nest and the sounds the leaves made in all the different types of breezes. The fairy loved the tree. And the tree loved the fairy. There was nothing more the tree loved than being seen and appreciated by the fairy. The tree didn't NEED anything from the fairy, but oh how its soul soared when they were together.
The final vision I had was of all the souls of humanity as little candles inside of us. A lot of us aren't lit, though. Sometimes we spend time with candles that are lit and we end up borrowing some of. the fire, and we are all lit up for a while, too. But borrowed flames don't last that long, so invariably they go out. So people go around, finding themselves drawn to the souls that are aflame, because having that flame inside themselves feels amazing. And eventually, many of them figure out the way to light their own flames, and those flames stay lit. What bliss! And when two lit up souls encounter each other, oh how the flames dance! I had the thought that this was the same idea as Jesus' parable of the living water. But it wasn't that he was offering to be the water for everyone, he was trying to show the way for people to become their own water. Always flowing, never running dry. Never thirsting.
So, back to the message from my higher self, reminding me of my ability to sparkle and sprinkle love and delight. In early July, I had the opportunity to assist at a women's retreat. I was so excited, and really looking forward to acting as a space holder and a supporting presence to the women who would be there to heal and grow. Friday night near the end of evening, I felt called to try a medicine combo that I hadn't before. The women were wrapping up their individual journeys, and this medicine was for most people a 10-15 minute experience. That sounded perfect. A nice wrap up to a lovely afternoon & evening. But it turned out that my experience was not the norm. After about 10 minutes of some lovely feelings of connection and clarity, I got terribly nauseated. And I started vomiting. And this continued. For hours. I have never been so nauseated, and I think I threw up more times over the next three hours than I had in my entire life. There was a long period where I just sat with my forehead resting on the edge of my purge bucket because the slightest movement sent more waves of nausea and resulted in more vomit. The women running the retreat were so attentive, kind, and supportive. Early on in my misery, I had the distinct impression that I was vomiting up fear that I'd been carrying. I was grateful for that, but as time moved along with no apparent easing of the nausea, I felt like surely that was the end of the fear. What else was going on? I tried to latch on to a memory or an idea of my "regular life," and they all would just evaporate. There was no escape. I was stuck. And the only option was to be present with this suffering until it was over.
Finally, I felt like things stabilized enough that I could crawl from the basement up to the main floor and then up to the second floor, where my sofa bed awaited me. It took a long time. And when I got there, I threw up a few more times and then collapsed on the sofa.
In the morning, I woke up and actually felt pretty amazing, physically. I felt light. Like I'd shed some emotional baggage the night before. But I also felt embarrassed, with a bit of shame and guilt mixed in. I was here to HELP, not to be helped. I had taken attention away from the women who signed up to be here. It wasn't right for me to have needed so much help. I worried that some of the women might be upset with me. It was discouraging. I had so looked forward to helping this weekend.
Putting those emotions to the side, I went down to breakfast. One of the women immediately told me how grateful she was for my experience the night before, and how she felt very strongly that I was purging more than just my own stuff. She felt like I'd taken on the role of moving negative energy for the entire group. A little later, another woman shared with me how powerful and healing it was for her to see someone suffering attended to by people who were calm and capable, and how they didn't get anxious or worried, they just did what needed to be done in showing up for me in such a loving way. And it had turned out that a couple of the other women had had similarly strong reactions to the medicine, so my experience helped them feel not so alone. If someone who was more experienced than they were could have such a challenging reaction, it normalized their own difficulty.
This was really interesting to learn and think about. Later, reading a passage in The Courage to Be Disliked about how humans aren't valuable for what they do, but rather just BEING, I had to reckon with my experience of the night before a little more. I realized that I am really comfortable and happy to show up as a Fun Person, a Helper, a Giver. But OOH BOY I am NOT comfortable showing up as a Mess. Or a Person Who Needs Help. Or a Recipient. Or anyone who creates anything that could remotely be seen as Drama. Oof. Maybe there was a lesson in there.
The more I reflected, the more I realized that to truly Show Up in the world, to bring the full blazing glory of your flame, you have to actually be willing to show up, regardless of what it looks like. Because when you have the courage to live in the present moment with everything you've got, you can't know if something will happen that will knock you down into your low places. If you are truly going to show up, you can't hedge your bets and keep something in reserve. You've got to Be. There. Fully. Which means sometimes it's gonna get messy. Sometimes you're going to be the person who needs help, and not the helper. Sometimes it's going to feel like you are definitely creating some drama, even though you absolutely didn't want to and maybe would have stayed home had you known that it might happen. And that's okay. In fact, it's better than okay. Because the connections we form when we allow ourselves to be loved and cared for are beautiful and powerful. And they touch and bless different parts of your soul than the spots that are blessed when you are the giver. Wow. This was going to take some working with. How could I grow in my ability to show up as a person who needs help? How could that be part of my practice?
Fast forward to a couple weekends ago. I had an amazing night at an outdoor concert with friends followed by a DJ set with another group of friends, but then we went to an after party at a friend's home. I actually wrote a whole post about that, as I was working through things that weekend, but haven't felt ready to share that, so this will just be the summary. Something happened early on at the gathering that was incredibly triggering to me and I went into full on defensive, withdrawal mode. I shut down. I needed to be alone. I was stuck, and I couldn't get unstuck. Maybe we should have opted to go home, but I couldn't bear to be the reason David didn't get to have fun with our friends. I tried to find a quiet place away from everyone so I wouldn't be a downer or a burden. In the state I was in, all I wanted was to minimize the "damage" to everyone that I cared about. I also hated the way I was feeling and had some fear of judgment from them. These were some of my very best friends.. I didn't want to inflict myself on them when I was this stuck, withdrawn, definitely unfun mess. Could I just spare them all having to deal with me?
But do you know what happened? They kept coming to find me. They all wanted to be with me. They didn't care that I was a stuck, unfun mess of a human. They wanted to cheer me up if they could, but more than that they just wanted to show me that they loved me and cared for me. During the course of the evening, I was not really in the best position to receive it and see it for what it was. A part of me definitely wanted everyone to just let me be an unnoticed lump somewhere, because I felt so bad about having a hard time. But over the next couple days, and with some lovely conversations and time spent with David and a couple of really close friends, I was able to see that these friends weren't judging me or thinking poorly of me because of the hard time I had. David said everyone was only expressing the kindest sentiments, and that they'd all been there and had a hard time too. They got it. They still loved me even though I was not showing up as fun and happy. They kept coming to check in with me because they wanted me to feel loved.
I've actually been sitting with and working with this quite a bit since then. I know my parents came by it honestly, but in my family growing up there was no room for hard emotions. I don't know how many times I heard, "Stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about," from my dad. And that pretty much sums up the lived experience in my childhood home. Only your "good" emotions are welcome. If you are struggling, you'd better do it on your own where no one can see. So that's what I learned to do. I deeply internalized the message that to have negative/challenging/"bad" emotions was my own problem. It's shameful. Go away. Hide. So I did. And what this gave me was a deep sense of loneliness. Because I knew* that my friends liked the happy fun Mindy. *or rather the story I told myself. But that nobody would or could like full Mindy, who was sad and unfun sometimes. Which meant that they didn't really like ME, because they didn't really know me. And they never would. Because I knew better than to show up with any of that.
So I'm still unpacking all of this. I've tried using IFS tools to help and it kind of has, but it's not been super clear what all the parts are in there. But the biggest takeaway for healing seems to be an assurance that these people I have in my life, my friends and most especially David, actually love me. They love me in my happiness and joy and delight and also in my pain and sadness. They don't need me to hide or go away when I'm having a hard. time. They want to be there to help. Just like I want to be there for them. It's funny (sad? ironic?) that I could see how great it felt to be a helper to others, but not see that other people might feel that way helping me. Somehow I guess I was the exception. I felt like people would see me in need of help and recoil or dislike me, even though that was never my response to anyone I care about. Some things we just can't see until we see them.
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