Where my girls at? Come and listen…
I hear you loud and clear. I hear your frustration. I hear your hurt. I hear your grief. I see it and I get it. I know it deeply. You deserve to feel every feeling. You deserve to respond in what’s best for you. You deserve to pull back, pull out or whatever the fuck else needs to happen.
But let me have a minute. All this explaining y’all are doing on social media is a trauma response. All this asking people to see your humanity of when will they see it is a trauma response. This sharing how you’ll be diverting your energy moving forward is a trauma response. And it’s still aimed to get the abuser to SEE YOU.
There has been trauma. Deep trauma. Trauma this country wants to deny has occurred. Trauma that this country is actively working to erase. The thing about it is that it’s not that it happened long ago and that’s it. It’s still happening. Each and every day! And then this election created a brand-new traumatic wound. So, I understand why you are moving as you are. It’s an appropriate response to what has and is occurring.
But the thing is I want you to really do what are saying you want to do and as much as we want to just say “I’m done” and that be that it’s not that simple because that’s not how trauma works. Trauma likes to put you back in what’s familiar and comfortable, even if it’s the most dangerous thing for you – it’s what you know. Having an extreme response in the immediate aftermath is natural but then the trauma brain will move you back to what you unless you do something about it.
What You Know Is This…
How to Serve Everyone Else
This is in our epigenetics. It’s how we’re trained in society. I won’t even get on the difference in how many of our mothers treat daughters vs sons.
How to Stay Busy
The busy-ness looks good. It’s got us a statistic of being the most educated group in society, along with the group starting the most businesses. But much of the fuel behind that is toxic fuel and it needs to be explored.
How to Betray Yourself
Appeasing others, caring for others, ensuring everything gets done for others ALL THE TIME causes you to deny and betray your own needs time and time again. Eventually you do it so much that you don’t even know you’re doing it – it’s just your way of life.
How to Gaslight Yourself
Your self trust has been chipped away at, and at times, even knocked the fuck out. So much so that you now do it to yourself. When something is off instead of sitting in that knowing, you question what you know. You rationalize why it happened. You make excuses for the person who did it. This isn’t all the time but it damn sure is much of the time.
Choosing You, Choosing Us is Necessary. Here’s How…
With all of that said, I will repeat…I want you to be able to do what you’re saying you will do despite your current brain neuropathways, emotional dysregulation and insecure attachments that will show up in this process. So here’s how..
Do Your Own Work
First and foremost – Self healing is community healing. If you go out and work to heal the community, to your own detriment, then you are still doing everything stated above, just for your own people. The first step to doing healing work for your community is to work on yourself. There are soooooo many reasons for this that this needs to be a damn masterclass because my fingers can’t take all the typing it will need. You have got to include yourself, no – make yourself the primary person you are helping first and foremost. Once you have more capacity you then extend that to others.
Create Peace Within
You have to create calm and regulation within and that means you need to do some serious nervous system work. I am not talking about being numb. Contrary to popular belief – healing allows you to feel and experience more and it gives you the capacity to be able to deal with and process it. A calm and collected nervous system will allow you to give the most accurate and necessary read to those folks without you having internal repercussions in the aftermath. You’ll be able to sit in your truth, speak up for yourself, hold on to your boundaries, and still sleep well at night and feel peace throughout the day. (Here’s a free guide I created to fully support women in beginning this work. It will give you more details and practical steps to take.)
Allow Space To Process (Required)
It’s imperative to process what is happening, for you personally, and in the world around you. This needs to be a daily activity that you can do through writing, role playing, dancing, drawing, laughing with friends…whatever it is, your feelings need to be processed. You need to find many ways to do this because you must be able to do it for yourself even when you won’t have others to do it with.
Learn To Trust Yourself
Self-trust must be (re)built. When you have self-trust you can stand firm, no matter what, even with yourself, because you know what you know. A lot of us don’t have a Mount of Gibraltar-like level of self-trust. Sis, when you get that level of self-trust, no one can fuck with you, even when they try their best.
- Start here – Stop asking everyone else what they think and stop seeking permission to do whatever thing. Catch yourself and then sit with you. Ask yourself what it is you truly want and then go with that. If it turns out to be “wrong” you still learned something and will take that forward. You know you – you must get back to you.
Reconnect To Your Body
Ok, now this one is close, close, close to my heart. Sis, your body is not a carrier of your head. Your body is a critical vessel that relays information to you all day, every day. It relays if people are safe, it relays if you’re comfortable in a space, it relays where emotions are stuck, it relays how you feel (ignored, undervalued, disregarded, angry). Your body is the key. Everything above will lead you back to your body but also you must be intentional about connecting with your body. So, take time daily to begin implementing the following:
- Slow down and observe the environment around you. Any time you enter a new space take 5 seconds to look around and consciously take in elements in the space.
- Take time to feel what’s happening in your body. Lay down, sit in a chair, however you are comfortable and set a timer for 5 – 10 minutes to start with and just feel what’s happening. Don’t judge it. Don’t create a story around it. Don’t try to change it. Just feel it.
- Immediately act on your body’s needs. When you have to use the bathroom, go! When you are tired, close your eyes, take a nap, say no to the invitation. If you feel restless, move, walk, dance. As you do this, you will begin to see that your body will trust you with more.
Allow Yourself To Be Seen (In Safe Space)
Get in community. While community is more than imperative, everyone is not currently in a space to thrive in community and it’s because of you. You got your own shit that is blocking what you want, and people reflect our shit to us. Therefore, find spaces where you can explore interests together but in order to thrive in deeper community, take the steps above first. (If the easiest first step is an online community, join Resonant Woman, my online community and learn more about this work together.)
And let me not forget to say, if you are showing up to be the support, the leader, the driver – that is not community for you. Being in community requires you to be IN community – to be vulnerable, to show up without a mask, to be honest (not mean), to be dependable, to participate. Are you capable of those things? If not, get to work on you.
Now Get To Work
I don’t want to overwhelm you so this is enough for now. I want you to be your best. I want you to be focused on you and our community. I want you to give yourself everything single thing you need in this time and in years to come. I’m not bullshitting you; I’m giving you the real. So take these tips and work them. If you need support in this reach out.
If any part of this made you uncomfortable, that’s an invitation to stop and reflect on why. What does it say to you? What meaning did you give it/story did you create around it? Is it serving you? This is how we do our own work.
Go take care of you so we can take care of us!
– Your sister in our collective healing & wellness
Photo credit: Photo by Clarke Sanders on Unsplash