Where does one begin?
How do you choose what part of the tangled ball of needs, associations, expectations, community agreements, unresolvable conflicts, childhood wounds, social injustices and their intimate day-to-day appearances, value systems and their neutered manifestations in our actions and attempts at connection - to start untangling, so any of us can step firmly on some kind of ground, and make even a single step forward? How do we find momentum, with so many threads to wade through? And who would we even be, if those things weren't there (?) - the evidence of our existence, that is probably our work in this lifetime to navigate.
Maybe because I was raised by deeply immature adults, under the poverty line and without any kind of guidance about how to survive in breathtakingly simple ways - I have grown strong and capable to hide my deep confusion about how to process and organize myself and the information I receive from my environment in a stabilizing way. It often feels like I shouldn't be in the rooms that I'm in, or have the language I have, because I was not given the tools or the appropriate lenses as a child to be able to hold my own and see clearly in these sophisticated environments. As wide and deep as I grow in knowledge and self/emotional awareness, no matter how many people I hold in high esteem that I impress with these things, no matter how brave or strong I become - it will not change the destructive narratives my mother has created to protect herself from the judgement of others - by telling anyone who will listen that my distancing myself from her is because something is deeply wrong with me.
I keep thinking I've found my way past this.
While at training the other day, when asked to do a 'grounding' exercise before beginning a session on Social Emotional Learning (SEL, an incredible byproduct of the pandemic that is being incorporated into schools) - I followed the directions, listened to a song I liked, looked over my notes, checked in with myself. When the session leader asked us how that felt, entering the group after taking a moment to be with ourselves, I can only really feel a mixture of confusion and frustration. Traditional "grounding" stuff always makes me feel vulnerable - breathing related exercises always take me back to desperatley trying to control my panic attacks while being emotionally abused by my stepfather. Looking inward before engaging with others leaves me feeling raw and exposed, a byproduct of my selfness and truth being constantly attacked by the adults that were supposed to be invested in protecting and supporting me as a child and preteen, I'm sure. But I also understand that vulnerability is an important piece of being in relationships, that often being able to be vulnerable is proof of feeling strength in oneself, and trust within a relationship - with self or other. So I guess I'm confused about how other people experience a conversation with self as 'grounding', or what it means to feel 'grounded' at all.
In the aftermath of this question arising, I have thought about the ways I do create systems of feeling prepared to meet others - I get places early to settle myself in the environment, to land. I make sure everything I need was prepared in advance and packed the night before, at my own pace (often with extra stuff in case I need to freestyle something). I map out what I think/feel/believe/value about whatever we are going to engage with, so I can worry less day of, and trust myself to be available and responsive. I make sure I have a sense of where I/we are going, to inform the steps I take, or how I log information. So I guess my closest sense of 'grounding' is anticipatory - If I'm prepared for what's coming, I can be available in the moment because I know I'm safe and resourced enough to hold all of us and whatever may come. But I am realizing that so much of my life is devoted to work explicitly because there are rules and boundaries and deadlines and expectations, and things and people to answer to about right and wrong and up and down and next steps - that organize me and my sense of self in a productive way, in a moving forward, momentum way - but is not available to me in my personal life. Perhaps that is why I spend so little time there, why I need so much silence and alone time when I get home every day, why dating is not safe for me, why my closest friends are people I have worked alongside in intense environments - people who also require huge amounts of space and alone time, but have proven they will also be there when it really matters.
I keep hearing 'self care' come up, a simplistic idea divorced from the reality that if we need to be told to do it, we probably don't have the skills - and its been co-modified by capitalism as something accessible for a few dollars in the form of a candle or a rock with a word carved into it, a shopping spree or a latte you 'deserve' - without any kind of exploration into our self-beliefs, our relationship to self, which was cultivated in our earliest moments by the adults who handled us and communicated to us their values and beliefs about our selfness - through their curiosity or lack of, about our developing selves, their space or availability to meet our needs or not, their ability to keep us safe or not - from our earliest breath these experiences teach us what we are shaped like (the good/bad one, the burden, the protector, the help meet, the surrogate spouse/stand in parent, too much, not enough, family savior/parent's pride and joy etc) and we carry these subconscious beliefs about ourselves into our adult lives and relationships, effecting every choice and relationship we encounter, and saying the word 'self care', or making sure you stay hydrated isn't going to address the lack of or underdeveloped relational skills we are all trying to navigate. The same is true for our students and young people - that we learn by doing, by being engaged with in the ways we need to grow, not through vocabulary words and superficial gestures.
The session leader told me I must send my roots deep, to be a tree that stands tall. I told her that I wrote once 'I'm a ship, not a tree' - so she switched metaphors and said I must find my anchors. I laughed through my tears and pointed at the anchor tattoo'd on my neck. So that is my homework - to figure out what anchors me to the earth, to myself, to this point on the timeline, the map, this moment.
Tarot Reading for Self-as-Client
(3 card draw, for Past/Present/Future)
The Star (Past)
You shone so bright, pulling focus in the room helped sustain you for a time, but you didn't have the reflective surfaces you needed to see yourself clearly.
Justice (Present)
Watch what you put out into the world - that is what will find you. Get really clear on what you want that to be shaped like (karma).
The Sun - crossed by the 5 of Pentacles (Future)
Clarity is coming, but will be coupled with being humbled. Not humbled in an embarrassing sense, but with the pain of not being able to keep holding the unwanted parts of yourself at bay - having to convert everything, even those sad bits that make you feel weak, into something of value/building materials for our future selves - what does it require of you to plumb the depths of your past with a lens looking for resources, rather then the lens you had before, the one figuring out how to protect yourself/survive in spite of the things you are. What if there was more salvageable material then you ever realized? What do you have to let go of, to be able to see yourself more clearly?
xoxo
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