The Place Where I End and We Begin

The 2 biggest insights from yesterday's Queer Siblings Circle: 

- it's deeply healing to feel felt

- I can feel myself better in connection with you

There is only so much we can do alone. It's a lot, and it's necessary. But there's a limitation to it. I felt it deeply in my own life a few months back when it took one phone call with a dear friend during which I could reveal the most vulnerable bits of my heart, to cross the threshold of stuckness I was in. Up until that point I thought I had done everything I could to deal with the pain of the break up of the most significant romantic and professional relationship in my life - I took loads of alone time to feel my feelings, I cried and journaled a ton, I went on a conscious celibacy journey, I had therapy, I had plant medicine, I was open about where I was at with the people around me. But there was a moment where I felt completely hopeless:

"Will this ever pass? Why can't I move on?"

The relief of being received in my raw heartbreak, of dropping the story of who did what to whom and why, and simply sitting there sobbing, with all of my guts turned inside out and on a display for this other human to hold all of it with me for a few minutes, while I kept mumbling "this hurts so much," was truly revolutionary. Being loved in all of it was life-changing. 

I grew up with a lot of emotional neglect. This means that very early on I learned that either I conform and belong, or I'm real but on my own in this life - I chose the latter. It simply wasn't safe to be myself. My tender bits were shamed and ridiculed. My realness - punished. My heart was shattered way before I had any conscious memories of it happening. I know how to survive, I know how to hold myself, I know how to be alone. And don't get me wrong - I'm proud of it, I'm strong as fuck. But the almost magical dissolving of the pain I felt during that call with a friend was a revelation - there is a relational need here that is completely hidden in my blind spot - the need to be felt and deeply cared for by another, exactly as I am. 

Something got unlocked that day, and I understood that this massive loss of the main attachment figure brought to the surface my childhood neglect and abandonment wound to be seen and felt, but this time not in isolation, but in connection. It kept asking to be felt and seen, and I kept feeling it and seeing it - alone. I wrote in my journal: 

“I am realizing that I have come to the edge. To the end of the process where it was serving to do it alone - those parts in me simply cannot be held just by me. I need more than just me to hold these parts. I can do a lot on my own. I'm very capable, but I cannot do everything, and these parts need to be held in connection. And so this has been the biggest insight - that where I felt stuck was because of trying to hold myself alone."

It is in the act of sharing that the alchemy happens. We need that mirror - we need to see ourselves reflected in the tears of another. In how touched they are by our humanity, because it reflects their own. We need to feel the warmth of a smile and caring eyes to realize "I'm real, I exist, and I matter." Not a thought, but an embodied experience of "I'm not alone."

The thing I believed I had to hide to survive as a child, becomes the thing I need to reveal to thrive as an adult. How does it sound? 

"I need you."

Post Scriptum

When I reflect on this event, I'm reminded of my first psychedelic experience in my 20's - when I quite literally experienced a sort of "reshuffling” of my nervous system because for the very first time in my life I consciously felt an actual physical and energetic sensation of all encompassing (self-)love. These insights rarely are such that once we receive them, we can instantly "transform". I'm rather reminded that they need practice and repetition to be integrated. The fact of the matter is that this reorganization of my physiology around safety through connection is a life-long process. And the circle yesterday was the most recent reminder of the most recent big shift that happened on that call with a friend a few months ago. 

And I want to name what made that phone call possible in the first place. I want to acknowledge here that what was the true beginning of this journey for me was being part of the Heart iQ field and the deep circle work that I got to experience since 2017. Especially after the break up of the family with my son's dad, I was held in many circles by my community at New Eden in Friesland. I was held in the deepest and most raw parts of my suffering and the highest highs of my aliveness - and those imprints of attunement and connection that I received back then have unquestionably changed my neurobiology, and therefore, my life. For these moments - and if you were there, you know who you are - I will be forever grateful. But my deepest gratitude I offer to my last partner who in becoming my main attachment figure, allowed me to experience the most profound instances of relational attunement and safety. And even though our lives ended up not aligning as we had hoped, I received from her the most precious gift. And… she raised the bar pretty high (so don't start comin’ at me with scraps!)