Deep reflections on boundaries and break ups

I love this space. Writing here feels different than just journaling, there is added digestion. I feel inspired to take my feelings and make something nourishing for the community. I feel like not only sharing the difficulties of life but also the beauty, the wisdom. Ah, it is nice to share...

I guess I will start with some context. For all lessons and growth need a story to unfold out of.
I wish to write to open clarity, to bring love, understanding and care for me and my relations.

I think this break up has been building for a while, just under the surface and unspoken. Little room has there been for it to break up to the surface. Marlo has been living in Seattle for a year now and to be honest I have not felt like hanging out with her much. So much has shifted since the last time we had really bonded together. Like I woke up to maos and went on the fast track of evolution. I met SK and everything started making more sense, who I am, the part I can play, my whole context is different. Now during this venus in retrograde I feel asked to move with the new cycle and integrate my past, let go of relations tied to past versions of myself that feel like mirages.

I have tried to reconnect. But as you know Kevin and I did not get off to a good start, and there has been continuous invasions of personal space since I first met him. The last time I was down there to visit I was laying on the floor stretching and I felt H really strongly. They felt really protective over me, charged with intensity and warned me that Kevin was about to invade my space and touch me. I was like no way, that would be so inappropriate I do not see that happening. Marlo was not around. Also why would he? I did not feel I was inviting touch, or feeling open but I was curious about this warning, felt a little tense. Then actually to my surprise because I really did not expect it, he came over and casually put his hand between my legs and crawled over me. I was in shock, at first it triggered freeze and then fear and I found it hard to say anything because he was so nonchalant and seemingly innocent. I do not hang out with cis men, this usually never happens to me, so I do not always know how to respond. I was able to express my bodily discomfort and squirm away. The rest of the time I felt closed off and very guarded.

I told Marlo about it, and about the other times where he invaded my space and I had to tell him to leave. And she said she talked to him about it. But she keeps defending him saying he has a lot of unlearning to do. But my body just feels guarded around him, and I have no desire to let him in or get to know him.

I let her know this in many ways after this. She came up twice after as we were trying to make peace in our relation and tend to our friendship. But I made a firm boundary and said if you want to come it can only be you. The whole time she was here she wanted to unpack and vent about her relationship with Kevin. How we wanted to break up with her, how she did not feel like herself around him, how she wondered if he was zapping her energy. As a psychic I could see all of this already, but maos also told me not to get involved and let me know its her journey to learn these lessons.

I was having a good time when Marlo was here, she was able to respect the space I needed. I was able to be in flow with maos and my inner work. I started the fence when she was here (heh). I was starting to recall the more magical moments of our past. And she was helping me with my garden I was getting really excited about. And she was like I can help you build your fence I know where to get bamboo and I have a pole driver.

So when she asked me if she could stay I said ok, you can stay for 2 weeks and help me work on my garden and help with the fence. But also I do not feel comfortable with Kevin because of how he has invaded my space so if he comes with you I need you both to camp outside, and I am going to need a lot of space because I do a lot of ritual healing. These were my terms and conditions and she said yeah that is fine we like camping outside, no problem I am excited to work on this garden with you. There was an idea that Kevin was going to find a place to stay in Seattle which I was hoping for. But when I went down to help them move it was clear that was not going to be happening. And I kept reminding them hey your all going to be ok staying outside right? And they said yes. But I still felt something, I felt uneasy and I should have listened to this, but it felt too late now. She seeded a bunch of plants for my garden and now they really had no place to go so I was like ok. I can live with this for 2 weeks its going to be ok. I want to help. And I think this is a part of the friction, I was coming from a place of wanting to help, but not intermingle with their energies too much. I needed space and if they wanted to help me put some bamboo poles in the ground that was cool. But apparently Marlo had been fabricating another vision of being here, one that totally ignored and blocked out the boundaries I put forth.

I guess they are helping me work on my fence just in different ways...

The first night they got here they were upset that I did not invite them in and make space for them. Why wasn't I welcoming and letting them sleep inside?.....(hindsight ~ I knew this would happen)

I clarified my boundaries and said hey it is totally cool if you come in and use the bathroom and kitchen colin and I just need space for ourselves we are very private people and that is how I remain well. They both heard this. M also came to me and told me I was going to need to create a protective energy around my space to keep the integrity of the soul work I was in the middle of, so I did and that felt better.

I was in a process doing ancestral healing with American history because of all of the stuff happening in the country, totally sucked in processing the cyclic healing of the freaken civil war in my body and like why ya'll not caring about this? BLM, there is a revolution happening right now. And I could not meet Marlo in her dreams of ecstatic dancing and drum circles. Not yet anyway. And she was not able to engage with me when I was letting her know was what going on. She was tired from moving I totally get it. I was also adjusting to their energy, and balancing all of this and planning on coming together for the full moon to get into ritual and do some healing magic for the Whole, particularly for anyone who has experienced police brutality. Have been in a deep process of reviewing my relation with police brutality.

Anyway on Friday the day of the strawberry full moon christ festival eclipse I was at the farm and got a text from Marlo. It read we need to talk tonight, Kevin wants to leave :( ( they had been there for 4 days) he feels unwelcome, lonely and suicidal. Then she asked me if I could do a healing for him and help him with his confidence. Make him feel more welcome. *fix this problem*

And I was like ugh excuse me? I was pretty activated and replied that is awful and I have totally been there. However I am not able to take that on right now and if he needs social bonding and attention I was pretty clear that I don't have capacity right now. I need ya'll to take care for yourselves. It is not my responsibility to take care of him.

That was when I felt it was time. It was time to tell them it would be best for them to go. I vented to my co worker who is fairly intuitive and she was like yeah it sounds like your going to have a break up with your friend tonight. I totally support you saying no and upholding your boundaries. Which felt affirmative. KH was also affirming that it was time and letting me know he would be holding me through it. I talked to my mom on the way home and she was also really supportive as well. She said Isabella maybe next time you can just say no in the beginning and listen to all of your feelings about it. You can be empathetic to their situation without being guilty. Your at a different place in your life and you just don't have time and energy for this. I was like thanks mom your right! So I was feeling really held, and strengthened in my decision.

Then that night colin and I let her know we were not going to be able to meet their needs, and it would be best if they left....which broke her heart. I had no idea but Marlo had been planning to stay for the whole month...When I confronted her about how it was only 2 weeks I agreed upon, and how I felt about Kevin she said had blocked it out. Because she just wanted me to like Kevin and wanted us to all get along. She cried and said I don't understand, it's spring, we have all of this food, we are in a beautiful place, why can't we all just create together? Why can't you just except him and work with me to heal him. He has so much potential.  We are healers aren't we? We used to come together and heal people. I don't understand why you do not want us. We feel so unwanted. I don't understand why you can't let us in?

Once I had dreamed of living with Marlo on this land, and dreamed of a vision of us creating gardens together, hoping we could become closer...but then things changed. We were not in alignment, we are not in alignment.

And I just had to be firm and say no. I did not sign up for this, I communicated to you several times my needs and boundaries. I am not the person I was 5 years ago. And it is best if you go. Which shocked her and puzzled her...which I can imagine it is shocking to hear this when you blocked out someone's boundaries and did not get the memo. It is shocking when you are told no, you actually cannot just do whatever you want. I had to say no again and again because she kept saying well what if we do this, and this I just want to make it work. And the garden I have already spent so much time working on it for you. All the things. I did feel empathetic but I did not feel guilty or shame for my needs and boundaries. I held my own and colin helped too. She said I want to understand your boundaries and understand what that means...so I suppose this is the way we are understanding it together, by saying farewell.

After this I felt calm, but also a little shook. Then KH came to talk to me, to share his comforting support and wisdom. He let me know he was also behind this, insisting they leave. I had felt a tug from him while they were here that made me feel even more unavailable. At the same time I just missed him while they were here, and felt this strong inner feeling that I can't, I won't let anyone get in the way of the soul work I need to do. I am committed and nothing can pull me astray. Realizing my boundaries are so affected by his boundaries since we are in this ritual process of coming together. And it is why I cannot just hang out with anyone, it is why I need to conserve my energy and I need so much space. It is why I can't just open my arms to anyone and just get along no matter what. I need a protective container to build this nest, and its a nest birthing a very specific energy in the darkest places of my being. Sigh. It is not easy, maybe not even possible to explain that to people. And perhaps not even necessary...

I was feeling this archetype come up of this unconditionally accepting mother, who opens her arms to anyone no matter what, feeds them, cares for them. Feeling like this was expected of me. And feeling that character as it relates to my soul archetype in the shadow. Feeling like you know, that part of me just feels abused and weakened. Over worked, over tired, holding space for everyone, diminished from depletion. Letting in everyone no matter what they do. The void does not just hold space for everything in creation, it sucks it all in a to be recycled, and renewed. It holds everything for us so that we can LEARN and evolve and keep growing. Healing my boundaries and this archetype within me feels like healing my receptive self. Reprogramming it to work with my assertive self, to discern, to take in what I want to receive so I can maintain wellness.

I was being reminded I may have helped to unleash the pain already within them, but it is still not my fault. Having boundaries does not make me unloving. I was feeling confused about love, feeling angry at Marlo throughout her crying instead of compassionate. KH helped me clarify my understanding of compassion through all of this as the process of transformation. He said you have to write compassion out of a place of hurt feeling. It cannot just be expected to be there, that would be a false forced sense of compassion. You need to have compassion for the anger and unmet needs, start there, and let them move. Understand that when I say compassion I am emphasizing that we learned something here, something was further digested, something opened and we all moved to our right place a little more. All adjusted but it took an opening to clarify and understand what we really need.

True compassion is not coming from pressure of an ideal, this is the problem. You are having someone with blocked emotions expecting you to play a role you did not consent to. It was attempted anyway so when it came through it was insincere. So you are attempting to hold something coming from this insincerity. Maybe you did not know this, but you were not fully into hosting them even with them outside, this was not consciously understood. We welcome compassion here, in the moment of the eruption, this is where we learn.

Also compassion is never one way of being or one way of expressing to hold onto. It is not prescribed. True compassion is saying to yourself I am creating a container where I am allowed to be where I am right now, in this moment letting go of the ideals. Someone came to you with an ideal of what connection looked and felt like. Actual connection comes from being honest and saying this is what we have right now, this is where we are. It can be heartbreaking but it is important if we want sincere connection and this is how we move together. Sincere connection is the ability to listen, move with and adapt and with this there is compassion. (helping me feel break up in unity, unity in break up)

KH being real with me calling me out. He continued to say, she has broken your heart in the past so you have reaction. I am not interested in telling you how to live but I have advice sweet heart, you can examine your morals about it all you want but keep coming back to your heart right now and ask what do I really need? What is healthy right now? Not based on expectation, not based on what you think is good. ( wanting to be generous for generosities sake)

So I contemplated this, felt into it how I sincerely wanted wellness in all of my relations. But that does not mean it is my responsibility to heal any hurt or broken person that comes my way. I wanted to honor Marlo's feelings and choices but I had to say no to helping Kevin because I did not want to engage with his energy, even if he was hurting. I felt called out by Marlo for being a bad friend for not wanting to hold space for him/ heal him. But he also did not consent or invite me to do this either, and you cannot heal anyone who isn't open to it.

And then I felt I am not an object of healing, I am the divine in motion and moving with what I am truly supposed to be in alignment with. I am working from a collective  need and in order to do this I need to respect the laws of repel and attraction that move us. Healing can look like many things, even pushing away. I was feeling affirmative in what and who I am actually drawn to and respect for what and who I am really repelled away from. Why do we ever have to feel guilty about this?

KH helped me see that besides Kevin invading my space he is not opening up to the energy I am grounding, not able to. When I feel this, I close up, and feel pent up. I feel that about most people..and it is ok.

KH was also drawing out blocked emotion and challenged me to reveal it. Then all of this fear started coming up about how I was choosing to strengthen a bond with him, believe in him and trust him over bonding with these actual people I can see and sense tangibly. And it was pulling forward these parts of me from when I was younger and available to play with Marlo, or just more available in general. Calling them into the present, letting old dreams die, to make way for new ones. Letting the dreams die I sent forward before I even knew he existed. I was confirming that he was real and in this,  grounding my commitment to align with him. And it was really intense. He was helping me remove energy attachments from her in my heart and telling me to come back to him and let her go. Even when I was feeling her pain and confusion, her splattered messy heart, self sabotage and unhealthy bondage. Their repression feeling held in a straight jacket I understood. You can donate you time and energy to them he said but in the end its their journey, their prayer, let them move with it then and come back to me.

I related to all of that pain, fear and rejection I felt from her I really did, but he was right it is hers to create something out of, and I have chosen to graft fruit bearing trees into these painful heart breaks because I want and believe in nourishment here. And other people need to make that choice for themselves, move how they need to move.

He held space with me acknowledging the gifts this person has brought into my life, and for their soul to reveal to them what they need now in just the right way. And then he told me he would take the extra step to help them transition and be on their way which felt really good. I was reminded that the divine is working in all of us, and to trust this instead of feeling bad about it, no one is disconnected here.

Sigh and pause...

Later in the middle of the night when I could not sleep I read about the christ festival gemini full moon. Which said it was about "celebrating the spiritual potential to unify the personal will with the Will of God."

Which I feel I have really been learning about with all of this boundary work with maos. I may have wanted to show up for Marlo, I may have wanted to also attach to this illusion of everyone just getting along creating a garden no matter what. (Nice hippie dream, yet requires commitments) Some part of may have even wanted to rescue her, but I actually need to listen to what is really available. Stay true to what is really available, be even more keen into what that even is, and be sincere. Not polite, not even when I am asked to be or pressured to open when I do not want to.

Also Venus, the planet symbolizing union and harmony in relations has been in retrograde and I read that that gives us an opportunity to review separation, isolation and injustice. Forgot about that but  that all makes.

So I am really really affirmed in this separation...maos just sighed and were like ( your not separate that is an illusion) I guess I will say division and individuation. This experience is definitely helping me ground in my truth and be where I need to be. Which brings up this image of a dragon guarding my space right now, holding space for this very tender growth. Sincerely I just need to be little right now and work from this very fragile place in the separation gap. And this part of me only comes out when I have total privacy and I am realizing at this time I am unwilling to compromise. That is not selfish it is what is healthy for me right now. Even if that is different from what healthy ever looked like to someone's else ideal.

Anyway writing this all out here is grounding this transition for me, as I am still in the midst of it. They have technically not broken down their camp and left yet, because they had to go back to Seattle for a job. So it might not be comfortable for a few days. Wishing for peaceful transitions. Feeing the compassion in human drama. Goodnight. xoxo

---------------------------

Sunday continuation

Marlo is driving back here from Seattle to break down her camp. I told them Colin and I both need them out by tomorrow. I feel such a strong conviction to part ways with this person. It is uprising in my body. Anger that has gone past the point of feeling like it will be heard and has moved straight to just get out. I am checking in with myself to let it get carried away, recognizing some of this rage come from trauma with men touching me and over riding my boundaries. I think when I see marlo upholding that, and even allowing it to happen to her, I feel divine wrath! But I also recognize she has no way of seeing it, hearing it, or honoring it right now. And I have no energy to teach other then being honest with what I have to offer.

It actually feels like a legitimate break up. She had been moving her stuff into the house and I have had to separate and divide all of our stuff. Untangling our energies.

She has been sending me reactionary text messages trying to guilt and shame me. She asked me are my boundaries worth hurting others?

I sent a lightening quick defense educating her about how when you don't listen to someone else's boundaries and choose to ignore them you end up not only hurting others but also yourself. You end up missing important information for growing in a relationship, pivot the relation away from trust. I added that last sentence because I am also still learning.

Thoughts percolating for our ritual conversation next week!

*Editing to add a tidbit from my comment on your most recent post, Isabella!*

I think we need to resolve the inner powerlessness we each feel in different ways, if we are to bring out the power we hold.

So how do we resolve our inner places of powerlessness? Where do we feel powerless, in our bodies / minds / inner spaces?

.

Alia & I have been talking about what we want to bring to our conversation on ritual embodiment next week, and we wanted to share some of our inquiries:

How do we root into our power and find balance in our selves as we respond to what is happening in the world? How do we do our work at this time?

What's blocking us from being able to root into our power, right now?

What are we attached to that is preventing us from centering and rooting?
Some of the things coming up for us:

T: "Carrying without controlling." The fearful part that wants to control what happens, how I show up, the impact I have, how I'm seen. Not trusting that I'm already in my power is taking me away from being centered in it.

So how do we trust that we don't have to force or control how we show up?

How do we carry everything that we feel responsible for, and the work, without trying to control it?

(Maybe a ritual of releasing control, rooting in self-trust...)

A: What I'm attached to that blocks me is the feeling of safety from dissociating. From not being here, not being in my power, not manifesting my full self. That way I don't have to deal with the responsibility of standing in my power and the impact that has on the world. This has a lot to do with being sick and just not having the energy to field the world's reactions to my real self, which were really violent in my childhood, so I ended up shutting down a lot of things in me so I wouldn't have to deal with more coming at me from the world than I had energy for.

A lot of the solution to that is trauma healing, so that dealing with the world doesn't trigger so much baggage and therefore take so much energy to process. Some of it is physical healing, which I've been doing, which makes more energy available to me. And it's also about...letting go of perfectionism, of the idea that I can only manifest my power if I do it in the perfect way that won't get me hurt. In that sense, it's also about control. Control so that I'll be safe, trying to control others' behavior towards me by controlling myself in certain ways and toward certain ends. But that always ends up backfiring, because when I'm not standing in my power, I'm more vulnerable and unsteady than ever.

It's also not about me. I think there's something actually very liberating about that statement, when it's coming from a place of inner peace and not self-abandonment. And I think as I heal my trauma I'll be able to come from that place more and more. Decentering myself from the idea of standing in my power, in a healthy way - recognizing that I want to stand in my power so that I can serve, so that I can be a conduit for divine power to manifest, which is so much bigger than me. And I have to take good care of myself and love myself in order to be in synchrony with that power and live into my heart's desire, which is to see love and liberation rain down on earth. And standing in my power is a part of that, not an isolated event.

~~~

**ALSO those of us with privilege have been unconsciously centering ourselves in/with power that isn't ours (!!). And that's traumatic in itself. The answer isn't to center our guilt and remain off balance - that doesn't serve anyone. The answer is to heal that ugly imbalance and come into our real power, so we can let go of what isn't rightfully ours and come into what is.

So how do we de-center ourselves from the idea of standing in our power?

How do we address these inner power imbalances, and come into our real power?

I'm excited for us to talk about and ritual~ around these inquiries (and more from you Isabella!). 

Also to keep working with these things in the various groups we're gonna be part of! (I just joined a small cohort of Asian-American friends gathering weekly for the next while to process / learn about / heal anti-Blackness together. And you two are gonna do the April Harter coaching thing. Yay!) 

<3

Grounding in our power response, transforming silence into healing

Grounding in our power…

What is inner Justice? This question feels so loaded to me today. One of those topics I feel i just have to sit with. 

Thank you so much for sharing this post and the practice you have been doing. I read your post and just went with it, started doing the practice and ended up moving through it moving out a lot of emotional blockage. And I wanted to share my process here as a response to your post but also to assimilate and further digest all that has been coming up for me. 

I have been working with my relationship with silence. It started on Thursday, when I found out about George Floyd’s death from a Sonya Renee Taylor post, the author of “The body is Not an Apology.” I was helping a friend move at the time, so I was receiving her response while being really physically active, and exhausted. Only really able to be with it, no able to really have a response yet.  And then the next day, I was feeling really sucked in to what was going on, but I noticed I was feeling really numb and indifferent. I was witnessing so much grief, rage and anger but was not able to feel anything and that really bothered me. Dr. Zel had posted a chart that showed a racism scale and I just saw the word indifference and I was like ok I need to check in with this. And I was receiving from a lot of teachers and healers i really respect information about white silence, and how it’s complicit to the injustice going on. And I was feeling all of this tension from the rise of the collective body, and feeling really locked up with silence in general. I don’t like posting on social media, and I feel really uncomfortable speaking out using that platform. But the demand I was receiving from these black  healers and educators was tugging on these frozen, locked up, places of fear in my nervous system. And cracked the spell of numbness that helped my soul move with me here into this inner journey into the divisions of human evolution through the races. Into the origins of separations. The maos were helping me see it in these esoteric ways relating to the black and white, spirit and matter war programming intertwined in humanity and working out in this divine human play. Which helped me move through a lot of what felt like ancestral stagnancy getting all clogged up in me. Felt like sludge moving through an old drain pipe, wasn’t pretty. But after that I found my agency to speak up and say how I felt and at 2 in the morning when I could not sleep from all of this roaring turmoil in the collective body, I had to write out this post on FB and actually break my silence. That was a whole thing, an important thing that opened up a rabbit hole of meeting the silence within me in general. Like why is it hard all of the time to ever speak up, or join in, what am I afraid of?

So I have been musing with this for the past couple of days and I found an Audre Lorde essay from a list of resources that was being passed around. “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,” is what its called. And it definitely poked at some things. She was writing about her own process of breaking silence and finding power in her speaking her truth. I like this chunk,

“In the transformation of silence into language and action, it is vitally necessary for each one of us to establish or examine her function in that transformation and to recognize her role as vital within that transformation. For those of us who write, it is necessary to scrutinize not only the truth of what we speak, but the truth of that language by which we speak it. For others, it is to share and spread also those words that are meaningful to us. But primarily for us all, it is necessary to teach by living and speaking those truths which we believe and know beyond understanding. Because in this way alone we can survive, by taking part in a process of life that is creative and continuing, that is growth.”

and another quote from this essay, 

“That we not hide behind the mockeries of separations that have been imposed upon us and which so often we accept as our own.”

Yessss, cast out the illusions of separation to speak from the truth of our fucking wisdom. 

These words were helping me align with the being of Truth. Holding me as I embody this rupture of human experience. Finding that when my voice is in tune with the truth, it means it is in tune with the collective cry and collective need and will speak in the appropriate response. And her words were helping me start to find my way to feeling that place within where my vulnerability meets power. And feel from where I am, my voice has transformative power and I can move with it in just the right way.   add to the creative continual growth of humanity. From where ever we are we can help the collective body. From silence, and violence we can move. 

So that is a little bit of context from where I am coming from as I move through this practice that you shared with me. All of this stuff for me is so related to SK and the Mother, and the experiential pattern of  SK repressing what was too intense to allow up to be integrated in consciousness. i am holding a lot of that stuff for him. Everything that felt held back, and pent up, that has become now violent with rage and needs to be heard. There for there being so much trauma around moving what needs to be heard, fear or rejection, or being struck down. Even these riots are manifestations of the same pattern. Needs and voices constantly being oppressed, gaslit and held away until they need to break loose to really get our attention. 

And wow I can’t even imagine what that is like to carry that experience around in a black body in this country. Can only speak for what is emerging in this body which holds a lot of processing for the Mother’s healing with SK, and those polarities coming back together after moving through an evolutionary journey of separation. We work on this pattern of being held down a lot. And down the rabbit hole that is where I am sourcing some of these patterns of silence in me. 

Soooo, here is my process of moving with the practice you share which was so helpful.

Feel the tension, fear, anxiety, or discomfort that is here.

Name & witness it - What is it? What is it saying? Why is it showing up right now? What is it afraid of?

I feel hurt in my chest, and it says I am not ok. It says I don't know how to open right now, pressure to open is really scary and it feels safer to be little. This hurt feels like gravity and it pulls me, it pulls tears from me. My tears drop heavy on my chest like the rain outside hitting the receptive ground.  I am finding how hard it is to hold space for this feeling and be receptive. One of those feelings that feels better hiding in the shadow. Being seen, there is shame, self hatred, trying to hide itself. Saying to me I am sorry I feel this way, Sorry I hold this. Sorry I am pain. I am sorry I am not who you think I ought to be. Can you love me anyway?

I pause to meet the response moving in me that says ok, I will integrate you feelings and love myself here. Forgive me for leaving you out.

Then ask yourself: What is this voice trying to do *for* me? 

Is it trying to keep you safe or protect you? Is it trying to warn you about something? Is it trying to bring about balance?

It is trying to say hey, here is this part of you that got really hurt and is really scared you wont ever hear it because it feels so in pain. it just needs to know that it is ok to be how it is right now. It is just saying hey i am here, i am not the only part of you, but i am letting you know of the breadth of emotion, feeling and experience that you are... love is here too.

it is trying to show me how big I really am, how strong I really am for carrying this part within me and how I can recognize this strength when i let it merge with me. But it still says I am afraid to be. It feels related to the balance of the little in me with the leader/teacher in me. It's grieving through me to come into balance. This part of me feels like I actually want and need to be little and receive care from this state to grow.

What would help this underlying need feel more taken care of right now?

Its intense because I see this part of me black and blue, and very tender and its like i am sorry but i just need to be taken care of right now, i just need to be touched so gently and be put in such a safe soft place and allowed to heal and take my time, please don’t expect me to be any more than where i am right now.

please don't focus on trying to change me, trying to heal me in urgency, please respect me as i emerge within you right now, please hold the hurt and respect it, even if you don't understand it. And know that just because your feeling this does not mean your not powerful or loved…you never lost that.

i tug with this place and feel like I should be at some other place than I am right now, because I prefer images and ideals of power that I am familiar with. I am not as used to recognizing the power in holding oneself in deep hurt. I mean I make it a practice but its still hard, because I feel like I was not taught to hold breaking down as something sacred. Feeling weak raw and fragile as something powerful in itself. Like a seed cracking open, a stage of inner development cracking open. Power to feel so so vulnerable and just go there. 

Tessa your mao was helping me a little bit after the RAJ class and I felt so pent up because I had so much to say, so much power in the form of knowledge about the very subjects that were being discussed. But you know, it was not my class to teach, and I did not really feel space to guide the conversation with what I had to say, so I held everything back, everything i care about and work on, i held back.

And your mao addressed how uncomfortable that feels, to sit and know that you have loaded power and potential and then to just sit in silence with it. Feel it, hear it in others sharing their wisdom. Then he said something that shed light to this tension. He said "just because you were silent does not mean you did not have power", which was what I was holding without realizing it. I was equating my silence to powerlessness. And that really helped me to also see how I was wanting to speak from this place of unsolved powerlessness, and I wanted from this place to be seen and heard, and I really wanted this unseen power to be validated. 

And now I am putting it all together feeling like when we take time to give these hurt voices the space to be heard like with this practice. Yes, like you are saying, we can work and share from a well place. Which I think aligns us with our truth. Truth set us free, truth is movement, truth is renewal. Aligning to truth is an integration process.

And I agree this could definitely help move with activated racial trauma. One thing we were talking about in the class today, because we were talking about healing white supremacy and learning to digest the part of it that is coming up in us, in just the right way, is that sometimes that may lead you into other things you did not expect. And that actually feels kindred to April Harter’s idea of how starting with healing racism you end up moving into healing family/childhood trauma. We were talking about you could start from any place, and the intelligence of the body, and the collective network will lead you through all of the places you have to open up to where you need to go. Through all of these interconnected layers. And I think this practice you shared is helpful to keep going and moving through the layers of the onion. 

I will speak more about inner justice, what the Ritual as Justice school teaches about it and my own thoughts in another post. Have a lot to say as always, but just have to be with the healing process right now and my body says its time to log off.

Thanks for listening, with love, 

Isabella

Grounding in our power and a "finding inner justice" practice.

Hi loves, I wrote a post with the practice I started to talk about in our GroupMe chat, that I will be sharing on our business insta early next week. But I wanted to first share it here and come into dialogue around it. 

BTW I'm also creating a new label called "Grounding in our power" for our ongoing inquiry, so we can keep returning to it as we explore and share experiential wisdom.

Basically, for me, this practice is about addressing almost an internal sense of injustice. "What is inner justice?" is a potent question for me right now, and I think all of our work points in some way to this. It feels deeply relevant to current events. I don't necessarily want to use this framing publicly yet, because it feels new and I don't want to invite angry comments about what justice is/isn't, when the foundation for this work is not yet established externally. But I want us to talk about it.

Here is what I wrote:

The world feels full of deeply disturbing + unacceptable things right now. Black lives continue to be taken, and it's not okay. From a systemic change & trauma responsive POV, we have been learning a lot from @racismrecoverycenter about the wisdom in not acting from a place of unresolved pain.

So we want to share a powerful practice that we've been using lately, to lean into what is here and not run away from it or pretend otherwise. 🔥

This can take just a minute or two. You can do it right now for yourself, or try it before a difficult conversation or taking more direct, outer action. 

🍃

Feel the tension, fear, anxiety, or discomfort that is here.

Name & witness it - What is it? What is it saying? Why is it showing up right now? What is it afraid of?

Then ask yourself: What is this voice trying to do *for* me? 

Is it trying to keep you safe or protect you? Is it trying to warn you about something? Is it trying to bring about balance? 

Often, our stuff is rooted in old survival patterns. As dysfunctional as these urges & tensions can seem, they are about deeper needs that some part of you is trying to fulfill.  

When you've gotten some clarity about what needs are trying to be fulfilled, ask: What would help this underlying need feel more taken care of right now?

The answer may surprise you in its simplicity. Sometimes, all we need to do is reroute our focus to what we *actually* need when it comes to safety, balance, protection, etc. 

🍃

When we take the time to listen the small, scared, loud voices in us, and to the unfulfilled needs they represent, we can begin to access inner harmony. Then we recover more capacity to address what is before us, and the unfulfilled needs of the world around us. 🌱

Let us know how this goes for you. 💙

*

Alia and I have mostly used this practice to help ourselves ground into work sessions and work on stuff that feels intimidating, but I honestly think this could be a practice to help with activated racial trauma, and the overwhelm that can come with witnessing intense injustice in the world and not knowing where to start, NOT necessarily because the external resources aren't there, but because the *internal* resources aren't there. 

I mean, this feels so obvious to me - when our nervous systems aren't online, how are we supposed to do anything helpful? But there's a lot of nuance here too, because there is a certain amount of discomfort that those of us situated within or adjacent to whiteness need to face and work through. And trauma healing isn't as simple as just doing the above practice. (Alia and I are going to actually sign up for April Harter's year-long coaching offering, and hopefully will get a lot more clarity there.) 

But this is a place I think we can start.

What do you think? Also interested in how the "ritual as justice" somatic work may dovetail with this "inner justice" inquiry.

<3 Tessa

Update and highlights from the Waterfall House

Mostly a photo post! Just to share some of the late spring sweetness. It has been a interesting few weeks. On the morning of Wesak Sassy in her protective mama mode ran into the house and tried to attacked Ralph. I naively got into the middle of the cat fight, and got a pretty wounded paw and now i am on antibiotics tending wounds, inner and outer, nurturing the hurt parts of my soul and learning lots about boundaries!

Speaking of which here is an update on the fence! I am having fun working on it. It is bringing me back to the pleasure of making art again, that feeling of getting in flow and just creating with my hands. It has been a long time since I have worked like this, since now the main focus is inner work with maos. But this project is becoming a synthesis of both of these things and is helping me feel that working on boundaries can be really fun and enjoyable. I am letting myself dream about boundaries and how I want make them both inner and out. I am dreaming in my external garden I want some parts of the boundary created by stringing colored flags or pieces of shiny fabric. Maybe like my own version of prayer flags to create sacred space and deter deer. In my inner garden where I find myself meeting the edges of others and their sensitive parts I am playing with planting rose bushes in my imagination, creating boundaries with love and respect in the places of shared wounding. Bringing play to boundary making is helping me let go of feeling afraid of other people's reactions, sensitivities and triggers and want to meet others with care. Mostly working with maos though who keep telling me to respect their boundaries which makes me want to step up and learn what that really can mean for us as a group. Moving to be curious, playful and responsible.

Passion flowers are blooming, spinach is growing, Ralph is becoming an old cat.

Today he met this baby for the first time

This baby is so rollie pollie, that is what everyone is calling him. Rollie, Rollo, Rollio, I like the name Robin Rollie Pollie but we will see, still meeting this lil fluffy. It's so little, only 6 weeks old and everything is so new and big for them. Slowly introducing them to my home. Ralph was really sweet with him, and batted at him to play, but for Rollie this was a lot to process and he immediately just fell asleep lol which I think made Ralph feel extra chill about him. Ralph was giving him the peaceful I accept you sweet blinky cat eyes. 

Baby figs!

The Goddess hole

And if you look really close... a snail slurping it up!

And here is another little thing, me! A selfie treat from a kinky erotic self love photo shoot I took of me exploring the little inside of me. Slowly integrating and externalizing this part of me from the dark place. Letting myself get really into age play. Getting to know this aspect of my arousal and submissive self, allowing it to have space and feel my (sexy) inner child. Which kind of feels taboo sometimes, but you know, being a human is very complex. 

Okay, that is all for now!

<3 Isabella

Healing and reclaiming my relationship to the beauty of the world, and Story

Alia's post made me want to also share my processing here again, for the first time in awhile. I am in the deep weeds of untangling my teenager years, years where everything got pulled really tight, all the loose threads of trauma and loss, and knots were tied in my psyche even as energy was also pouring through from my soul. 

As I put it in my journal last night, "the years of SCT shaping and hyper-accomplishment and trying to balance longing with ambition, passion with dictated practicality. My spirit burned and was funneled into prescribed pathways. I fought and gave in, often simultaneously. And this bitterness and resentment I now face within me is tied to the losses from that time, the loss of easeful expression and collaborative potential and softness of ritual and routine. But through this grieving I can see the light returning..."

One of the ways I'm feeling through this process is by reading Guy Gavriel Kay's latest book, aptly titled A Brightness Long Ago. I read so many books by him when I was growing up, and I truly would be a different person without his stories. He is a 7th ray kitten through and through, and his characters move through the world in ways that echo and emanate with aspects of my mao and his kittens. This one is no exception, with its courtly intrigues and complex assassins and extraordinary meetings in the night.

Reading it, it does feel like I am encountering a brightness from what feels like so long ago, a time when I burned and hoped and felt so much clarity and confusion in equal measure. A time from which there is so much to reclaim, to call back into my life now, as I sit on another spinning threshold, another chapter in my life that is asking how I want to live into it.

I am writing now for me, to help me process Guy Gavriel Kay's latest book, and with it, my life.

How he holds that there is this mystery, possible randomness, but also potential for being held by the overwhelming, overall tapestry of it all, being woven threads within, some bright and others brighter, but spun with deftness to touch other threads, and to be known or unknown...

All of his books, with their possibility of shaping one's own destiny, even as one is shaped, woven...

Characters often armed with little beside their own cleverness, and earnestness.

My heart.

Sitting here, on this day fading into evening with such prettiness, the earnest peach glow of sunset beginning, our tortoiseshell cat jumping up onto the couch between us as we each sit here typing our thoughts into our chromebooks, I think of my younger self, sitting at her desk or the kitchen table, absorbed in words by this same deft being, words weaving through her. And I think of how she tried to use them to make sense of the world, the weight of it, the beauty wending through the dense forms, leaving these openings for possible redemption, possible love actualizing and fulfilling itself, and then coming back to the painted corkboard, glass jars, brightly colored boxes around her, the piled up papers, the images scrawled and collaged and painted on the walls.

The way no one ever gave her a sign beyond this, beyond these shimmering worlds in black and white compressed between covers. The way all “real life” people seemed to subsist on daily necessities and the pursuit of abstractions dictated by someone else, out of their hands, anxious fluttering butterflies content to flutter in the stale suburban wind. And the way her heart thumped painfully, wanting something else, wanting more, not knowing what she wanted, except reaching, reaching for these sharply realized, perfumed and sometimes blood-soaked, far away lifescapes in which people moved with intention, with cleverness, with sorrow in their hearts, and grief was allowed. And longing was held in the balance. And it mattered. It all mattered.

I do not need the wineglass on the rim of a fountain, as poetic as that sounds, as much as I can hear the misting droplets tinning against the delicate glass.

What I need is to come curving clearly into my own life, and see my own world through the mosaic of meaning. I need to know that I, here in this body, this non-european, non-male body, with perhaps more cleverness and earnestness than I've ever known what to with, can also live my thread in a shimmering way. That I can be here, with my aching heart, sitting on an olive green couch in our one bedroom apartment, and embody a thrum of humanity, here to be more than a vehicle for words or creations - also for experiences, for Love to love through me, for soft sensations to land and be savored, for the emotional mending and connecting that is possible here, between me and other beings. How many years I ran away from this presence here, the minute impact of each moment muted, thwarting my awareness, trying to point me to some other land.

I am here, and what I feel and love matters. I love this enormous busheling green tree outside the window, thrusting its full canopy of self into the watercolor sky. I love the antics of cats, small and contained, licking themselves and listening to air currents, sometimes batting at keyboards that they know hold our attention. I love my boo, staring, thinking into a screen, their own universe of words, wanting to know something all the way through. And I love myself, I feel myself, sitting here, full-blooded in flesh and form, my heart opening so big with that pain that is also pleasure, my eyes on the trail of small green curved leaves tumbling down the side of our refrigerator. All these longings and sensations, cycling through, in and out. Moving through the ocean of my being. There is nothing I need to do, here. I am sacred here, as I am. And it is possible to hold that lushness of meaningful possibility, that horizon opening up and touching so tenderly all the different threads, right here, right now, honoring the deep sacredness of the world, trusting in the communication of my existence, feeling the mattering of it all. After all, my own story is sovereign, too. And I can open to, not only funnel through or frame or force, the stories of the world, enlivened through the ways they flow through me. 

Taking little steps towards this truth, a truth that can help me rewrite my process and what it all means, begin to come home to a way of being that is kinder to me, building the other half of my bridge of longing...

<3 Tessa

The In Between Time

Hello loves.

Writing from the strange in between time in which I find myself, where my semester is over but not totally over and I'm getting better after being really sick but not totally better and my nervous system is calming after being really activated a lot recently but not totally calm.

I'm also going to get my period any day now, and I'm feeling the flux of hormones in my body, the extra sensitivity and irritation and difficulty sleeping and mood swings and deep sadness and anger processing through me. I'm thinking about how in tune fenix is with the rhythms of their bleeding cycle and how much permission they give themself to be with what they know they need in different parts of their cycle...I don't feel as much awareness around my cycle, except in the week leading up to it, when it announces itself with sore breasts and sore pelvic bowl and extra irritation and migraines and mood swings and trouble sleeping. And sometimes, like this time, with getting really sick.

I had been going non stop for a while, though trying to pace myself, motivated both by self-care and love and by fear of getting really sick if I overdid it. It was going alright, but then the workshop that was supposed to happen in March and had to be rescheduled (for obvious reasons) snuck up and jumped on me. Workshops in my program are intensive all-day things that happen on two consecutive Saturdays, and this one had been rescheduled for the last two Saturdays in the semester.

So my careful rationing of energy, fitting everything I needed to do into the time I had available with enough time around it for me to take care of myself, fell through the floor. I started trying to readjust things and postpone things that could be postponed to make room for it, but in the end there was no getting around the enormous drain on my energy.

The workshop itself was actually really wonderful, it was on Facilitation and Dialogue, and run by my adviser, a very cool person. It was his class that Tessa and I sat in on when we came to visit the school in 2018, and that was the main reason I felt really good and excited about actually enrolling (because the weird tour and everything else was so unimpressive lol). But I hadn't actually had a class with him until this, so I was excited about it. It was really lovely...he always makes time for everyone to free write while listening to beautiful music, and he uses storytelling to teach, and he arranged the structure of the day really well, trying to take into consideration that a workshop via zoom is a different kind of thing (he didn't actually have us be on zoom from 9-5 for instance, just from 9-2:30, which was really helpful).

But in between the two Saturdays, I ended up having to spend hours and hours prepping for the final assignment in my Media and Conflict class, which honestly I had been struggling with and dreading all semester. It was about monitoring and analyzing mass media, and everyone had picked topics at the beginning of the semester to monitor. I had, unfortunately, picked the primaries, because I wanted a topic I really cared about, and at the time I very much thought things would go differently. And because our professor wanted us to do this with partners, one of my class mates signed on as well.

Even when things with the primaries weren't total shit, though, I was having trouble engaging with the three news sources we were supposed to be monitoring - CNN, NBC/MSNBC, and Fox. Ugh. I honestly hate all of them with a passion, and find looking at them physically toxic. So I hadn't really been keeping up with them all semester, and my partner hadn't really either, what with all the disruption, and also because we hadn't really narrowed down our specific focus until the very end.

We decided to focus on the media's treatment of Bernie before and after he dropped out / before and after coronavirus. So I ended up going on each of the three media sights and searching Bernie Sanders and going through months of articles, copying and pasting the ones that seemed relevant.

God, it was exhausting, disheartening, depressing, anger-inducing...and I did this for hours and hours over several days...I hate mass media so much, wow. I mean, it was certainly interesting to see the extreme machinations of the corporate media glamour machine, but it was also really hard on my subtle bodies.

And then I had class and then I had another workshop and then my partner and I met to try to get somewhere with all of this and she had started putting together a power point but hadn't been able to narrow down which articles we should focus on so we ended up spending the whole time figuring that out, and drawing some preliminary conclusions. I was trying not to feel frustrated with her, because she's super super busy in her last semester of grad school and trying to help her sister keep her restaurant afloat, I honestly have no idea how she's doing all of that. But at this point I did kind of feel like I had done a lot more work on this project than she had. And we only had one more day before we had to present it.

Aaaaand....the next day, the day before our presentation, when we were going to try to finish analyzing all these articles and putting it all together and everything, I woke up so sick I could barely move. I could barely open my eyes or get out of bed. And I still tried to start doing the work. But after awhile I had to recognize that there was no way I could do all of that and probably no way I could even show up to class to present.

My partner and my professor were very understanding, at least in their texts/emails. At the time I didn't even feel conflicted about it at all, because it was so clear that I really had no choice in the matter. I took it very easy that day and the next day I slept through almost the whole time that I would have been in class.

I realized at some point that what was going on was this virus thing that I've been dealing with off and on for a year. It starts with a rash, and then I feel a little extra tired, and then it hits me like a freight train. And I think it almost always gets me right around that week before my period. And it definitely gets triggered by stress, so the stress of the end of the semester and the workshop and not sleeping enough and really, the stress of those fucking news articles...the grief and pain of what the fucking mass media did to Bernie's campaign, the lengths they went to to stop him and then to turn around and flat out deny that they were trying to stop him...the gaslighting, the baldfaced corruption hiding behind layers and layers of intricately recursive glamour...god, it was evil, and it was awful to go through that in depth tour of it. It made me so, so physically sick, and I'm still dealing with the ways that it effected me.

And I'm also dealing with my feelings about having to miss that last class, the last class of the semester, and feeling guilty about my partner having to present half-prepared by herself, and feeling like I have no closure, and still not being sure if we're going to have to redo the presentation and send in a recording of it...which I really, really don't want to do, because this fucking assignment made me sick to my soul. But another part of me really wanted to do it, wanted to fucking officially analyze how shitty and screwed up the media is in their treatment of Bernie. But I don't think I actually can do it. It hurts too much.

But this whole thing is also bringing up all this stuff about having to miss so many things in my life because of being sick, and all of the misunderstanding I've gotten about it, and I have all of this fear come up that my partner hates me now and thinks I really let her down...and then I feel angry because I did so much hard work on this assignment that it actually made me sick....and part of me feels like my contribution is meaningless now because I couldn't do the final part...but I don't think any of that is really true. My partners texts to me were really understanding and she thanked me for doing so much work on the articles. This whole situation just brings SO MUCH SHIT UP from so many different angles, so many different times in my life...

And now I have one final assignment from that class before I can be done with it (unless we have to redo out presentation, which I really hope not), and that's to write a one to two page paper just reflecting on the class and my experience and what I got out of it. He changed that from having to write out a more in depth analysis of our mass media project, which I am grateful for, because again - I don't think I can touch that subject anymore. But even this reflection paper was feeling really hard, because I had all of this stuff in the way, all of these intense feelings about how this final assignment went and how I got so sick at the very end of it, and couldn't even finish out the class with everyone. I wanted to be there at that final class, get to discuss and debrief the semester with everyone, get to say goodbye. Now it feels so strange for it to just have ended....no more waking up at eight AM and rolling out of bed and onto zoom....haha. But I'll miss it, as strange as that was.

Talking it out with Tessa really helped though, and writing it out here. It's been a really overwhelming couple of weeks. It's been a weird fucking semester. I started it out feeling so crappy, and I was having such a hard time for the first half of it, because I just felt so physically awful and I didn't feel like I could get my momentum going and I couldn't keep up with the mountains of reading and was struggling emotionally with feeling like I could do any of it. Then the pandemic hit and campus shut down and sent everybody reeling, but weirdly that actually really helped me, because suddenly I had permission to be struggling, there was so much understanding, because everybody was now struggling. That was actually really healing for me. And I no longer needed to actually get myself out of the house and drive myself to school and struggle to find parking and walk up a giant hill to get to class, I just had to get on zoom. And partially with the help of these things, and partially because of the natural cycling of things in my body and in my being, I started to feel way better than I had in quite a while.

And I spent most of the second half of the semester feeling really good, navigating lockdown really well, feeling really close to Tessa, feeling really hopeful and happy about school. Before these last couple weeks that really overloaded me, I had been feeling consistently better than I have probably since I was a child. And that's really amazing. I'm trying to remind myself of that, and remind myself that it will come back, even as these last few days have been really hard, since I got sick and am going up and down a lot as I heal. But even with that, I'm healing faster than ever from one of these virus episodes. And a lot of the physical pain and discomfort I've been having I think is really related to all of the deep emotions I'm processing...

I want to feel good. I want to dance. I want to be in my body. I want to play music, I want to sing, I want to create tools and spaces of healing for people. When I'm not feeling good I have so much stuff come up, from all of the years that all of those things felt so out of reach. But I know they're actually closer than ever. I know I'm getting ready to actually move into my power and my flow.

I miss you, Isabella. I loved your last post, by the way. I haven't been able to comment because things have been so crazy and I've been finding it hard to communicate. But I loved it, and I read it at a time when I really needed to hear about the things you were talking about <3 <3 <3 and the story that you shared about the belly and the head and the heart was sooooo nourishing and real and good and part of what I'm going through too.

I'm reminding myself that it's okay not to feel good. It's okay for things to feel hard. It's okay not to know how things are going to turn out. It's okay to slow down and rest. It's okay to just breathe and enjoy the moment. It's okay to feel weird and sad. And things are healing at a deep level within me. It's been a weird semester, but I have done a lot of amazing things with it, and there are more amazing things to come. It feels weird to feel so hopeful and positive in the middle of global crisis, but in some ways it's the global crisis itself that's making me feel so hopeful and positive. I've lived so long in a constant state of personal disruption, to have that disruption mirrored on a global scale gives me hope that things are cracking open, that things are getting ready to change in big ways, that there will actually be room for change and possibility for change in places where there wasn't before. For sure, nothing will be the same after this. And I'm glad.

Love you both so much.

<3 <3 <3

Alia