It's a Both And Thing

Here's a list of the healing muck I've found in my inner basement over the past 6 months or so.

• Memories of sexual and relationship trauma
• Inability or unwillingness to share vulnerably
• Monsters that live in lights
• Fear of being too much, too strange, too big
• Fear of not being seen and/or of being subsumed
• Old resentments
• Body image, aging, and injury

The Powers that Be are really being pushy about this stuff.  It's like they're saying, "You know, you're about to hit that half-century mark.  You could drop dead at any time.  Get this shit done now.  Oh...you don't know what you need to look at?  Here, let us show you."

And they have.  I've had full-on flashbacks, episodes of somatic re-experiencing, a knee injury, a diagnosis, a really cool bleeding episode, and feelings of frustration, clogginess, pent-upness, and resentment having nothing to do with the present tense. How do I know it has nothing to do with my current life in this moment?  

I'm generally happy.  That's how.  Things in my life, this present life, are going really well (other than my misplaced reactions, that is).  Look at this wonderment:

• I'm still working in a way that sustains me and my ability to serve my clients 
• I'm on the far outside edge of the grief that kept me anxious and messed up for years
• I'm in love with a man who loves me and wants to know me
• I live in a great little house with a wonderful land-person
• I have some money socked away and a car that runs thanks to the generosity and love of my Uncle Jack
• I am a member of a strong, spiritual sisterhood and also a fun community of delightful weirdos
• I'm being creative in a number of different ways, 
• and Sofia and Ivar are both healthy.

My life is good.  It is actually pretty fucking stupendous.  And...

I'm feeling pressured.  I'm feeling pressured to figure out my personal humanity.  It's like the ticking clock is speeding up.  Tickticktickticktick.  I can hear Gary Gulman's version of the 60 Minutes clock (Watch The Great Depresh on HBO if you get a chance) ticking in my head.  

I realize that not everybody would feel the push to take on this stuff.  I know folks who might ask, "Why rock the boat? Why stir the cauldron?  Why stick the blender in the bathwater? Let this stuff rest."  And that might be the very best thing for that person.

It doesn't work for me.  Maybe it's because I'm a pretty strong Enneagram 4.  Maybe it's my Aquarius nature and all that 12th House stuff.  Maybe it's because I'm a heavy INFP.  Or perhaps it's just because...  Just because.  I have been driven to investigate my inner landscape, driven to know my shadows, and driven to transform for what feels like forever.  Other folks might get a little obsessed with history, railroads, cooking, sewing, their jobs, computer games, the color of their belly button lint.  I am obsessed with knowing myself and transforming.  I am a novice alchemist; the metals I'm transforming are habit patterns of being. 

I'm a Witch, and this is what I do.  It's my boat, my cauldron, and my bathtub; I'll rock, stir and blend if I want to.

And I want to.

So, my inner world is currently uncomfortable.  Sometimes really fucking uncomfortable.  

My outer world is so lovely it almost hurts.  

It's a both/and thing. 

Copyright: Falki Heithdottir