Sitting cross legged. Eyes closed. Notice the tension in the shoulders. Feel the earth beneath holding my weight. Inhale and picture the things I’ve been carrying, the weight on my shoulders. Exhale and see those things slide down my arms and into the earth. Imagine putting it down. Trusting that it’s okay. The earth can carry it for me now. Feel the lightness watching it go. It’s not mine anymore. Tears fall. What would it feel like to put it down? What would it feel like to let it go? What would it feel like if I gave myself permission not to carry the burden of it into the rest of my life? Do I have the ability to put it down right here and right now? Is the resistance because I don’t know how or because I don’t want to? Is it my values? Is it that I’ve had it for so long I’m not sure it isn’t a part of me – in the way I couldn’t just let go of and leave behind my own arm? I know it isn’t part of me like that.

Your body is yours.

Your life is yours.

I remember what it’s like to stay with discomfort and know that it will pass. It’s been a long time since I felt that.

It’s not intuitive that simply holding still where there is tension and breathing into it will transform an uncomfortable place away, but it does.

In therapy a couple of weeks ago I said I wasn’t sure if I have ever truly sat with discomfort. I see a pattern in myself, a barrier, in that I meet discomfort with action to change. Maybe in life I haven’t learned to sit with discomfort but in yoga I have, I used to know it well, I didn’t fear it, I knew my power to remain, that the change I sought came from not doing anything at all, that it came from focusing on my breath, believing on a cellular level that ease would follow.

I don’t know if I believe that meeting the discomfort, the trauma, the betrayal, the anger, the pain, and simply sitting with it, breathing with it, not running from it, not doing anything about it will be enough to let it pass. That ease will follow.
But I don’t know that I don’t believe that.

When I think about how impossible it feels to be okay again in the aftermath of this layered collage of pain, I’m trying to picture how to take action to move past it. Maybe what I feel is that it is impossible for me to DO anything about it, to DO anything to make it go away.

I think the doubt comes from how long it’s been with me.

But the first five years I didn’t understand it, so it haunted me. It was also still happening. It wasn’t over. The gaslighting was ongoing. My brain was still being shaken like a blender bottle by the person who had shattered it.

And then the next nine years I was still holding on. Trying to heal but also choosing to delay healing for the pursuit of justice. I’ve known this. I’ve known there was more healing to do. It’s not fair to doubt I can when I knew I was hurting myself still.

I’m not anymore. There’s a lot of damage to sit with.

But I’ve never sat with it. I’ve never faced it without trying to fix it.

So maybe there is hope. Maybe this is how it happens. Time alone does not heal all wounds. I know that. But the changes I’m making now are in myself, to accept not to fix.

Also, as an aside, I am continuing to be more aware that I cannot relax my muscles completely, and that sometimes I actually can’t tell if I’m activating or not.