We’re here again, the longest night is coming soon. My husband and I call this time “the slog towards solstice”. It’s the tightest contraction of the year. Gravity can feel 2 times normal. I hear it from my clients. I see it in myself and my loved ones.

The world is reflecting that in many ways — polarity and anger, fear, devastating natural disasters with the creeping conviction that they are human driven. A seemingly never ending pandemic.

I will keep this brief. I want you to know that you are not alone. Even if you are physically alone, there is a planet full of beings who are sharing this reality with you. So many suffering. And, many of us needing communion, connection with other folks.

You don’t have to be in this alone. Reach out to friends and family, even if you haven’t in awhile. You might be surprised that someone is happy to witness your pain and be in connection. Please, don’t give up if the first few folks are not able to be there for you. Keep trying. Keep reaching out. Look on Meetup and see if there are virtual gatherings.

If your pain is too much for friends or family to hold, please reach out for professional help, whether that’s me or another warm, friendly counselor or healer.

You deserve support.

And, the light is coming back. Light your candles, plug in some twinkly lights. If you can’t trust in that, know that I do. The light is coming back. The swing of the seasons is predictable and dependable. Take your vitamin D3 if where you live is dark. (Said in my most motherly voice.)

The light will return. We need to hold one another until then. And, after.

All the blessings to you and yours.

It breaks my heart when I hear a client say, “I’m broken” or “I think there’s something wrong with me”. It happens far too often.

I remember feeling the same way. The first big wave of deeper emotional work I did was back in my late 20s. Some of the patterns in my relationships became so obviously painful, I just couldn’t muscle through and pretend everything was okay anymore.

I remember saying just what I hear from my clients. “I think I’m broken. I’m too wounded.” I felt like I was dirty. (Thank you, shame). My inner critic grabbed onto the work I was doing with healers and teachers and used it against me when I didn’t change as fast as I thought I should.

It took awhile for a core truth to sink in with me, even though it was spoken to me many times. I say it to you now. See how it feels to read this —

There is nothing wrong with you. There never was.

You suffer, and that suffering needs to be met skillfully. But, the suffering is not a sign that you are broken, it’s a sign that you’ve forgotten who and what you are. You can remember that, and hold the suffering parts of you tenderly. Learning to do that is healing.

When things happen to us as children that give us the message that we don’t matter, or that we’re unworthy, we believe it. We’re children! We don’t have the capacity to rationalize someone else’s behavior and know that they didn’t have the skills to treat us, a child, with gentleness.
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We’ve all been affected by the pandemic for over a year now. That effect looks different for many of us, depending on our life situations, of course. Some have felt some concern, but have still been living fairly full, interactive lives. Some have felt angry and inconvenienced, some fearful and forced to go to jobs that puts them in consistent contact with the public. Some have stayed home almost entirely. Some of those in the last group live alone, and have barely had any physical contact with other human beings. For over a year. Some have had loved ones die of COVID-19.

It’s been hard for everyone to some degree, in whichever group you’ve found yourself. Perhaps you’ve had more than one of those experiences at different times.

Right now, I’m writing to those of you who have taken social distancing seriously, and have had little contact with people. I have a number of clients and loved ones in this group. It’s been a rough year for you.
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It is so understandable to feel impatient with our healing. It always tugs on my heart when a client asks me “How long will this take? When will I feel better?” When we’re suffering, we want to feel better! Of course.

When some kind of trauma is involved, whether from childhood, ancestral patterning, or societal pressures, the suffering is a pattern in your nervous system. It’s in your body. This is why we often see health challenges of various types show up when we have unresolved wounding. In my practice I see a fairly wide range of chronic conditions, often autoimmune in nature, along with unmetabolized trauma. Digestive issues are common, too.

Sometimes the suffering shows itself more in emotional patterns. Relationships that always seem to end up the same way — badly. Anxiety that comes up in predictable ways, in response to a boss asking for a meeting, or a spouse making a fairly innocuous request. Even though there’s no particular reason you should think something bad is about to happen, your heart may start to pound. You might feel like running away, or arguing. That’s flight, or fight. It’s a nervous system response. And, it’s likely a nervous system response that is a memory that has nothing to do with what’s happening in the moment.

Without going too much in depth into the mechanisms of healing, it’s important to know that for the healing of traumatic residues in the nervous system to go deeply and last, the process needs to go slowly. I’ll say that again. Healing trauma needs to go slowly, or the nervous system will be overwhelmed and we risk being retraumatized.
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