But there comes a time—perhaps this is one of them—
when we must take ourselves more seriously or die,
when we must pull back from the incantations,
rhythms we've moved to thoughtlessly,
and disenthrall ourselves, bestow ourselves to silence...⎯Adrienne Rich
Moving through the pain of this life, you inevitably confront your past.
Either you repeat strategies for survival you have always used—even when they do not work—or you take a risk and try something else. You see it repeated again and again in history, in families, and in yourself. You contract. You open. You snap back to small. Change is particularly hard in response to pain.
Survival responses.
Dissociation—losing track of time or self—is nature's most basic numbing response to pain. Rage, compulsive attachment to abusive patterns and relationships, drugs, sex, and addiction have been embedded in the nervous system as strategies for survival. "Laziness" or compulsive overwork have become learned cultural responses to inherited trauma. Shame is often forged from exploitation, profound neglect, and the damage instilled by a perpetrator or a system. All of these responses temporarily mask the fear and self loathing that are remnants of abuse.
Beyond your old response cycles.
Consider another possibility beyond the endless cycles you repeat. Can you cross the chasm to the unknown and step into air?
Can you ask hard questions about everything you have ever learned or believed about yourself?
Can you wonder about your purpose and your course?
You may have to turn back the pages of your pain with more kindness than you usually exhibit inside to see yourself anew.
Maybe you’ve always depended on someone else for advice or rules or dogmas. You learned not to trust your own heart—your own wisdom. You test the waters with new input, new resources, new community.
Perhaps music or words crowd out the sense of loneliness and memories. So you grit your teeth, turn up the volume, and ruck through the mud with your gadgets, podcasts, soundtracks, and distractions.
But what if you disenthrall yourself to a deeper listening? What if you simply stop and listen?
Silence.
You stare into space. The mind is racing. Lists, ideas, grievances, regrets. You grapple. You run the same scenario over and over. You sit blank. You may resist this sitting. You reach for your phone and scroll. It is a habit you find hard to break. It is difficult remembering how hard it has been to be alone, to feel the grief, the isolation, and the endless inner voices of shame and self loathing that loop again and again.
But listen again.
There is a truth that has always lived inside, long before you were conditioned not to trust yourself or your own wisdom, your own creative soul. Quiet in the noise.
When you open the window of change, in community and in solitude, it will take courage to outgrow the snakeskin of the past and expose yourself to new skin. You must be tender and fierce in the process.
Life is a series of these explorations. You cannot wait until you are no longer afraid to grieve what has been lost. You might just dig deeper into the ground, not knowing just yet what's growing under the earth.
Listen.
Every time I hurt I know the wound is an echo,
so I keep listening for the moment the grief becomes a window,
when I can see what I couldn’t see before
through the glass of my most battered dream
I watched a dandelion lose its mind in the wind
and when it did, it scattered a thousand seeds.⎯Andrea Gibson