Thread by Thread

There is a black hole inside of me - an emptiness that can never be filled. This is the gaping hole left by my need for emotional connection that was not met by my parents as an infant, a child, an adolescent, an adult. This is a hole I refused to acknowledge, refused to admit was there; a hole I covered over with "I don't need anyone" and "I don't feel anything," covered over with numbing and overachieving, covered over with denial and judgment. I could not acknowledge this hole because its very existence would prove that I was unworthy of love. After all, if I hadn't received what I needed as a child, there must be something wrong with me. Children who do not receive the love and affection they need blame themselves as unlovable and unworthy, rather than understanding the caregivers they adore as imperfect and flawed. This is my story, this may be your story, this is the story of so many.

Drawing by Kalil, CC BY-NC-SA

I love my parents and they love me, and this black hole exists. They loved their parents, who also loved them, and this black hole exists in them as well. This black hole of disconnection from emotion, self-protection from genocide, from pogroms, from war and poverty and oppression. As I witness this pain, I feel it's impact and mourn the many losses it has caused in my life and in my family. I also confront the way this pain oozes out onto others, onto those I love most. This sense of rejection I carry with me creates a self-protective barrier to connection. I have a reflexive tendency to pre-reject others, to avoid the possibility of being rejected myself. This unconscious closing off is a tool to prevent further damage, which feels like it could be fatal to this tender and exposed heart.

And yet, gradually this is shifting, changing, opening up. This blog was a major shift - a revealing of my soul and a reaching out for connection with friends and acquaintances. Through this and other means, I have begun to weave a strong web of connection and love, creating a fabric over this black hole, a fabric that grows sturdier every day. Each strand of connection, each experience of vulnerability met with compassion, each need I express that's met with care creates a new thread, a thicker strand to weave into this fabric, mending the hold in my heart. This black hole with always be there, a consequence of childhood lack that can never be filled, but eventually this fabric of connection and acceptance and love will be woven over it completely. For now, the edges have a soft and thick fabric around them, and the center is still fully exposed. Travelers on this road to my heart may still fall into this uncovered depth of pain, but the road becomes safer every day. The strands reaching out from my heart, the threads that allow me to connect proactively with others, grow longer every day. Today I accept the limitations of where I'm at and the size of the hole, and enjoy feeling each thread being woven by many hands into a resilient fabric of love. Thank you for contributing a piece of that thread - and for allowing me to reach out and weave some of my love over the holes in your heart as well.

Drawing by Kalil, CC BY-NC-SA

The Only Way Out is (Slowly, Gently) Through

Photo by Kalil, CC BY-NC-SA

For the past two years I have had the words "the only way out is through" emblazoned on the door to my room. Over time, the meaning behind this idea has morphed greatly for me. Originally it represented a forceful, tenacious, tough approach to my transformation process. It meant diving into a too-cold swimming pool, from a too-high diving platform. It meant bracing against the inevitable belly flop at the other end of the jump, taking an awkward and painful leap because there didn't seem to be any other way to get where I was going. This approach came out of a sense of desperation - a sense that I needed to "fix" everything that was "wrong" with me as soon as possible, regardless of the collateral damage of this approach. This version of "the only way out is through" looked like tightly shut eyes, a clenched jaw, a furrowed brow and hands curled into fists. The energy of this approach was a determination to get through the process as fast as possible, insistently confronting everything between me and healing.

As I've worked toward self-acceptance and continued to cultivate self-love, I've gradually shifted in my approach from force to invitation, heading away from a model based on fear and control towards a theory of change centered in tenderness, kindness, gentleness, and patience. This looks like slowly and carefully building a path toward healing through a forest, one hand-carved step at a time. It involves daily reflection and relaxation, with a lot of attention given to rest and recovery during and after I lay each step down on the path. It means having the opportunity to experience the process while it's happening, and appreciating the beauty of the landscape around me. It means connecting deeply with the essential humanity of this forest of fear and trauma and pain and grief and anger. This may be my forest, my path through the woods, but it is also part of the larger human story. My journey towards myself is a part of the healing of the whole world. This approach feels much more vulnerable. Even though my earlier strategy had clear consequences of fear and pain, these were brief moments of vulnerability - only a few seconds on the diving board before closing my eyes and jumping off. The slow approach requires maintaining a state of vulnerability over time. It means acknowledging my desire for connection with myself and other people, and reaching toward it over and over. It means asking for help in gathering the materials that I need to build each step on the path. It means witnessing my limitations with my eyes open, and allowing others to witness me too. This version of "the only way out is through" looks like open eyes, an inviting smile, an expression of curiosity and hands outstretched toward those I love. The energy of this approach is calm, centered, present and loving, with a deep faith that I am worthy just as I am, shadows and all. This is a new place for me, a tenuous but beautiful space of unconditional love. I invite you to join me here today - worthy and deserving and wonderful, just as you are.

Molting

As I continue deeper into my process of self-transformation, I experience the death and rebirth process over and over again. Each time, I gain new insight into the transformation process itself, in addition to the personal growth that occurs. I have experienced several types of transformational processes, each of which mirrors that of other animal species. One example is the caterpillar to butterfly metamorphosis which involves building a cocoon, dissolving completely from a caterpillar into undifferentiated goo, reconstituting as a butterfly, struggling to break out of the shell, and then flying off in an entirely different form. One obvious example of this in my life was coming out as transgender and subsequently transitioning my sex through hormones and surgery. The end of a six-year romantic partnership was another version of this, although not as literal in its parallels.

Another transformation experience mirrors the lifecycle of amphibians as they develop from aquatic to land animals. This process involves a transformation in which one develops new capabilities and outgrows an older form, leading to new needs and to a change in one’s external environment. One example from my life is being born into an environment of unhealthy communication norms, gradually developing the skills of compassionate communication, and then seeking out a community of people committed to similar communication practices while no longer being able to breath in environments of judgmental and aggressive communication.

By W. P. Hay [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

My current experience of the death and rebirth cycle is different, however, and new for me. It more resembles the process of a crab molting and then growing a new shell. A crab outgrows its shell dozens of times in its life. Each time this happens, the crab must crawl out of this too-small shell and become utterly unprotected in service of its growth. The crab experiences a period of extreme vulnerability, during which it hides itself as best it can while eating the nutrients stored in its old shell in order to help it grow a new, larger exoskeleton. While the crab grows in size gradually, there comes a point in this growth process where the structure that supported and housed it no longer serves. At this point, the crab must take a major leap into the unknown, purposefully becoming exposed and tender in order to build a larger structure of support and safety for itself. This mirrors my current process, which involved steady growth that led to me outgrowing my old self-concept. The process of creating a new self-concept first involved discarding the old, even though a new one did not yet exist. This period of extreme vulnerability has been incredibly challenging, and yet so freeing. After a month of reassessing who and what I am, I am starting to grow my new shell, a larger and more expansive version of what I already had. I look forward to discovering many more types of transformation over time. Have you experienced other death and rebirth cycles? I would love to hear about them!

Falling in Love with Myself

Free Yourself by LFTattooDesign

There are many aspects to the rebirth process I am currently co-creating with my Higher Self. Some of them are thrilling and joyful, some invoke the deepest grief I've ever felt, and many parts encompass both soaring joy and overwhelming grief at once. I feel the joy of release, relief at loosening the gripping and clinging that have held me in this cage for so long. I feel the grief of all the years of living in the cage, of all the years where there was no hope, no option of freedom.

One major piece of this step in my healing journey is becoming closer to myself, to identify my needs so that I can meet them for myself. This is a very new process for me as I grew up repressing all my needs, and have lived in denial of having needs for most of my life. This made me feel strong and self-reliant, when in reality I was too weak to allow my vulnerability to show in this way. I was scared to ask for what I needed because of a deep-seated belief that no one would be able to meet these needs, that no one would care to try. Now I am learning that while this may be true of other people, it is not true of myself. I can rely on myself to show up, to care, to try to meet my needs. No one else is responsible for meeting my needs, and I am very lucky to be a reliable and responsible person that I can truly count on. I have been showing up for myself throughout this healing process, and I now have the opportunity to deepen this relationship to self by figuring out what my core needs are, so that I can learn how to meet them for myself, and how to invite others to join me in meeting those needs.

One need that I have identified for myself is a need for security, to know that someone will always be there for me. In the past, I have endeavored to meet this need through romantic relationships and through external accomplishments that I felt would earn me love. Both of these strategies for meeting my need for security have proven unsustainable. No one else can promise to be there forever, and even when that promise has been made, it hasn't worked out that way. My drive toward over-achievement as a means of earning security has also failed me, in that it is an unsustainable approach to life. The more I have come to value balance and wholeness, the less I have been able to maintain this illusion. My ego has felt secure in fleeting moments of achievement, in winning awards and receiving accolades, but this affirmation is not a daily experience and the feeling of security it brings cannot last without new infusions of praise, which require that I deny my basic needs for rest and relaxation in order to accumulate more and more achievements.

I have learned that other people and external achievements cannot meet my need for security. What I am now discovering is that I can meet this need by falling in love with myself. I can promise myself to always be there and I can keep that promise. I can promise to witness and hold and nurture and support myself every single day, and I am able to follow through consistently. And when it gets too hard for me to hold, when I am overwhelmed and cannot do these things for myself, I can reach out to those around me for support and still get my need met in those moments. This is a place of power, empowerment, transformation. Plus, it means I get to fall in love again, which is the best! I get to romance myself, take myself out and treat myself to special things, write myself love letters and make art for myself and smile at random moments from the sheer joy of it all. This is what liberation feels like, sweet and juicy and enticing, infinitely fascinating and expansive. I am not yet living in this place daily, but I am so blessed to be able to visit here today, and to know that this where I'm headed. I'm manifesting security and love for myself, with myself, and through myself. Thank you for witnessing this journey with me, and for all the love you've helped me tap into. Seeing myself through your eyes has helped me to see myself through my own eyes with more compassion, acceptance, and love than I ever though possible. Thank you all for that great and precious gift.

Death, Death, Death and Rebirth

Drawing by Kalil Cohen, CC BY-NC-SA

In the past year and a half that I've been rewiring my brain, the fruits of my labors grow juicier and more abundant, however the journey continues to get more difficult rather than easier. I attribute this to building capacity, to being able to take on the harder stuff I knew was waiting for me as I began this process but wasn't yet ready to deal with. When I am able to maintain this perspective on my experience, it feels really exciting and affirming that things are getting harder. At the same time, things are really fucking hard right now, and god damn it if I don't feel resentful about that. I've been fully committed to this healing process and diving deep for this long, so when is it going to get easier?

Many years before I started this process it felt like I was dying every single day. Every moment was a struggle, a conflict between my soul's truths and the world I was surrounded by. Eventually this faded back a bit to where I felt like I wanted to die most of the time, but it didn't feel like I actually was dying in the present moment. This was due to addressing certain major issues in between me and my true Self, including transitioning my gender and articulating and beginning to live my radical politics. For a while this felt okay, like a resting place in which I felt comfortable. Then my life began to fall apart around me again as my soul yearned for something more - for a more full expression of my true Self in the world. This is when I began this blog, began a new process of intentionally rewiring my brain. The underlying goal was to alleviate that feeling of wanting to die every single day, and for a while it worked. I felt more centered, more grounded, more connected to my emotions and my body. I had a greater understanding of my issues from childhood, of my triggers and areas for growth, a growing acceptance of my flaws and pain. This gave me respite, courage, faith, and deepened my commitment to becoming my true Self, to continue peeling back the layers of self-protection and hiding in between my soul and my current reality.

I turned to face the truth of my deepest grief, greatest rage, and looming fears, and that's when all hell broke loose. Here were the issues I had been running from for 30 years, the struggles that haunted me from birth, the reasons I had kept my emotions repressed for so long, had denied contact between my body and conscious mind. Suddenly, it feels once again like I am dying every day. It feels like the grief is too great to bear, like the rage is infinite and uncontrollable, like all my fears are coming true in front of me. I kept myself in tight control because I feared intense pain for which I would be unprepared. Now, as I loosen my grip, this is exactly what I'm experiencing. The deepest pain I've ever felt, and no certainty to cling to, no belief system that can make it alright. I am dying right now - my old self is dying as I write this, as I reveal this truth to you. Part of me believes this is happening because I am ready for this false self to die, and that it is making room for my true Self to be born in its place. Sometimes that explanation makes sense and brings me some measure of comfort. Simultaneously, that birthing process feels remote and unimaginable, possibly a chimera that will never materialize. I may in fact just be dying, never to be reborn, never to find roots or an anchor or solace from this pain. I know that I will probably never again have the illusion of control as a means of creating safety for myself. Can I feel safe some other way? Can I feel my own truth and my connection to the Oneness of the Universe so deeply that I am safe simply because I am connected? Can I survive this death process long enough to get to the other side? I do not know. At times I feel certain that I can and will - that I am experiencing this extreme deconstruction process because I am ready to be transformed. Other times I feel desperate and panicked, wondering if it'd be better to just die right now and get it over with rather than endure the slow and excruciating death rattles that I'm currently experiencing. Rather than death and rebirth, this part of the process feels like death, death, death and (hopefully) rebirth.

Inviting, Embracing, Accepting, Transforming

Come and Play by Robert Barber

Each new understanding I gain through my process of mindfulness, reflection, purposeful journeying and happenstance feels like a gift, a Divine offering in service of further self-actualization. As I weave my way through the uncharted aspects of my mind, my heart, my body, and my soul, I am learning to love and embrace the broken places, to invite and accept the shameful pieces, and to witness and integrate the hidden parts. Lately my experiences with judgment are front and center, and my relationship with judgment is becoming clearer, more pronounced, and more dynamically alive. I see this synchronicity of realizations as a sign that I am ready to examine and better understand how judgment has impacted me, and to integrate my memories and feelings about these experiences. Through this process, I am transforming my relationship to judgment - the self-judgment of shame, the other-judgment of criticism, and the universal judgment of misanthropy that I have carried around for so long.

We live in a judgment saturated culture - from reality TV and tabloids to standardized tests and zero tolerance policies, we all witness and experience harsh judgments on a daily basis. Yesterday, for instance, I witnessed students berated by a substitute teacher for "not having self-control" and put down for "not knowing how to think", I overheard someone call themselves "a lazy fat-ass," and saw a parent mock their child for "being too emotional". These experiences are just the tiniest slice of the judgmental states I absorb every day, and they affect me deeply. Judgment has been used against me viciously by my family, my culture, and my society throughout my life. These experiences caused me to shrink down into myself for protection and to repress the "unacceptable" pieces of myself.  I am only just starting to meet many hidden bits of myself that I squirreled away when it was unsafe to be seen, to be imperfectly me.

While it is hard to look at the vastness of the problem and the incredibly severe impact it's had on my own development, it has been equally painful to acknowledge how I took in this poison and made it my own - in the form of self-criticism and in my judgment of others. I took the weapon being used to injure me and used it on myself, then became the perpetrator, attacking others with the tool I knew so well, and which has hurt me so badly. This is nothing new - it is the classic cycle of violence we all experience in one way or another - and yet seeing it and naming it and acknowledging its impact feels significant. It is hard to admit that I have hurt others as I have been hurt, that I have participated in creating a lack of safety and a need for hiding, when I know just how painful these experiences are. I understand how these cycles happen, and I see this understanding of my own positionality as a gift, as an invitation to forgive myself for my transgressions - and to forgive those who have transgressed against me. And so I declare myself to be right where I am - seeped in judgment, poisoned by criticism, and on a slow and loving journey toward shedding these layers that keep me from myself and from those I love. I want to be a safe person for my self and for everyone I care about. I want to accept the imperfections of each of us - including accepting my judgmental tendencies and the repercussions these actions have caused. I am writing this here to be seen - to witness myself and to be witnessed by you. Thank you for being a part of my process, for listening and for reflecting on my words, for seeing my humanity and for believing in the process of growth and change.

Creating Enough Space for my Needs

Contortionist Kevin Sadrak 013 by Tim Evanson, CC Licensing

As I continue on my journey of self-transformation, change, growth, shedding, releasing, healing, and expanding into my fullness, I often find myself doing new things I never thought possible. I am slowly and tentatively beginning to stand up for myself, communicate my needs clearly, express my feelings, and assert my right to holistic wellness. All of these acts feel extremely risky. This is partly based on past experiences of trying to advocate for myself and being aggressively constrained by someone more powerful. At the same time, a large part of the fear is due to cultural brainwashing that tells me I do not have a right to take up space by having needs or feelings, that I'm asking for too much and getting too full of myself if I do so. I know that misogyny is a huge factor in why I am so afraid of taking up space, and am therefore politically motivated to defy the limitations that have been placed on me due to my socialization. This helps me understand my acts of resistance within the context of a larger process of human liberation to which I am contributing by creating more space for myself, and thereby helping others to create more space for themselves as well.

This framework does not diminish my experience of fear, however, and it does not make each moment of self-advocacy feel easier. My heart still races and the voices in my head still insist that I need to quiet down and constrict myself into the space others are offering rather than expanding into my full power. These voices shout that it's not safe, it's not reasonable, and it's totally unacceptable to state my needs and expect to have them accommodated. Even when I reach out to others for support, for assurance that I do have a right to be me, I am often chastised, doubted, and demeaned. I accidentally opened up to my family about an issue I was having and my struggle to find a way to meet my needs within the situation, and they were all very clear that it was utterly impossible to do so and that I needed to accept that reality and conform to the oppression I was facing. While the conversation was helpful in clarifying where the voices in my head originated from, it was very challenging to stay strong in my conviction that there is another possibility once I had absorbed their negativity.

Each time I manage to act in spite of my body's stress hormones kicking into high gear, in spite of  the voices in my head, in spite of my family speaking out loud those same limiting beliefs, I gain some small measure of freedom. I prove to myself and to others that it is possible to live a healthy, whole, self-realized life even within our oppressive cultural reality. These successes shine light on the small moments, the small interactions, that defy the dehumanizing reality in which we all live. These acts of self-advocacy are also exhausting and overwhelming. I hope that someday they won't each feel as scary, as potentially life-threatening, as they do now. Each time I speak up for myself and something actually changes because of it, I create new neural pathways that assure me that it is possible, reasonable, and even desirable to express myself more fully. This understanding of the positive neural impact of facing my fears helps motivate me to continue to do so, even though it takes a great deal of energy, will-power, coaching, comforting, and recovering each time I do so. I couldn't do this work without the support and guidance of others who believe in the possibility of another world. This is why having a community of people committed to self-transformation, communal transformation, and human transformation is so crucial to my own process. Thank you for being a part of that community, and for contributing to the liberation of each of us through your own healing journey, your role in my journey, and your visions for a better world!

Trust

trust yourself a little more by Andrew J Cosgriff

Trusting myself to care for myself, to grow and transform without force, control, oppression, and shame as the motivators, is so hard. Without negative motivators, will I continue to change in positive ways? Will it happen, but much more slowly? I fear that perhaps I will revert to an older, weaker, sicker, less “evolved” version of myself. As I change my methods and strategies of self-healing towards compassionate, patient, loving care, all of the repressed self-hatred bubbles up. The voices (in their high-pitched Australian accents and adorable onesies) are screaming at me to toughen up, straighten out, and force myself to be “good” through willpower and control. These are the strategies I used as a perfectionist over-achiever, characteristics I’ve been shedding for several years now. The vestiges of these traits still roam my subconscious, looking for ways to scare me into compliance, to trigger the survival-mode, panicked desperation that will cause me to revert to striving, to forcing, to pushing, to contorting myself into new and “better” shapes. I am slowly learning to trust myself instead. For instance, over my two-week winter break I made no plans to do any work and no lists of all the work I could be doing. This did not extend to my personal life, however, where I had several major projects listed as goals, including digitizing my entire filing system of the past ten years and revamping my financial tracking systems. Not that I did either of these, but the fact that I was hoping to do so is indicative of my general approach to “free” time. So yeah, I’m taking baby steps here, but the lack of work related goals on the list was a major change, and turned out really well. I spent the last two days of break camped out in the living room reading, journaling, and… doing some work related things. I was internally motivated to do them because I was feeling a bit restless, had a good solid break, and wanted to start thinking about teaching my upcoming classes. I really like my job and enjoy most of the things I have to do for it. When I was able to trust myself to choose when and how to do work, I felt naturally motivated to do so. I learned that I can trust myself to be consistent with my job, without forcing myself to do work through willpower. This month I am experimenting with extending that method into the school week, not deciding ahead of time when I will plan my lessons and do various work related paperwork, but just letting the week flow. So far this method is working out just fine. I am definitely going more slowly than I typically do, but still getting everything done on time. I am much more relaxed overall, and discovering for myself what pace of life I am most inclined toward. 

Accepting this new pace is incredibly challenging for me. This blog, for instance, is one example of this shift. I initially wrote a blog post every single day for three months straight. Then I was attempting to write once a week. Then my life got super busy with moving to a new city, starting a new job, etc. When I started writing again, I decided not to have a structure to how frequently I would write. At first it was several times a week and that felt good. I felt that being consistent was an accomplishment, and I felt proud of myself. Conversely, the fact that I haven’t written a post in weeks felt shameful, like a failure. I almost wrote a post after New Years. I even have a half-finished post about New Year’s Resolutions that I never felt like finishing.

Allowing and accepting that I might not feel motivated to write for an unpredictable length of time is a form of trusting myself – trusting that I will know what is best for me, trusting that I am still an okay person even if I don’t blog consistently, trusting that my life will not fall apart if I’m not constantly “in control”. This is a long slow process, but so worth it! When I am able to release my grip on myself I can approach each moment, each activity, each task with ease and relaxed engagement. I don’t have to bribe myself with caffeine or sugar in order to force myself to do something unpleasant. I hope I can continue to inch in this direction. There is a long road to travel from constant controlling behavior and outlook to fully trusting my intuitive sense of timing and priorities. The road itself is quite scenic, though, so maybe it doesn’t even matter how long it takes or where I end up. These ideas are truly radical for me. Maybe they are for you too?