✨Glimmers✨ (and a trigger warning)
I saw a pink daisy mug recently and had to have it.
I’m not a big impulse shopper in that way, I’m actually not a huge shopper in general. But the whimsy brought me immediate visual joy and I know the value of steady, consistent glimmers being built into my everyday life.
For almost as long as I can remember I’ve been considered a high risk for death by suicide. This is a big reason for the work that I do, and a large part of how I manage my own health and wellbeing is through actively utilizing the same work: somatic inquiry, nervous system healing, intuitive energy healing, and overall reconnection and coming home to myself.
My first time feeling really healthy and strong was in my early 20’s just before becoming life-changingly sick with Lyme and co-infections and undergoing years of grueling treatment.
My second time feeling really healthy and strong was in my late 20’s when I hit suspected remission, just before getting pregnant and relapsing and eventually becoming bedridden.
I haven’t self harmed in probably 15-20 years and yet, like any old addiction I imagine, some days that ache still rears it’s ugly head especially when overstimulation, overwhelm and grief are at their peak.
I have so many tools in my toolbox, and I need them. I use them all and sometimes it still doesn’t feel like enough.
I’m in a parenting course right now, run by an RCC counselor focused on somatics and integrating primal reflexes and last week in a session with just her and I, I shared a brief overview of the layers our family is navigating right now and together we laughed at the degree of it all because sometimes that’s all one can do. Instead of suggesting new tools to me she just looked at me and said “well, no amount of meditation is going to be enough for all of this”. I already knew that, but it was a relief to have her recognize that too instead of tell me to use one of the long list of tools I’m already using.
There came a point fairly early in my life when the vast majority of the advice given to me was for tools I was already using and skilled at. It gets exhausting, seeking help and being given the same advice that already hasn’t worked, repeatedly.
The first things to truly shift the dial for me were energy healing and reconnecting to my own intuition and deeper with my Self. The second was to bring in the body through somatic inquiry. Combined, they are so powerful. But, none of these tools lets me bypass being human, and that’s the point. They do help me be with that, though.
Self-harm and suicidal ideation is about escape more than anything. Leaving the body. Escaping the pain, distress, overwhelm.
The tools I use now, help me stay present to the pain. They allow me to stay in the body even when it’s uncomfortable. They help me digest and process the discomfort on a physiological level rather than repress it or temporarily escape it.
When we escape, the pain just gets buried, disconnected from, but it’s still there living inside of us and until we give it the space to metabolize it will just fester like an old hidden wound, oozing into other areas of our lives.
This doesn’t mean we can never escape; sometimes life is lifing just a little too hard all at once and we need to step out periodically. Distract, disconnect, self-soothe in ways that are disconnecting from the body rather than connecting. But these tools invite us to come back home to ourselves. To reconnect. To titrate in and out of our pain in ways that allow us to digest it slowly. It’s like eating a few bites of food and then coming back for more instead of gorging on a massive meal that is way larger than we can eat all at once and then making ourselves sick.
When people feel the need to escape it’s because something in their life feels indigestible. It’s too big, too painful, too overwhelming to be with. It’s not a character flaw, it’s a sign that something is too much.
Like our counselor said to me last week, no amount of meditation is going to be enough for this. It’s important to have multiple tools in our tool box so that we have a number of things to use in different scenarios. But sometimes life really is just too much all at once and those situations are really good practice at getting comfortable with the discomfort. Of feeling helpless and finding our power anyways. Of extending ourselves the grace we’d extend to another. Of humility when we find ourselves in situations or behaviors that we would have judged someone else for.
Just like the hard stuff compounds, the good stuff can too. I stack glimmers like some people stack habits. I lean on the people who love me when I can. I come back to my breathe and back to my body and I find safety until the storm passes. And I know, life has taught me, that they do in fact pass.
The only inevitable thing in life is change.
