My first post since the extraordinary time that is Covid first hit awareness here for most of us.

I am still not ready to write, but I also feel the need to begin, so hopefully I can continue writing beyond today.

I sit outside, welcoming the burning of the sun at it’s early fall angle, feeling I could sit here for years, welcoming the elements to batter me, without moving a muscle. I keep returning to the the vague knowing, the vague awareness, years ago, that this part, my heart, might feel this way if or when it finally opened. I resisted the urge to force it open, as learned there are ways to do such a thing, and I’m so glad I waited.

It’s a bit perilous, writing about what’s happening at the same time as I’m being a therapist and a support to others. And, I think it’s helpful for others, as well as my clients, to know that I am human, so they will know they also have permission to be. So they will know I am not afraid of their pain.

Soon, today, I will shift gears and start my day of Zoom meetings. I am grateful for the responsibilities which pull me out of the well of grief so that I can be with others. It’s constantly surprising me how possible this is, and how much softer and more open it’s made it possible for me to be with myself and with others.

This morning I had the luxury of time to be with grief, or whatever this mix of heaviness and intensity might be called, in a new way, for a little while. Sitting outside, staring into the yard, and making a space in my body for the wave to move through. Noticing the old familiar contractions in my head, shoulders, and torso, and allowing them to release so I could more fully feel the heaviness and sadness in my whole body. I want to know this part of myself. It’s waited a long time for my body to be able to hold it, and for me to be able to welcome it without judgement.

Two waves, three waves, four waves, then I decide to stop and eat breakfast.

More and more, I’m able to make space for it, as I shift away from fear that it will never end, or all the other things that might come as a result of feeling in a culture that cannot, will not, allow sadness. Bit by bit there’s more ease, as I release the need to explain it, rationalize it, analyze it.

I feel the anger and sadness about all the past attempts to pathologize me, judge me, diagnose me, by people who did not know they were frozen and unable to feel, unaided by the understanding of traumatic stress. I feel the regret for times I’m sure others may have felt I did the same to them.

I’ll run now, even though it feels like the heaviness of my body won’t allow it, and I’ll find, as before, that my body remembers how to run. Running as a way to care for myself, not as a way to get rid of what I feel.

I don’t know what’s ahead on this new journey of a heart broken wide open, but I can refuse to pathologize myself or go into worry that something’s “wrong” with me.

And you can, too.

Sending love for your day,

c