Calling Myself Home

I think it is important to tell the truth about what is happening in our lives. I say this having missed the mark on this many, many times in my own life. Having the hard conversations about why we are showing up in our life the way that we do, wearing the masks we wear, is how we come back to each other and show one another that we are all flawed humans with shared experiences, fears, and the capacity to be vulnerable, all of which have the power to unite us and prove to us that we are a collective humanity and that it can be safe to just be ourselves with one another. My coach told me awhile back that authenticity and vulnerability are utterly disarming to most people. She said that when you show up in the world and in your personal relationships from a space of vulnerability, having shed whatever mask you would normally wear and allow someone else to know what you’re afraid of, what you are struggling with, or what you are ashamed of, that more often than not, you can invite a space to create the kind of connection you have been looking for. I greatly respect the idea that our willingness to show up from a place of truth in our own lives invites the world to step up in a bigger and more authentic way. I think that is one of the most beautiful uses of our authenticity. This post details a hugely personal part of my life, and potentially, a hugely personal part of other people’s lives who could someday end up reading this. There are a lot of people that may not like this topic of conversation, this level of exposure, or even my take on it, but that is why I want to put these words to paper. Part of being committed to my growth, which I touch on later in the passage, is doing the things that make me uncomfortable because that discomfort is usually a beacon calling me forward to my next right step. I’ve heard this referred to as “living on one’s edge”, and I love this saying because it reminds me that leaning in to life literally means leaning in so far on your edge that you risk falling off your cliff. It doesn’t mean leaning cautiously while you make sure that you still have strong footing on the ground upon which you started. It means a deep dive into vulnerability knowing full-well you might get your ass kicked, as Brené Brown would so eloquently put it. Leaning in is so damn uncomfortable, but begrudgingly, it is the only way I feel my expansion. When I wrote this, I thought about hitting the backspace key until I had a blank page again. I considered erasing all the words I had just written and pretending they never existed because I couldn’t imagine the thought of my most vulnerable and personal thoughts, ones that I usually do an impeccable job of keeping neatly tucked away in a corner of my mind, potentially showing up in front of someone else’s eyes. I had a hard time picturing my family reading this. Maybe I will be ready for others to read them someday. That is not the point. The growth for me is in the vulnerability it took to do it. Someone recently said to me that I should believe in my voice and the fact that someone out there right now really needs to hear what I have to say. I’m clinging to those notions with white knuckles in the hopes that someday I will be brave enough to let someone else read these words.

I left my body over 20 years ago the first time I was molested by a man I was supposed to trust. I can remember feeling like I wanted to crawl out of my skin, feeling that sinking in my stomach, feeling like I was dirty, feeling the immensity of the shame and guilt of those experiences. Each time I experience emotional and physical intimacy now, it is a battle against all those feelings that flood over me again and again. As I now try to heal those deeply-rooted wounds, I can see that each time I felt assaulted by intimacy, I would depart my body and my physical self would be left to act the part as if the actor hadn’t left the building. Until very recently, I had never known what it felt like to be present in my body with challenging emotions. This work has brought me home. After a 20-year departure, I am finally returning to myself, and I plan to stay here.

It still surprises me how the best approach to my writing is to let things unfold naturally. I have a tendency to want to force thoughts and themes that haven’t fully formed in my consciousness yet, but when I allow the thoughts space to form without trying to “find my voice”, the words just come. I began writing about this before a breathwork class I attended. 

The first time I attended said breathwork class, I was timid, awkward, and acutely hesitant to look or sound stupid in the practice. I felt uncomfortable showing up alone to try something that was so far out of my comfort zone, but I was committed to my growth and living on my edge where comfort didn’t exist, so I went anyways. I did not fully relax into the experience and allow myself to feel it the first time around. I became anxious over the sensations that flooded my body when I began breathing air into places that had been dormant for a long time. The anxiety was a bit overwhelming, so I resigned that my first experience was just supposed to be about getting used to the feeling, or at the very least, getting acquainted with the discomfort. The second class I attended, equipped with the knowledge of what sensations would ensue and having gotten more comfortable in my skin with each day working towards my alignment, I settled in and had quite the spiritual ride. In short, I had an incredible, existential experience that could be classified by some as a spiritual awakening, and it will remain with me for the rest of my life. I experienced my own immensity and divinity. My endlessness. Words don’t do what I felt justice, so I just won’t even try. Walking into my third breathwork class, trying to keep my expectations low after my last poignant experience, I decided that I would just try to relax and let the ride take me wherever it was meant to go. 

I had been chewing on some thoughts surrounding my sexual trauma that day after listening to a podcast featuring Byron Katie around the topic of pain and trauma that left me with some burning ideas, and it carried over to my awareness during my breathing. If you’ve done breathwork before, instructors often remind you that the purpose is to get out of your brain and into your body. It seems counterintuitive that the greatest spiritual movement can happen when we get out of our minds, and yet, in my powerful but limited experiences, I do find this to be the case. My mind had skimmed over this point during prior sessions, never really grasping the fullness of the concept. This time was monumentally different. The first half of the session I was just focused on “getting into my body”. I was riding the waves of sensation as they arose, reminding myself not to panic and that each sensation was perfectly okay and that it was still safe to reside here, inside myself. Then it hit me.

The tears started flowing, and I was overcome with words. Everything I had been working on and trying like hell to materialize that day became very clear. I fully grasped how dissociated I had been from my body for the majority of my life and that I hadn’t even fully comprehended that breathwork had been helping me return to myself until it was literally happening in that moment. That was my homecoming: the moment when my soul comprehended that it was living outside my body, afraid to return and reside there, but that my breath, sip by sip, was bringing it back with full comprehension of the enormity of that kind of healing. I would consider this my second spiritual awakening. The words I had been trying to speak and write into existence were swirling around in my head, each one reinforcing what I had been trying to grasp at for years, unknowingly. 

And then, by no coincidence, “Back in my Body” by Maggie Rogers came over the speakers, flooding me with reassurance that my fight to return to my body was real, it was happening, and it was happening right in that moment in exactly the manner it was meant to. It had always come down to this moment. It was God saying to me, “I hear you, and I’m here for you. Keep going.”

After the session, in an attempt to pinpoint and ascertain the sadness, loneliness, and discomfort I had felt about my relationships with men in my past, I began writing about what my soul has been hoping for, and the words just kept flowing. I realized that the next man that will be allowed to touch me, emotionally or physically, will be a man fully in his integrity, a man I can trust to hold me in that most fragile moment, a man that is not only capable, but willing and wishing to fully see me. A man that can look directly at my past without so much as flinching and say, “This will be different. I will be different, and we will do this as slowly and as carefully as it takes for you to be safe.” No man will be allowed to reach me except this man. 

I don’t want a man who wants to be a white knight to swoop in and deem himself my savior. I want a man that wants to hold me in his arms when I am exhausted and weary from climbing the mountain and sifting through the shit required of me to save myself. I want a man that can wipe the sweat from my face as I fight and look directly into my eyes when I sob from the pain I am releasing as I heal. I want a man that knows no limits to his well of desire to reach me but is most concerned about stepping onto that sacred ground only when he can do so safely and in complete integrity for the sake of my emotional well-being. I want a man that does not see this as a burden, but rather as a sacred opportunity to lead us in union with trustworthy, strong, and loving arms, an opportunity which he holds with utmost reverence. I want a man that doesn’t flinch at the messiness that is me. I want a man that doesn’t look away at the parts of me that are scared or healing or painful. I want a man that doesn’t want an actor. I want a man that knows the difference between acting and feeling. I want a man who chooses to see when I’ve left my body and calls me back time and time again until I no longer feel compelled to leave. I want a man that calls me home to myself and rejoices when I arrive there. I want a man that can hold space for the moments when I may not succeed. Universe, show me this man when I am ready to receive him. When I am ready to match him with love, integrity, respect, and reverence for the vulnerable connection that we will create by first embodying this existence individually.

I have looked and looked outside me and around me to find a man I can stay in my body with instead of looking inward at what it would take from me to do that for myself. The man worthy of reaching me will certainly help me uphold this promise for me to stay with myself, but he alone will not accomplish this. This is my work. It all starts within me, right now, by myself.

Before any man is able to come into my existence and fill those shoes, I will hold myself, I will call myself home time and time again when I try to flee. I will be with myself when I sob for those departures. I will hold that little girl who was violated and terrified and bring her back to her body. I will hold space for her while she is in despair and tell her that I am here to protect her, to heal her. I will reconcile the fear I have of men and intimacy by learning how to hold my own intimacy close to me, when before I pushed it away. I will hold my boundaries with fortitude so that one day, I know that the man who reaches me can walk those lines without crossing them because I can be trusted to uphold them without fail. I will fiercely defend my safety by holding my needs as top priorities and taking conscious action every day to meet them. I am the one I need to be intimate with first. I will stay with myself from now on, and I will heal myself by keeping those promises I make. When my homecoming with my own intimacy has been reclaimed, only then will I turn outward and know that whoever enters my existence next will hold strong and steady.

Tonight, I keep thinking about all the women and men who have had to leave their bodies in order to survive for one reason or another and who maybe haven’t made it home yet. I hope they can hold themselves gently as they navigate that path back. I hope they can love themselves through it. What I would say to them and especially to myself is:

“Your body can be sacred again. Your body can be a safe space for your soul to reside again. You can host a reunion for yourself every single day for the rest of your life each time you find a small way to return home, even if only for a short time. Keep going. Your body is your home and no one else’s, and it can become your favorite place to be again. You can reclaim your right to remain safely there.”