➡️Do it NOW: Learning to take the rock from my shoe
Mindful Mondays.
It’s a middle-of-the-night Mindful Monday post. And I am at peace on life’s roller coaster.
To be clear: I’m at peace for the moment. And isn’t that all we can hope for, truly?
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I’m the only one awake in my house. This is a feeling I relish many times: soft purrs & snores & small stirs of the kiddos & critters; safe sleep energy that lets me know there are people around me who love me & who are comfortable enough to fully relax in my presence. Light music lilts in my left ear, the only one adorned with an earbud, so that I can listen for any late-night needs as necessary, mama-bear that I naturally am.
I cherish the freedom of being alone in my awake-ness … & at this moment, I fervently & fiercely grasp that acceptance of my freedom to my bosom as the gift it is.
My love of this moment is hard-won. For sleep has not always been safe for me. This is true of many sexual assault survivors, & not just me.
In fact, the statistics on sexual violence in the U.S. are staggering. (Please be warned of that when you click on the link to educate yourself on the subject.)
The facts, in my case, are that more than one assault or attempted assault occurred at night in my own home. More than one event (but not every event) was perpetrated by someone that I knew or who was/were in my community sphere. With a life laced with such experiences, trust can be hard. Feeling safe is fleeting.
I am ready for more trust & safety in my life.
My favorite personalized feature of my custom weighted blanket by SensaCalm is the private message to “Trust” that I was able to order as embroidered inside.
I’ve been writing about healing in some of these Mindful Monday posts. I’ve been living a journey to spiritually heal (& help others heal their own wounds) since my first sexual assault as a child. Through the years, now piled high in decades like a cairn pillar of time, I’ve added pebbles of hope; smooth stones of change; solid bricks that block out love & awkwardly topple my growth to the ground. I’ve taken away some of those bricks; tentatively placed round rocks of faith & progress; re-placed & re-set the tower in test patterns again & again, learning & losing & re-learning along the way.
And sometimes some real healing is etched in stone as lasting change, no matter what crashes down around me.
I received that gift this past week in my 1:1 advisory work with meditation teacher Artie Wu. In peeling back the layers of lies I’ve formed in my lifetime around my relationship with money & financial success, using Artie’s framework——that’s rooted in the philosophical spirituality of the Greek Stoics & the psychological mysticism of Carl Jung——I was able to honestly identify a defensive fear of being targeted by bad actors. Considering my past experiences, that’s no surprise. Artie’s feedback so compassionately framed that reality without minimizing it.
To be seen & heard in full clarity with whole-hearted compassion is a rare & blessed thing. I AM SO GRATEFUL.
Just a day before I received Artie’s feedback, I received an email message from a member of a support group I moderate who took advantage of a one-to-one mini-coaching session I offer á la carte to the group members. And isn’t it a beautiful, full-circle life pillar that she said she felt safely seen & heard in our session?
I’m grateful for that, too, because learning to become someone who can be a safe place for others is one strong rock in the cairn that marks my life path. Like a lot of other lessons in my life, it took hitting rock-bottom to get there.
I’m not done growing & building yet. There will surely be more tough lessons along the way.
… And, I guess——considering the alternative——that’s a good thing.
P.S. - I found this beautiful, on-theme poem & image:
Huge mountains and great hills They tower above our heads Like mothers to sons The intimidating weight Of experience To our youth Like a father’s instruction Heavy with discipline Is the carved stone The frightening rock But it is true We can move mountains If we tried If we faith-ed One pebble at a time One pen to a rhyme One stuttering syllable And leaking ink We scatter stumbling blocks Like children at play Except There are no toys No plastic dolls Or wind up cars Just similes And metaphors passing pebbles And conquering mountains