Becoming
Foreword: I’m happy to have Kim E. back as a guest blogger. You may know Kim as the Dissociative Writers facilitator of the afternoon writing-in-place workshop and as the upcoming leader of the book study on Healing in Your Hands by Kate Truitt. Kim invites you into her space with honesty and beautiful imagery. You know exactly where Kim is, both physically and internally, by the words she weaves together in this personal essay.
by Kim E., Guest Blogger
As I sit here on this porch in the cabin in Maine looking out over the pond, I realize this is a day when I have literally no obligations, nowhere to be, and nothing to do. I can just be here in nature.
I take a deep breath, noticing all the stress and tension I have been holding inside my mind and body, and exhale, letting it all go. I feel my body deflate and relax. That is when I really know how tense I have been!
Allowing the gentle rippling of the water with its slightly shifting shades of bluish gray in; as well as the shoreline across the pond – trees dappled here and there with a brown or whitish or greyish house or cabin. And the sky also whitish gray, but a different texture than the water that reflects the shifting cloudiness overhead. All framed with the newly budding, slightly lighter green leaves on the tips of the branches on the birch trees to either side.
Of all the times I have tried and practiced the ‘take a deep breath, now let go of the stress’ exercise, I think this is the first time it actually worked! I felt the letting go, the emptying, making space for the gentle peace of nature surrounding me to come in. Without being able to let go there was no space inside to let this peace and calm settle in. It could flit by or visit briefly but there was nowhere to land. Perhaps there still isn’t but for today I am allowing it to rent out space inside! At least for as long as possible.
This is the conundrum. There has always been too much inside, so much since way too young; so much that needs letting go, release, to reduce the tension – emotional, mental, physical. Yet, ironically, all of this seems too important to let go of. And simultaneously there is this awareness that there has been so much that has already been lost. We don’t want to lose any more, anything else… so we hold tightly onto everything we have so intently, tracking it, recording it, putting it in its own special place so it doesn’t get lost! This makes it so, so hard to let go of anything or give anything away. Especially from inside. If we let it go, it may never come back and then it is lost, gone. And then it adds to that emptiness inside that already cannot be filled.
So how do we learn to let go of the Too Much? How can we let go without adding to the emptiness? We need to make some space for new feelings and new experiences yet are so afraid to lose or let go of the old ones, for they may be lost, leaving us with nothing! This is the ‘too much and nothing at the same time’ feeling that makes our head hurt, our heart ache, and our mind explode, the body tense.
Take a deep breath, let the tension out, let the mind take in what is here now: the nature around us offering peace and comfort, let the body relax.
Here is the space. This is not too much. Allow this in to fill some of the emptiness.
All of those things that happened are the Too Much. It is okay to let it go. They are not happening now. Yet we fear letting go of those things. For us, it means we will forget and so we will lose who we are. We remember in order to remind us of who we are. We have lost too much already and without the past, we are no one, we don’t exist! Or do we?
We need to remind ourselves that we can evolve, we won’t disappear, we are still becoming us.
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🕊️
And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.
~ John Muir
Lyn