Trust, and Feeling it All

FEELING IT ALL AND OUR CAPACITY TO TRUST OURSELVES.

Early in my grief journey I realized that I knew the landscape and territory of grief.

It was eerily, unsettlingly familiar.

As adoptee, I spent my early life in a state of perpetual, yet unacknowledged grief.

I hadn’t really tied this all together until Tanner died though.

One of my earliest memories of seeing a therapist was when my parents got divorced.

My response was so intense and visceral the therapist asked me if it might have something to do with my adoption.

The sensation that ensued was so distinct, I still remember some 30 years later.

The idea of confronting my adoption was so big, so overwhelming, it felt almost life threatening.

I felt a million trap doors seal shut inside me. I sat, trying to look dumbstruck, as I attempted to convince the therapist that “was a ludicrous thought”.

I didn’t start processing the adoption until my failed reunion a decade ago.

Up until that point, I had managed to convince myself I was blessed to be chosen. Creating a total exile from the actual pain that lived in this spot.

When I was “abandoned” a second time, in a fully conscious way, it brought up everything my little one felt. And drew a straight line between my primal, infant self, and my adult.

What came up and out was messy, destructive, full of hurt, pain, death, & grief. Every conceivable dark emotion one can think of accompanied that rejection.

No one understood it. “How could she grieve people she never knew?”

So I wasn’t supported. I was cast aside as an overly emotional reject. And I felt that way myself. I wanted to be in control. So I didn’t give myself much permission in the early days to feel everything that needed to be expressed.

I’m not sure I ever labeled what I was feeling “grief”.

I was hurt, felt totally rejected, re-abandoned, and in pain. But grieving? I hadn’t acknowledged that part to myself.

I did eventually get to the bottom of that pain through feeling it all. Mostly because it was the only way out of it.

I tried all of the grounding, and soothing, and healing practices I could find.

I spent years attempting to criticize, shame, and “should” my emotions into submission.

None of that worked.

Life wasn’t going to release me from the well, until I felt it all.

I learned a lot about how to show up for myself emotionally through that period. Mostly because no one else understood it, so co-regulation in my immediate environment wasn’t an option.

I finally had to hire someone to fulfill this function for me.

It wasn’t until Tanner passed away that I realized I’ve been a lifelong traveler with grief (unacknowledged).

And the map for this place would be the same as the map I discovered a decade ago.

Permission to have my feelings. And Approval of myself was key (because others mostly get tired of our evocative emotional displays. We still prize stoicism)

This practice of “letting myself have it” means emotions move through in anywhere from 1 minute to 1 hour. Sometimes they leave a residue that lingers throughout the day.

But mostly, they are just energy moving through. They want expression and relationship.

They want to be welcomed. Invited to have a seat at the table as an honored part of our internal family.

The biggest challenge all those years ago were the “big - scary” emotions.

I did have someone to hold me the first time they came through. So I do recommend this piece. Find someone to help you create a container to meet the bottom.

* a note about “The bottom”. It won’t ever look the way we expect it to. It won’t look like the thing that hurt us. It’s an emotional, felt-sense, destination. A liminal landscape. Odd shapes and feeling textures. I mention this because often people try and consciously “go into” their pain by focusing on what hurt them. And forcing a catharsis. This rarely works. We can evoke these realms. But it’s generally an in-out orientation. Not an out - in process. Try music if you are really keen to open. *

Once we are acquainted with the bottom we can learn to relate on our own through self holding. We can build a relationship with these places within us.

For me, this practice has increased my ability to trust & know myself a million fold.

This is where courage is forged. “cœur” meaning “of the heart”, in French.

When we become friendly with the bottom, or the root, everything begins to shift for us.

Slowly. Tenderly.

It’s my fervent belief this is where “trust” and the ability to truly surrender to what “is” lives.

It’s where the muscle that enables us to meet what is real, resides.

Through all of these experiences, I feel as though I’ve finally begun to integrate, or rather heal the split that lives within us all. The split between conscious and unconscious, dark and light. Grief and Love. Pain and Joy. It’s as though I can finally have them all at once. No more running and hiding. No more fear. Just life. With everything that entails.

Art: Sam Rodgers