Wild & Wondrous
Teaching surrender, in group process, is magical and magnificent. I allow the group cohesion to seed, grow, and blossom. My gut and heart always know when it’s time to teach surrender, to help the people before me re-write their stories, integrate hurt, and transmute wounds into superpowers. The group dynamic gets to this sweet spot where people are playing with words, making jokes, and holding sacred space for witnessing each other. This is when the dynamic is just right to learn something new and stretch into the grow zone.
We start from the places that created shame, internal discord, and emotional dysregulation. Those are the places where people believe they are not enough, believe they will not measure up, and believe they don’t belong because they believe they are inadequate. I challenge those beliefs.
Me: When is the first time you remember not being enough?
Group: It’s just the way it always was. The way it’s always been. I make stupid decisions. I was too loud, too quiet, too small, too big, too much. I was 7 when I started doing laundry, grocery shopping, and cooking. I followed all the rules, and my family was not happy with me, not even when I graduated from business school.
Me: Where do you find safety?
Group: It is in the bottle. In the needle. In the line. In one more fix. In one last time. In isolation.
Me: What now? You put those down. What’s next?
Group: Try and get a job. Try and get into recovery. Try to rebuild trust.
Me: Do you trust yourself?
Group: What do you mean?
Me: Do you trust yourself to rebuild that relationship with you?
Group: I don’t understand.
Me: What if, from this day forward, you let go of all those stories that cause you to judge yourself with pain and fear? What if you decide you would like to live from love, live in a place of divine connection and belonging? Who might you be?
The stigma, shame, and not enoughs were woven through generations. The riddle in all this, “not enough” is that we, collectively, have come to believe our story is pain and the pain is someone else’s fault and someone else will need to fix it.
My life has given me a unique opportunity to serve others, explore ideas, and excavate the concepts. When addiction is present, or trauma, or pain, or shame, we have taught each other that there is something wrong with us. That we are broken. Broken beyond repair. How can we walk in our highest human expressions from these places of such sorrow? How can we know love when we absorb these pain messages with every cell in the body? How can we be free when we allow the body carry ancestral trauma? Is finding a pathway out possible? Yes, there is a pathway out, and it starts with all of us right here, right now.
To work with other people’s shadows and shames, I learned mine. I know mine intimately. I sit with them. They are ugly, harsh, cruel, and unforgiving until they aren’t. They do transform. They do transmute. They do dissipate. Our shadows give us the birth canal into infinite miracles. Sometimes, they stick around longer than I want. To hold space and witness people in their shadows with love and grace, I learned to love and appreciate my own first.
From as young as I can remember, I was feeding people without homes, giving time to soup kitchens and packing boxes in food banks. I was born into the world with a purpose of making a difference for us. I am divinely designed to love those who are abandoned, estranged, and lost. These days, some clients and I find each other in group and individual counseling where I serve them best as a licensed alcohol and drug counselor.
As a counselor and qualified clinical supervisor, I serve marginalized people from all kinds of backgrounds. People are suffering with confusion, grief, historical trauma, isolation, and loneliness that come along with intergenerational trauma and mental health disorders. What I uncover as the result of helping one person repair their wounds, is that our communities and families repair as natural byproducts.
Each time one person says yes to their own healing, the rhythm of humanity vibrates in love. Saying yes to what’s new simultaneously means saying no to what is ineffective. Saying yes is love. Yes is prayer. Yes is sacred, healing, and wholeness. I say yes to the fringes, yes to the discarded, the yes to the neglected, yes to the outcasts in all ways. Yes, ripples vibrations of intention and attention beautiful, wild, and wonderous.
“Yes” gives us all an opportunity for transformation. My willingness to live in, “yes” means I will be someone new again in four months, four years, and so on. The difference between who I was and who I used to be is very simple. I decide to believe in love. I choose to become love. I live in love. I love in love. I’m a burning, passionate, exquisite flame of love. You are, too.
The big news this week is my accepting the invitation to the 2024-2025 Southeast Brainspotting Institute Diversity Fellowship Program. My heart sings for experiences yet to come, the connections being built, and opportunities to share the impactful healing brainspotting offers.
Writing my application, which included an essay and short answer questions, gave me an opportunity for deep contemplation, lasting several weeks. I wrote and set it aside. Wrote some more. Set it aside. Allowing myself significant time to let ideas simmer, let myself vision, and feel into my heart’s experiences was incredible. I remembered back through the events of my life. I remembered back to our ancestors.
Going back to where I started this post. What if we pivot and change our perspectives? What happens when we change our mindset? What if what seems to be the most tragic event is our pathway to gardens of Eden, lush and everlasting wholeness and nurturing? What happens if we never teach from a deficient and always come from a place of loving wisdom? What happens when we empower each other and our children with love, wholeness, and nurturing? What if we teach ourselves we are perfect and complete exactly how we are made?
You know that scene in the 2017 Wonder Women where Gal Gadot is with her cohort in the front-line trenches? She’s been forced to cover her beautiful, glorious wonder woman clothes with a dark grey dress suit to blend in with everyone else. Her luxurious, long hair is pinned back into a bun. She believes she can help the fallen, get medicine for the sick, and help restore villagers to their homes. Her friend, Steve, tells her they can’t save everyone and that isn’t why they are there. Suddenly, the music changes, her facial expression shifts, and she sheds the dark-grey dress suit and unpins her hair. Restored from confined to Wild & Wondrous. In minutes, she takes back no-man’s land for the people, hair down, in red and blue and gold. The difference between her character and everyone else’s is that she believes restoration is possible. She has always known love, wholeness, and nurturing. She restores the land for the people who’d been displaced.
I believe we can choose love and joy and wonder. In whole & loving choices, we begin in abundance and continue in connection. I surrender in love. I surrender into the wild. Surrendered, I walk into the shadows and work in the shadows knowing restoration is possible.