On the car ride over I had attempted to smoke away the heaviness of my day. Using weed as an emotional palette cleanser is rarely effective, I know, but I did it anyway because I had also read something about cannabis heightening the experience.
That it did.
Heightened the already relentless social anxiety strumming in my chest, that is.
Perfect.
I had for some cosmic reason broken my cardinal rule about not smoking before social events, and in doing so, it overrode my original intention completely.
Which had been, for the record: To release the energy I mistakenly held for other people. And to reclaim my own.
Thanks to a little weed and a lot of little-t- trauma, my intention was instead replaced with facing the dragon in front of me: Social anxiety and the wounds beneath it.
As I felt the energy of this fear resonate in my body, I couldn’t help but wonder…
After all the ceremonies, and all the breathwork and therapy sessions, after all the meetings with my Higher Self, all the newfound self-love, and all the spiritual awakenings, why tf do I still get nervous in social situations?
Too bad psychedelic ceremonies don’t have money back guarantees, because I was just about ready for mine. Judging myself, I wondered: why is healing so goddamn slow?
But then the breathwork started and I did what I came to do.
I held my husbands hand as I began to breathe, clinging to some semblance of safety in a room that reminded me of the places I was hurt.
Within moments however, I felt safe to let go and hold myself.
And in my breath I met her; that beautiful goddess of a Higher Self I meet when I get out of my mind and into my body.
She moves like water, smells of love, speaks so softly yet so powerfully, and feels like Light.
My breath summoned her and she held me in her Divine embrace. With each breath, she showed me my light.
My power.
My love.
She roared with me as I released energy from every part of my body, most of all my throat.
I went back in time with her, to times I recalled feeling unsafe to show up as my true self. Times I had to chameleon and shape-shift, times I felt compelled to fold up into myself and hide. Times I shut off and out, times I had felt less than, times I was in a big crowd like this one and felt afraid of my own shadow.
As I breathed, I felt the waves of utter terror grip me, as though it truly was a matter of life and death.
I recalled having to give up bits and pieces of myself, like bargaining chips, in exchange for my survival.
It had been a matter of survival, hadn't it? And I developed a brilliant mechanism that protected me. That got me here, to a place where I have enough safety and power within that I could go back and heal it.
I honored that.
I felt the grief from the loss of my authenticity.
I honored that too.
As I continued to breathe, and move, and kick, and scream, I felt myself come alive. I felt my energy. I claimed my energy, in a room that reminded me of the very people I repressed my energy for. I released energies that did not belong to me, energies that I absorbed in order to ascertain who I needed to be to please the person/people in front of me.
The process of release and reclaiming felt like alchemical bliss.
After it was done the facilitator asked if anyone would like to share, and before I could stop myself, I heard my voice reverberate in the circle. I felt it vibrate in my chest, and it carried on into the space as though it had a mind of its own.
Uncharacteristically of me in a large crowd: I let the words come up and out through my heart without overthinking them. I spoke vulnerably about my journey.
I spoke about how when I began breathing I released my original intention in favor of a more pressing one, but how in the end they were one and the same.
As a highly sensitive empath, who developed a hyper awareness of energies around me as a means of survival, I spent my life giving far too much attention and credence to the energy of others, and not nearly enough to mine.
I feared the rejection/abandonment of others so I systematically changed who I was, and in doing that, I rejected and abandoned myself.
That night though, I chose myself above all else. I chose authenticity over performance, and my truth over an illusion of safety.
Speaking publicly, from my heart, without a lot of input from my analytical mind felt one part like flying, and the other, like death.
I left feeling more anxious than when I had arrived, and woke up to a vulnerability hangover the following morning that lingered for a bit.
Yet even in the contractions of my pulsing anxiety, I knew it was all unfolding for my highest good. The extended anxiety had given me more time to dig deeper into this wound, trace back to where and when it began, and hold my inner child through it.
As I worked through what came up, I began to feel grateful for the questionable choices I made that heightened my anxiety. I felt grateful to myself for pushing past my comfort zone and opening my heart to the same world that broke it. Whether or not they would get it, applaud it or judge it, this time I didn’t really speak for anyone else; I spoke for myself.
I shared that night, because I felt compelled to voice a part of me that spent the greater portion of my life in silence, in defense mode, for the fear that she will once again be rejected, abandoned, tossed from the tribe.
I spoke my truth to prove to my scared parts that I can be myself and more than survive. To show them that others can reject me, but that I won’t reject me.
I spoke my truth to show my judgmental parts that they are misinformed. That they have mistakenly clung to false beliefs that were programmed long before I could understand how false they were.
I shared, because bringing my shame out of the shadows of secrecy and into the light releases its once choking grip on me.
I shared, because on the other side of my comfort zone is freedom.
That night I walked directly toward my trigger. And in the courage it took to do something that made me feel like I was dying, I transmuted one more layer of my wounding.
While I didn’t die, something did die on my mat: one more level of a survival mechanism I no longer need. And from the very ashes of the false limiting beliefs that I burned that night, I was reborn.
A little more me.
Even when the change is ever so subtle, versions of us die and are reborn constantly.
We may feel impatient when change isn’t happening quickly enough, but metamorphosis happens quietly, and beautifully, frustratingly, deliciously slowly, as it's meant to.
We evolve in tiny nudges forward, backwards, sideways, inside-out, in a dance that ebbs and flows.
I don’t really notice the pieces reshuffling into someone new. Until one day I look back and feel different somehow.
A little more me.
Until I look around and there’s a little more light around me.
A little more laughter.
A little more love.
A lot more love, actually.
Truly, the best part of this psychedelic journey that is life, has been learning to love myself through all the becoming and unbecoming, even when I feel like I’m gonna die.
Especially then. ♥️
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