There are More Ways to Be Sacred Than You Know
It feels like I’m learning to breathe.
Hello Beautifuls,
I am humbled and thrilled by the community gathering here. Thank you for your kindness, your vulnerability and your presence.
🌈Please ❤️ this post (and share or restack it) if you’re feeling it! It helps me feel like I’m not shouting into the void (and it helps others find my writing.)
What readers are experiencing:
“Thank you for sharing your vulnerability and courage.”
“I gasped so many times reading this, wanting to pull out the words and pin them somewhere.”
“You weave paradox into your writing in ways that stun me.”
Hello Beautifuls is a reluctant optimist’s weekly take on loving our humanity. Full of rough edges, vulnerability and of course love, to help you get through it all.
My Loves,
I am feeling more grounded this week. Last week, I spent a good 15 minutes crying, knees to chest as I triggered on past trauma. I am lucky to have a partner who can hold space for this, and allow me to feel so deeply while keeping me grounded in the present. In unpacking those minutes with my therapist, it occurred to me during that whole experience, I’d been fully present in my body, with all of its emotions: despair, sadness, anger, rage. I also occurred to me what an incredible gift that was. Holy cow! In my body! For 15 minutes!
After a lifetime spent disassociating, and as I am still relearning how to be in my body, this feels like a huge, beautiful, sacred thing. And while I don’t want this kind of experience very often, it helped me realize that I live in a narrow zone of emotions: I don’t allow myself to get too excited or joyful, though some is okay and frequently is okay, but the fullness and depth and breadth of it, that’s what I cap off. It’s the same with sadness or disappointment. Sadness, anger, depression, those were not allowed in my house as a child and so for decades they were not allowed to fully express in (and through) my body.
What I recognized last week - in part because of that session with my talk therapist, and in part because of a lovely conversation with a dear and old friend (this shit doesn’t happen in vacuum) - is that I am ready to fully experience joy, excitement, delight, desire, sorrow, disappointment, anger, disgust. I expect it might take some practice, this allowing a full range of emotions, but I am okay with that.
It feels more than necessary, it feels like I’m learning to breathe.
xoxox,
j
Another poem came to me this week. I’ve never considered myself a poet, still don’t, however, I love these little poemish things that are bubbling up, and I would love to dive into the craft of poetry and write in such a way it just knocks me (and you too) over.
Like Thunder
In the creek at the falls
the group of teenage boys yelled to each other
over the sound of the water.
I was annoyed.
I wanted peace, I wanted silence, I wanted sacred.
I wanted them to leave.As I got closer
to the boys and their teenage bodies,
some with more muscle, some with less,
playing in the rippling, tumbling, coursing water,
I could clearly hear the one
buried up to his neck in a tub made from rocks
shouting to his friends, over and over again,
"Come over here! It's like a bubble bath! It's like a bubble bath!"The water, like thunder,
whispering to me under its breath,
"There are more ways to be sacred than you can possibly know."
🌈Please ❤️ this post (and share or restack it)! It helps me feel like I’m not shouting into the void (and it helps others find my writing.)
Hello Beautifuls is a reader-supported reluctant optimist’s guide to being human and loving ourselves and others. Full of rough edges, vulnerability and of course love, to help you get through it all.
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With so much love,
xoxoox,
j
"Sadness, anger, depression, those were not allowed in my house as a child and so for decades they were not allowed to fully express in (and through) my body." This was me too! My mom told me ad nauseum "Don't cry, Lisa". So, I disassociated too, wearing a smiling face through the sadness, anger, depression caused by being emotionally abandoned by my caregivers. It's been quite liberating to live in ALL of my emotions this past decade. I've learned when they show up, they all have something to teach me :) Beautiful share Jocelyn and love your poetry too!! XO
Friend, I always love how raw and authentic your writing is. I think it's sad, yet relatable to so many that when we were growing up, it was more important to suppress your true feelings and keep that brave face at home and even more so in public. It's heartening in a way to read experiences like yours and so many others on Substack, including myself, who have come to the awareness of how much this trauma has affected our lives even to present day. I truly admire your courage always to share yourself here.