CARE.CHECK*: What is your relationship with fixing?
Yourself, other people, circumstances?
What does this word bring up for you?
How does this word feel within you?
What if you were not broken? What if you couldn’t be? What if none of us ever were nor ever would be?
What would it change in the way you see the world and live?
What would it change in the way you walk and breathe and sing?
I hope this week’s letter feels like love.
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Hi Care.Friend,
How are YOU?
Can you take a long minute before answering?
Can you truly take the time to answer from center and not automaticity?
Will you give yourself the gift of your own presence and attention and love? It’s no small feat but it’s the most profound shift we can commit to on our way back to wholeness.
And when I say on our way “back”, I don’t mean that the wholeness has been lost. It can’t. You are whole and complete RIGHT NOW. And so am I.
What I mean is on our way back to wholeness’s embodiment.
To that FELT knowing that we are one, within ourselves and with Life. One with Love.
We’re made of Love and I personally believe we were created by Love and for Love too. Love begins and ends in the sacred confines of our hearts and Love is our hearts’ essence. Love is what this entire journey is about. Love is the inspiration, and love is the destination. Love is the reason… and Love is the conclusion.
That FELT knowing that we are one, within ourselves and with Life.
Coldplay’s song “Fix you” is so beautiful and moving, and it is misleading.
It fuels our all-too-pervasive Cinderella complex through which we identify with this sweet romantic martyr, in need of a prince to be rescued and freed. But when living in a patriarchal culture, depending on a man who’s been told that he’s special, born to be above others, and raised to sacrifice his inner life because it is his duty to “save the world” and to give orders to everyone… is not a very safe bet (!). It’s far more empowering for us to realize that we can just surrender the house to the evil stepmom and LEAVE. We can then take ourselves where we need and want to be, to meet the person we’re truly meant to be with (if we so choose).
We do not need fixing. Because we’re not broken! What we are is dis-integrated.
Everybody talks about regulation now, which is great because understanding the differences between survivalism and aliveness is the foundation of a human life lived fully and deeply—but the discussion cannot stop there. Because that’s not the whole story (no pun intended).
We’re not broken! What we are is dis-integrated.
Regulation is the first step.
That’s how we find our way back into our body and how we root and anchor back into our guts and hearts. That’s how we can understand the world again as coming from the inside out, and how we can offer to our minds the support system they need to execute what Soul energy is inspiring them to do—instead of letting them run the game, terrified and lonely, as if they were in charge of us.
But with regulation must come another pivotal part of the healing journey: INTEGRATION.
If we do not learn how to reclaim, know and love every parts of ourselves…
If we do not descend into our shadows and ensure that there is nothing there but acceptance, creativity and love…
And if we do not learn how to care for, tend to and embody our light so that we can receive and embody our gifts…
…we will have missed the mark.
Because only through integration will we be able to share our vibrant wombs and hearts with the entire world (which does not have to be a literal manifestation and can just as well be done through the quietest of lives).
And I believe that is what this sacred journey called life is all about.
Understanding the differences between survivalism and aliveness
is the foundation of a human life lived fully and deeply.
Yes, I am learning that this human experience is a soulful cycle of facing an enlightening challenge, going up and down that ladder of self-protection—thereby harnessing the worldly skills and inner resources that will allow us to find our way back to regulation WITHOUT needing shield nor armor—and to then drop into this earthly and spiritual process of integration, so that our beautiful, raw, humaness can be alchemized into even more awe-inspiring, embodied, humanity.
And I have learned that to achieve this we cannot rely on others’ help if we haven’t first fully received our own… and that we do not need to surround ourselves with saviors, because what we actually need are WITNESSES.
Which is not easy to do within cultures when we’ve been taught that all of our energy, time and love must be turned outwards and “spent” on others—as if it was meant to be transactional, as if we were machines created for the sake of productivity.
Which is not easy to find within cultures when we’ve been led to believe that emotions are weaknesses… or even worst: liabilities, and that feeling (the healing language of the body) means that we’re mentally ill (when our mental conditioning is what is preventing us from accessing the timeless wisdom of our feelings)! Oh, the irony.
With Regulation must come Integration.
We don’t need to be rescued, we need to let ourselves be seen.
It was one of the most profound experiences and takeaways from Luis Mojica’s extraordinary Embodied Performers weekend that I attended in August.
So that our beautiful, raw, humaness can be alchemized
into even more awe-inspiring, embodied, humanity.
I had not expected that Authentic movement would be a form of Art that would free my pain into the world, so that not only my scars but also and FINALLY my wounds might be witnessed by the person in front of me.
I was looking for self-expression in my mind and heart, forgetting that my body is my greatest ally on the Being journey.
Here’s how it worked:
We were asked to partner two-by-two and took turns being the mover or the witness. The mover would close their eyes and go inward in order to “follow impulse”, which means moving ONLY when and in the way that the body—not our minds—wanted us to. It could mean standing still for those five minutes or swaying ever so subtly. It could mean dancing, jumping, testing the ability of the Earth to receive our stomping or exhilaration, screaming, singing, laughing or rolling on the floor. Everything was welcome, everything and anything was the “goal”. And so for five minutes we were to move from impulse, while our witness would look at us and make sure we were safe within our immediate environment.
It might seem easy and liberating to some of you… and I’m guessing it’s sounding terrifying, silly or crazy to a lot of you. In any case, when you let yourself participate (and that might be, like me, because you just don’t know how to say no now that you’re in the room?), the effect is profound.
We do not need to surround ourselves with saviors,
because what we actually need are WITNESSES.
And I’m still reckoning with the look on my witness's face when I opened my eyes each time (we did it three times over the weekend). Their faces always embodied so much compassion! For the first time in my life, I felt seen for what I truly carry beneath my smile.
I still don’t understand how it showed when I moved, but that’s besides the point. Because here’s the treasure I brought home from that experience: the incredible healing and empowering effect of being seen in my pain by someone who neither intervened nor ran away.
That is so rare. So many disappear when we’re in pain. And it’s not because they don’t love us! It’s because they just can’t… Watching our pain, grief or anger (or here again maybe joy!) is beyond their capacity. It feels too scary, too confronting, too forbidden. We’re breaking so many golden rules: “You need to be okay so that I can be” “Emotions are dangerous and choosing to lean towards them make you a witch” “Emotions will make you irrational and therefore you’re going to destroy yourself and the entire world” “Grief kills and I don’t want you to die” “Anger kills and I don’t want you to kill someone”.
In those last two examples, it’s of course Grief AVOIDANCE that slowly but surely drains and destroys us and Anger AVOIDANCE that can lead us when unattended to aggression, violence and projecting what we refuse (or don’t know how) to alchemize within us, onto others.
So many have been taught that pain must never be acknowledged… and therefore close their eyes, arms and hearts, costing themselves and us the pillars of our aliveness: authenticity and connection.
It’s a tragedy we’re all more and more aware of, and progress is being made everyday in unrooting those narratives that keep us stuck.
I was looking for self-expression in my mind and heart,
forgetting that my body is my greatest ally on the Being journey.
We’re less advanced on our way to deprogramming the second misguided reaction to pain: RESCUING.
When we were sharing as a group after the experience, my witness expressed how hard it had been for her not to step in, not to pat me on the back, hug me or murmur some loving words. I was surprised to realize how much I would NOT have wanted that. But I could relate to what she was saying.
As a witness myself, it had been just as hard for me to keep my attention solely focused on my mover and not respond to the cries that I heard all around, as it had been to not embrace my mover’s pain so that I could ease it in any way.
We’re loving creatures who yearn to help. It’s beautiful. And we’re also all scripted in caregiver patterns that have been ingrained within us through the trigger of self-sacrifice and that are based on the false hypothesis that humans are fragile, incomplete beings, unable to survive if rooted in their authenticity—which makes sense, again, when emotions are perceived as deadly.
The incredible healing and empowering effect of
being seen in my pain by someone
who neither intervened nor ran away.
Weena, our guide, highlighted though how sacred it is to WITNESS someone’s pain AND to STAY. To just stay… To look at them knowing that they’re okay! To look at the other with the sole intention to mirror back to them their beauty, their light, their strength and the love that we’re all breathing and here to embody.
She also hinted at how entering the hallowed place of someone’s vulnerability WITHOUT having been invited to do so, is actually a violation of their inner temple and invading holy territory.
I felt that deeply.
I see you, I know you, I love you and I am here. That’s all we actually ever need to know and hear.
From others…
and from OURSELVES.
We’re loving creatures who yearn to help.
Indeed, here’s another story that changed the way I want to show up for you and the way I want to show up for me:
I was a parentified child of two deeply wounded and traumatized adults who probably had never experienced unconditional love before meeting me. Then, I spent nearly two decades on the Oncology ward, scripted from head to toe in martyrdom and saviorism. My entire sense of worth (and self) was based on being the rescuer, the fixer, the problem-solver, the one others needed. The one who knew what to do. The one who only cared about your needs and your story and how to rewrite it into a fairy tale with the most joyous and empowering ending. I was lost to myself and into everyone else’s tragedy.
So the shift from being the one you need, to being the one I need (and the one who knows that you’ve never ever needed me because all you need is within you already) was nothing short but life-altering.
Coaching really helped me become aware of this of course... I went from explaining to people what they should do, armored with my knowledge and strong will, not witnessing any change in their experience over the next three years, to just asking genuine questions, armor- and agenda-less, bringing only my compassion and our shared humanity, and suddenly I was seeing people change their entire lives in less than three months.
I also shedded the relational containers in my life that were only based on codependency and people pleasing, and entered sacred relationships in which we do not fix each other’s experience, we receive each other’s journey and in which we do not save and guide but support and learn from one another. So I know that it changes absolutely everything, that it changes our understanding of love, that it changes us.
But I hadn’t fully witnessed that process between me and me.
Entering the hallowed place of someone’s vulnerability
without having been invited to do so,
is actually a violation of their inner temple and invading holy territory.
Recently I had to give up the ticket I had to go to Liz Gilbert’s and Martha Beck’s event about Life’s true Magic in Montreal. My VISA doesn’t allow me to travel out of the country right now and that’s just the way of things… But I had been looking forward to this weekend since last December, so the disappointment runs deep.
I thought (and still do) that I needed this weekend, and that it was going to be a pivotal part of my healing journey and life story. They’re both treasured teachers of my heart and I would not be who I am now without their voices, art and work. I really wanted to go… And I still do. That weekend is going to be absolutely magical.
That ticket now belongs to a new friend, and I am beyond excited to know that I have been the spark that will allow her to light the fire that her heart is yearning for! The way we met was enchanting, and the way this ticket was transferred from my hands into hers feels special, fated, needed and enlivening. Our beloved Maya Angelou taught us through our cherished Oprah Winfrey that: “Whatever it is say thank you darling, because you know God has put a rainbow in this cloud”. And I see it. I see the rainbow.
Yet, I noticed that the sadness and disappointment were still waiting silently in the background of my awareness to be acknowledged and felt.
So I signed up for another workshop with Liz Gilbert that same month, one that is happening in the US. Again, this brought a lot of heartwarming energy in my experience and allowed me to meet other beautiful souls on this creative journey!
Yet, while Joy and Gratitude were having a feast in light of all those unexpected developments, I noticed that Sadness and Disappointment were unimpressed—and still waiting silently in the background of my awareness to be acknowledged and felt.
I see you, I know you, I love you and I am here.
So I dug deeper in my felt experience and realized how familiar it felt with a previous memory from my trauma past.
When I was ten or so, my mother bought those two beautiful, soft, adorable Teddy Bears. They were based on a book character called Benjamin that I had never heard of but I knew those bears were meant to be my best friends… and all I wanted to do was to hug them until the end of my days.
However, they were not for me.
They were not, in fact, for anyone! My mother explained that she had bought them “for someone, someday,” that that someone would NOT be me, and that I was not allowed to touch them again.
She then put them in a closet near my bedroom, where I saw them E-VE-RY-DAY, while remaining forbidden to caress them, talk about them, or—God forbid—ever ask again to receive them.
Now I know it might seem like a small story. Let’s remember that this woman tried to take my life… so I’m the first one able to testify that this is not the worst kind of trauma that a child can experience. And YET!
I can also testify that it is one of the deepest wounds I hold. I’m 39 yo and I still dream of those bears. I still want them because I still LOVE them—and I still believe that hugging them would feel like taking a cloud-bath with a carebear, underneath a singing rainbow.
I of course disobeyed the order and asked for those bears at every Christmas and every birthday for years, but no! They were not for me. They were for someone else. And “I should be ashamed of myself for wanting what is NOT mine, especially when I already had a lot of other Teddy bears”. It was the proof that I was selfish, and ungrateful and mean. It was the proof and that I didn’t deserve them. (Or at least that’s what I was being told.)
I noticed that the sadness and disappointment
were still waiting silently in the background of my awareness
to be acknowledged and felt.
And that young part of me thought that as an adult something like that would never happen again! But suddenly the beautiful, soft, adorable weekend is also “for someone else”. So she’s making it mean that truly nothing would ever be mine on Earth.
Of course many many wonders are actually mine today, but when I was child I was told repeatedly that nothing, absolutely NOTHING belonged to me—not even my body… and not even my bedroom—so there’s a reason why that young part of me feels so terrified and activated by that turn of event.
I still believe that hugging them would feel
like taking a cloud-bath with a carebear,
underneath a singing rainbow.
My first impulse when realizing this was to google those Benjamin Teddy bears to buy them for myself now! But all I felt in response to that offer was rage and distrust. So I got curious, stopped trying to fix what cannot be undone, and sat down and listened…
And here’s what my wounded little girl answered:
“Do not fix this. Do not fix me. I don’t want a beautiful bow on the story of that weekend! AMAZING that we made a new friend, great that something so good is coming out of this! But that’s a different story. That’s the after, and I want you to feel the before.
And I don’t care about that other weekend… It will be wonderful and special and great and AGAIN, it’s a parallel story. You’re leaving alone in the hurt.
AND I don’t want another Teddy Bear! I don’t even want those Teddy Bears (who are most probably still in that f*** closet) now… I wanted them then. And that’s not something you can fix.
I don’t want you to erase my pain now, I want you to acknowledge it. I want you to stop pretending that you’re fine with the wound just because you won’t let yourself feel it.
I don’t want to be fixed: I want to be seen, known and HONORED in my grief.
I don’t want you to fix me, I don’t want you to bring me to the present with you now and show me how beautiful New York is. I want you to come into that dreaded French house and sit beside me, while I look at the bears that I am not allowed to hug because “THEY ARE NOT FOR ME.”
“Whatever it is say thank you darling,
because you know God has put a rainbow in this cloud”.
—Maya Angelou
And so here is my promise to you dear Care.friend:
I will not try to fix you.
I am here to witness and HONOR your pain.
I am here to mirror your wholeness and light back to you, while you visit the shadow that makes you a miracle, and provides fertile ground for your dreams to come true.
The darkness is a nursery of stars. Your darkness is the source of your light and it’s a gift—and it’s holy ground.
I am here, and I am devoted to be your anchor in the present while you go sit in the attic and basement of your inner haunted house—those precious chambers where our inner children await the loving embrace of an adult to face whatever they’re much too young to be going through. While you show those inner children that there might not have been anyone there in the past—or at least no one with the connect with them at the time—but that they’ve got you now.
I will not try to fix you, and your pain just as much as your light are welcome here.
I will not run away and I will not intervene.
I trust your feelings... I trust your inner world. I trust your wounds! I trust your inherent healing abilities.
I trust you, I trust us, I trust that we’ve got this, I trust that you’ve got you.
I will not try to fix you because you do not need fixing—and you only need me to the extent that me being here allows you to be with you.
I will not try to fix you, I will not ask you to fix me, I will only show up and share the magic and awe I found in the darkness so that we can all remember that there is nothing to fear, nothing to look away from, nothing to erase within ourselves:
There are only places that have not been brought back into love YET and places through which Love can enter the world through us.
So let us remember that we are whole, that we ARE love, and that both our shadow and our light are very holy ground.
With kindness, love and light—knowing that all three are born in the sacred darkness of our hearts.
leo