Turtle Day

Two days ago I used the bluebird energy to enliven and empower my day, but yesterday it didn’t work.

Is it possible, every day, to find a new organic inspiration?

I’m going to try today.

I am scanning my body, looking for and inviting anything that seems like a spark or current of hope, excitement, eagerness, or some other similar sort of energy.

But what is showing up is more like a sweet melancholy; a tender feeling of love. It is rising from my belly to my throat.

Letting my body lead, rather than my thoughts or analysis, is a key priority in this healing process. So I am going to go with this feeling that is showing up. I’m asking for an image, or for any other information that wants to arise.

There is an image of myself as a kindergartener, feeling distant from everyone else.

And my neck is wanting to stretch out of a contracted state, like a turtle pushing its head out of its shell.

So perhaps that can be my image today, the turtle coming out of its shell. I feel two contrasting things simultaneously. One is that the turtle is out and feels just comfortable, safe and ok. The other is that there is a clear sense of danger.

Now I feel lot of buzzing, pulsating and vibrating, and I particularly feel vibrations in my neck and collarbone, and in my wrists and the backs of my hands. As I sit with these sensations, I notice the fear that I am aspiring to something that I cannot do, that whatever website I produce will be a pathetic gesture, with all of the quality of a third grade science fair project.

But that thought form is not sending me back inside my shell. I am still out, and my neck is stretching in all directions. It feels good.

I am studying my intentions about my website. I want to be a messiah. I want to create a tool that anyone with trauma can use and can quickly find profound healing. Maybe that is possible, but evaluated from a place of non-attachment, my being able to create such a resource, especially at a first go, seems extremely unlikely. So I need to more specifically define and describe my target reader, and then more specifically define what it is that I want to offer to that reader. Perhaps in the end I will be a ground-breaking healer who becomes a household name, after all. I’m not mocking or making fun of that possibility. I’m just releasing any attachment to any ideas about a grand outcome and looking for a matter of fact understanding of what I want to build. And that can start with a small set of specific resources for a specific audience.

I can feel that I want to be important. I can see a little girl waving her arms and saying, “Look at me, look at me!” But it continually feels like no one is looking. That is interesting, because in present time, there are many people who are looking at me and who appreciate and respect me and my ideas and skills.  So I need some healing around that little girl, and how she feels neglected and unseen.

So, what does the turtle, and the bittersweet sense of love and tenderness have to do with the little girl who is not being seen? As long as my head is in my shell, I cannot be seen by others and I can’t see anyone, including myself. So my thought is that today I will practice poking my head out, looking around, and particularly seeing myself.

A bit later:

I had an interesting insight. Inside of my desire to be a savior and to create a website that rescues people is the feeling that I am all alone in this effort and quest, and that each of my readers is all alone. But that is not objectively true. There are a lot of people who are supportive of me, and there are a lot of people and organizations who are working on the same problem, looking to help traumatized people find their way. So my good intentions are overlaid by a subjective reality that is not actually real. The little girl waving her arms, wanting to be seen, also feels alone.

A big component of trauma healing is cognitively recognizing supportive resources, and then doing the work so that the body and nervous system also become aware of those supporting resources. So I need to make my way from “I am all alone waging the brave fight” to “I am surrounded with friends and allies, finding the way forward.”

By the way, I poked out my turtle head in an interaction with my partner, and the whole interaction that followed was very sweet and tender.

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