What Does Safety Got to do With Gut?

Alright, I don’t know about y’all, but I am tired as sh*t. Anybody else feel like they could just take a nap for about 2 years? No? Just me? Okay then. Honestly though, I know we are all tired. We are all fighting every day like hell to feel okay. With the state of the world, the state of our mental health, the state of bachelor nation… It’s a lot for one person to handle. 

You ready for the good news? The good news is that we CAN handle it. Our brains enjoy telling us that the weight of the world will one day crush us. We say we are weak and incapable and, wait for it, not enough. To quote the great Tom Selleck and his even greater mustache in the 90’s hit Three Men and a Little Lady – “What a crock!” We, as we are today, are more than enough. We are doing exactly what our brains are telling us we can’t. We are living, breathing, fighting every single day despite what we might be hearing. 

Now that I let you in on my little words of wisdom to kick us off, let’s get into the good stuff. I have been doing a lot of soul searching lately, trying to leave the brain out of it. I mentioned in my previous post that I am working on being more in touch with my gut instincts. Y’all, it’s hard. I don’t like to complain, HAHA just kidding. Yes I do. It is sooo hard. I find myself wanting to quit sometimes. Like, maybe I can just go back to not caring about myself. As they say though, ignorance is bliss, and I can’t unsee what I now know. In order to avoid my number one fear in life [settling] I must keep doing the work. Keep moving forward. 

How am I moving forward? I am so glad you asked. From the outside it may not have looked like I was doing much at all, but that is the cool thing about learning to trust your gut. Nobody can see you doing it. In this instance I am the Wizard of Oz, the woman behind the curtain. And trust me when I say you do not want to remove the curtain because it is mostly just blood and guts. Ew. 

I really did practice a lot though. I practiced not only listening to it, but not judging it. I feel the judgement all the time. “Why didn’t you say this? How did they take that? Am I even good at what I do? Am I good? Am I enough? Should I speak?” This week though, I shut it down. I took every opportunity I got to practice listening to myself. No hesitation, no judgment. With this practice I found myself feeling stronger in my choices, more confident in my decisions. Each time one of those old comments entered my brain I didn’t shut it down, I just reality tested it. I would hear ‘why didn’t you say this?’ and I would break it down. Why didn’t I say it? Perhaps it wasn’t the right time to say it? Maybe they weren’t ready to hear it? Maybe I can bring that up next time? It was validating in a way that I had not felt validation before. I felt safe. 

Safety is hard to conceptualize. In a world where people are being harmed and/or murdered for the color of their skin, and/or their gender identity, and/or their sexual orientation how do we define safety? What does it mean to feel safe? I’ve talked to a lot of people lately, both in my work and my personal life, who just don’t feel safe. Heck, most days I don’t feel “safe”. The world, as was previously stated, is scary right now. 

For me, right now, safety is not about feeling like nothing bad will happen, it’s about feeling like I am making the right choices. That I can trust that when my gut is telling me to run, I run like hell; when my gut is telling me to fight, I fight like hell; when my gut is telling me to freeze, I don’t move a damn thing. On the flip side when my gut is telling me to love, I love deeply; when my gut is telling me to heal, I stitch each part that needs it; when my gut is telling me to stand in solidarity, I take each of the hands beside mine and I hold it and squeeze it and let them know I’m here. 

If you’re finding yourself in a place of fear, you are not alone. If you’re gut is telling you things are scary, it’s probably because they are, but if you listen closely to your gut, I bet it is also telling you to reach out to someone, to get help, to know that fear is not something that must hold us back, but rather it can ignite a passion in us that we didn’t know we had.

Our world scares me in the way that hate and fear sometimes guides people, rather than love and understanding. It scares me in the way that power and control is our goal rather than harmony. Hearing the news of Jacob Blake scared me, just as hearing the names of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd,  and a million other names scared. It scares me in the way that life is so fragile, so easily stolen. Those fears though only makes me want to fight harder. It makes me want to know that in my life time I did not let the fear take over, that instead I harnessed that energy; that I stood up against injustices because I knew in my gut it is the right thing to do. 

As for now, my gut is trustworthy and that is the “safety” I always needed. 

A[wo]man

a compass blooms

from the gut.

direction bred 

of misdirections.

-soul searching

If you have the means please consider donating to BEAM (Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective). A collective “of advocates, yoga teachers, artists, therapists, lawyers, religious leaders, teachers, psychologists and activists committed to the emotional/mental health and healing of Black communities.”

A Clock is a Clock

Hey all, can you believe it’s been two weeks since I’ve told y’all about my emotions? I know you are all desperately waiting to hear how I’ve been holding up since my last blog. You know, the one where I was an anxious hot mess. Yeah, that one. Well good news, I am doing FABULOUS now. I know that sounded a little sarcastic, but I am being completely truthful with y’all- as always. 

The real question though, is how did I go from an anxious hot mess back to a confident boss babe in a matter of two weeks. Well, I am sure I can attribute it to a lot of things, but I would say the number one contributing factor was *drum roll* LISTENING AND TRUSTING MYSELF.

After my last big relationship, I had a really hard time believing myself. I was convinced that I didn’t know anything and that I could not, under any circumstance, listen to my instincts. That, my friends, is the result of being lied to by people you love and trust. Your internal meter for what is right and real gets twisted and begins to resemble The Persistence of Memory by Salvado Dalí. Reality just melts and it feels near impossible to get it back to its original shape.   

This is the result of trauma. 

Trauma bends our reality and alters our brain and, to be honest, f*cks sh*t up. So, how do we get them back to that original shape? How do we unf*ck sh*t up? Where is that place where a clock is a clock and there is no question about it? If you read my blog, you know what I am about to say… therapyyyy. You’re welcome. That is how we get reality back to its shape. We have a professional person guide us back to the spot where we trust our gut, where a clock looks like a clock and therefore is a clock. 

My therapist guides me through my body, eyes closed, with full trust in her and in myself. After my last post the first message that I listened to from myself was that I needed to speak with my therapist. I am not kidding. I posted my blog at 5 and then went to therapy at 6. Before I had a therapist I would convince myself I was fine. I wouldn’t listen when my body was literally pouring out tears uncontrollably or my brain was saying things like “nobody loves you”. I didn’t listen when I would eat until it hurt to avoid feeling anything else. Once I started listening to myself, all the pain I felt was still there, but it was healable. That pain was no longer an abstract, never-ending “this is just how I feel and I can’t change it” part of myself. You can only heal when you know what you are trying to heal. 

So, let’s circle back to that session of healing and how I got back to feeling stable. I fired up my laptop, hit the FaceTime button, and waited for my therapist to answer. I could feel the anxiety coursing through my body as I sat on my floor with my laptop perched on my bed. By the end of the session the anxiety was minimized, near gone. She helped me release the ties I was holding so tightly to. It was a beautiful exercise in release and I encourage you to try it if my description resonates with you.  I closed my eyes and she said “I want you to picture that relationship, the one that hurt you. Where can you feel it?” Without hesitation I saw a tight rope, thick and strong, tied so tightly to my heart it was strangling it. Each time it pumped, I could see the rope tighten. She wanted me to look at the memories that painted the rope. The good, the bad, the ugly; see the rope connected to that person. Then, she wanted me to cut it. 

I hesitated. I couldn’t cut it. I wasn’t ready. I was sobbing, not quite sure that I knew how to be without this part of myself. I was scared that letting go of that pain meant moving on and moving on meant finding someone new; scared because I didn’t know what any of that truly looked like. In the calmest of voices she said “only when you are ready Sarah.” And then the most beautiful healing imagery appeared: 

Baby Sarah. 

She grabbed my hand and whispered ‘we could cut it together.’ That little face of mine, with big dreams, staring up at me just wanting us to be happy. My sobbing slowed as we picked up the pair of golden scissors together. I squeezed her hand as I began to cut into the thick rope. It didn’t budge at first and I looked down at her again and she looked up at me as if to say “keep going” and I did. I cut again and again and again. Each cut made the rope fray ever so slightly. Then it happened, as if I was watching my own cartoon version of what I was doing, the rope slid to the floor, his end back to him and my end back to me and my heart started to glow like the sun. I didn’t realize I had been holding my breath until the rope broke free and I took a huge gasp of air. It almost felt like I had been holding my breath for the last two years. I opened my eyes and saw my therapist looking back at me. She said “I am so proud of you.” Those words again, setting me free. I said I wasn’t sure if I was ready to do it and she interrupted me and said “Sarah, if you weren’t ready to, we wouldn’t have done it.” That was the power of listening to myself- knowing when I’m ready to let go, ready to heal. Just as important as knowing when I am not ready. 

So, I spent the last two weeks remaining in tune with myself. I took a break, I ran away with me for the summer. I did not go upstate though, I went to Wisconsin. (Solid Hamilton reference in case you missed it.) I rented a car, drove 14 hours there and 14 hours back, got a COVID test before and after, and was able to be in tune with myself. My wants and needs were met every inch of the way.  I stopped everything that was giving me anxiety and I just lived. I took a break from this blog (not that this blog gives me anxiety, but I do feel the pressure of deadlines and wanting more people to read, etc.). I had dance parties in my kitchen with my roommate; I watched TV; I read a book; I took my antidepressant every day; I listened to me and trusted what I was hearing. 

So, here I am refreshed. My head is clear and my heart is … free. Of course, it’s all a practice and I’ll forget to listen and/or trust myself again, but that’s what learning is all about. We fail and we try again and again and again until we no longer have to think about. Until listening and trusting myself is as second nature as obnoxiously quoting Hamilton is. And please remember, it is more than okay to fail and forget and to make mistakes. If we didn’t we would be robots and we wouldn’t have feelings and this blog would be meaningless.

Plus, without the mistakes I’ve made along the way, I’m not sure this blog would even exist. Scratch that, I know this blog wouldn’t exist.

A[wo]men

arms spread,

eyes closed.

drop back

into a vast sea of yourself.

deep, powerful, real.

-trust falls

Our Own Best Ally

Hello friends. It feels like it has been years since I last wrote even though it was only a week ago. The reason for this is I had the… FLU… dun dun dun. It was awful. I didn’t leave my house for two days, everything hurt and I thought my life was ending. Obviously, I don’t do very well with being sick. Most of the time I use my sick days for mental health needs or bad headaches. I don’t usually get puking sick. So, when I do I am a total wreck. Today though, I am feeling totally better and it feels good to be sitting in front of my computer in a Starbucks, in public, even if I am sweating profusely because that is the most I’ve moved my body in awhile. It is a nice change of scenery and my body is happy to be in a different setting as well. I love my apartment, but one can only watch so much Netflix. Didn’t know I had my limits until now.

While I am excited to be writing, I also know I don’t want to push it, so this may not be the longest post. I am just going to listen to my body, trust myself- a practice I have been working on for awhile and through this flu was reminded of.

While I was sick a lot of things came up for me and some of those thoughts took me aback and I want to process them with you all because I have a feeling I am not alone in this. As someone who has been through different eating disorders and struggled with my body I sometimes get these automatic toxic thoughts. For instance, when I started to puke my first thought was, ‘well, I bet I’ll see the scale go down at WW’. As soon as I thought it I felt sad. Sad that those thoughts still consume pieces of myself; sad that I was trying to justify my bodies pain; sad that I was even thinking about weight in that moment.

I then took a deep breath. I rubbed my stomach and I apologized. I said how sorry I am for thinking that way. I then dove into where that thought came from. This was also a way for me to not think about my nausea for a brief moment. I sometimes struggle with this idea of honoring all my thoughts when in those moments I want to beat those thoughts with a bat. I know though that they are there for a reason and I need to give them the space. So I asked myself “why did you think that?” I took another deep breath and closed my eyes. Maybe WW is too much for you right now? Maybe I watched too much romantic reality tv shows and feel gross compared to them? Perhaps dating is bringing up a lot of insecurities in myself and I tend to equate thinness to love? Perhaps, I feel guilty about not being at work and I want to think about anything other than not being there? This went on for a while. I just let all these thoughts cross my mind and swirl in and out. I sat there for about 15 minutes with a million thoughts crossing.

Then, I opened my eyes and sat in front of the mirror. My sick face, drooping, white, sickly; my eyes bulging and blood shot, unable to stay closed due to the fact that I needed the toilet every 30 minutes; my hair drenched in sweat, stuck to the sides of my face. I just sat there looking at every inch of myself, reminding myself that my body takes care of itself. I am sick because something needs to get out and my body knows that. I thought about how powerful that is. How innate it is for our bodies to just care for us, no questions asked. So, I used that when I looked in the mirror. I said out loud “I want to take care of my body- innately and unconditionally.” Those other thoughts are just leftovers from a time I didn’t trust my body.

I then got up and puked.

After I finished that up, I laid on the couch and rubbed my stomach. I called my mom and told her how much pain I was in and she told me to just rest and that it will pass and, of course, she added “if it doesn’t pass in the next few hours, go to the ER.” It did pass though. Just like that thought, the pain subsided. I rested and healed just as I knew my body could.

Yesterday, during that healing, while my body felt like it got run over by a bus, I decided to do some Yoga with Adriene for illness. It was nice to gently move my body and stretch out the parts of myself that were crunched up for 24 hours. The thing I loved the most though was how the video ended. She said when she is sick she uses the affirmation ‘my immune system works perfectly’. With our hands at our hearts we both repeated those words. As I spoke those words into the universe, I recalled my moment from the day before. A sense of relief just wafting all over myself.

I think all of this is to be a reminder that A) things are always changing and B) we can/should learn to trust our bodies more. I used to push those thoughts away, not give them the time of day. Now, letting myself explore why I had that thought and all the things that came along with it allowed me to realize that I am not in that same place. It gave me a moment of self-reflection that I wouldn’t have gotten if I just shut it down immediately.  I suggest learning to trust yourself- I promise it feels so much better than being an enemy of yourself. “They” always say you are your own worst enemy, but I would argue that we are our own best ally. 

I would also argue that we could all do better at washing our hands.

A[wo]men

a reflection

in the water,

in the mirror,

in the window,

in the puddle,

in the broken glass.

always-

you

-wherever you go.

rooting for you.

-your number one fan