Happy New Year!

This ezine is a project long in the making. It required that I find time (we all know how that can go) and it required that I really listen to what was calling to me and pushing me forward.

It also meant encountering turbulence and reasons to abandon the way! As I started gearing up for this first ezine I realized what I dream of creating: a supportive community for people looking for positive ways to heal their trauma histories. Listening to dreams, finding pointers to community became the article below.

My hope is to write a monthly ezine that will inspire and support the healing of trauma in the world. That’s in addition to a blog, a forum, various websites, a home study course... some which are still to come. Stay tuned!

With love and kindness,

Deirdre

The Journey

Perhaps this life is about remembering who we really are and trusting ourselves to open to that memory so that we can dream it into the future. Trusting that dream is like Hansel and Gretel walking into the dark forest, dropping bread crumbs to find your way home.

Trauma changes the fairy tale a bit, sending in the wolves to eat the bread crumbs so we can’t find them when we look for them.

Yet, the path out of the darkness remains. The path has always been there, it has been obscured, hidden, gotten completely covered over. But it’s there.

My father had always wanted to walk the Camino de Compostela in Spain. The Camino is one of the oldest Christian pilgrimages and my father had learned about it in the 1950’s when he was living in France. Having wanted to make the journey,life intervened: my father met my mother, had five kids, and lived a very full life.

Many years later, almost fifty years later, my mother had died, my father was 84 and he remembered his dream. My sister and I offered to go with him.

Ah, I digress, you think. What does this have to do with Hansel and Gretel and trauma?

The Camino had fallen into disrepair over all these centuries. People who walked the Camino had a difficult time finding their way. The path, even today, can be pretty treacherous. Thank God someone decided to help guide these pilgrims along the way. This someone went out walking the Camino with a box of spray paint and marked the path: this is the way. Now this way. Take this right. (See if you can see the yellow arrow on the brick wall in the picture above.)

Those arrows, like the bread crumbs in Hansel and Gretel’s story, guided our journey. On the Camino we walked only the last 100 k’s (which still took seven days). But those arrows painted by an unknown hand, some with drip marks not tidied up guided our journey, marked the path, and brought us to the goal, Santiago de Compestolo.

As I enter mid-life and remember my dreams I realize that there have been many of those Camino arrows. Those arrows point to my dream of creating a supportive, inspiring community for people on the journey of healing from trauma. My commitment is to support people to find their way through the dark and horror, to help people listen to themselves, to hear their own knowing.

We all get lost at various times in our lives. We feel stuck and can often feel terribly alone. Having a resilient community of people who understand the dark and foreboding world of trauma, who have lived the chaos but are willing to serve as helping hands, as guides along the way makes a difference.

This ezine is one marker, one arrow on that journey to building community. More is to come. I have a whole bunch of projects in the works - keep posted for more information!

Embodiment: Letting What You Dream Guide You

As you reflect on this new year what calls to you? Inspires you? What do you dream of?

Take a bit of time to reconnect with why you want to heal. See if you can sense deep inside what helps guide you and point you in the direction of where you want to go.

If you’re in a place of feeling some balance it might come easy to you. You might get images or thoughts, or fragments of music that inspire you. Take a moment now to let your body and mind and heart be filled with these thoughts, feelings and body sensations. Soak it in. Ask for more guidance to come to you.

For others, though, the question of what inspires you will bring forth despair and sadness and might feel like there is nothing. Yet, that despair, that hopelessness is trying to guide you. There’s some spark inside that says this is terrible—this should be different. Use your imagination and explore what would feel better? What qualities would you want to be with you, to help absorb and redirect this despair? If your sadness feels gray, what color could hold and care for this gray? If you feel heavy, what would help to kindly and gently lift the heaviness?

In the Becoming Safely Embodied groups one way people get to know themselves is through writing and drawing. It can be helpful to take these internal images and externalize them - put them outside of you through an image or though words. (Yes, I know, you say you can’t draw! Give it a try. You might surprise yourself.) The point is not to be perfect, not to make something “right”, but to make what’s churning inside more concrete outside of you so you can interact with it.

If it feels right, take some time and write or draw. See what emerges and practice being with it. If it feels too much, as always, trust yourself. The more gently and kindly we interact with ourselves the easier the journey becomes. Trust in small pointers, small moments of guidance. Let your journey unfold from within.

I’m always really interested in what would help you in your life. If you have a moment and want to let me know, I’d be grateful.

With love and kindness,

Deirdre