This morning as I sat on my deck watching the intense and beautiful rain, suddenly a big gust came up and picked up a chair from my deck and toppled it over the side (my deck is about 15 feet above the ground). I laughed so hard. it looked so funny to me and reminded me the power all around me I get to connect with every day. I said a prayer for those dealing with flooding, and felt grateful for the rain which we truly need.
When I told the story to several friends, some perceived it very differently. One told me to go inside and lock the doors, she was afraid for my safety. Another told me I should be bolting my chairs to my deck. This from my friend who a few years ago would have absolutely laughed with me.
It reminded me of how we have shifted our instinctual perspectives the last several years. How much our traumas and the global traumas have affected our day to day thinking.
Please know I am in no way minimizing any experience. It’s been a deeply difficult time for many, myself included. While we have experienced many wonderful things as well, it’s been complicated and most of us have experienced loss on many levels, unexpected transitions and trauma. We need to take our emotional healing seriously and as a global society put more focus on self-care and emotional release/renewal right now.
Many of us feel so different than we felt several years ago. Our trauma is changing our perceptions and we need to address this to find our way home to ourselves. We need to be present to the trauma, to the gaslighting from all the constantly changing messaging, to the constant transitions we had no control over and to the changes to our personal communities and individual support systems. Our global and individual worlds have changed, and so have we.
Today I encourage you to take a moment (or many moments) with yourself and remind yourself of the warrior you are to have come through the past few years. Allow yourself to have self-compassion for anything and everything that you dealt with and compassion as well for the fact you may not always feel like yourself right now as you are healing. Perhaps even journal on who you are now, what you are healing and needing to heal and honor yourself for being human.
The layers of trauma run deep for many and require compassion, awareness and the openness to see ourselves and others as human. More than ever before it’s a time to realize that just as others cannot know what is going on in our world, we cannot know what is going on in theirs either. Global compassion is also important and it’s up to each of us to decide how we want to move forward and what we want to focus on for our healing journey.
Over the past few years there were times I wouldn’t have laughed at the chair going over my deck…days the pain of loss was too great for that instinctual perspective. Part of my laughter this morning was realizing I had returned to myself, that my healing journey had brought me home, and that meant more to me than the laughter. Though the laughter was pretty darn good too. 💛
I hope you have many ‘laughter moments’ as you find your way to healing and exploring what the next chapter in your story is unfolding to.
Big hug, much love, and happy new year! Jen/Satya