Releasing Trauma Held in the Body

As for the title of this blog, "The Next Right Step - My Knees Will Thank Me!," I read an article recently on llewellyn.com about how the body holds trauma. I have read this before - it's not a new theory. This was a leader article, just enough to get you interested and here's how you can purchase the book. I put it in my Amazon cart, sure enough.

The example the author used is knee pain, that when you have knee pain, you don't know which way is the right way to step, metaphorically. That is exactly where I have been for the last two-and-a-half years, the same amount of time as it takes Saturn to make his journey around the sun.

The sacral chakra is where creativity, fertility, intuition and passion flow. It's in your midsection, down low where your womb is or would be. Mine spins slowly, only a dull orange. Sometimes, it spins backward. Physically, my sacral chakra is encased in fat. Well-meant protection turned toxic.

I need my creativity back. I need my sacral chakra to be healthy. I need to be able to express myself without fear of abandonment or assault. I will not be a victim again. It seems counterintuitive, the way I am going to ensure that is by being vulnerable.

I tried the other way. I tried to protect myself from everything that could hurt me. At this moment, I am isolated by choice. Instead of learning healthy protection, instead of learning discernment, I have shut myself away from the world. I rarely see people I know besides my immediate family: my husband and children and critters. I have friends in other places, far away from me and only ever talked to online. I do not drive - I think it's my adrenal glands. (The adrenal glands are the reason we experience the fight-or-flight response. When they are not taken care of properly, the response surges through you even when there's not a threat to respond to appropriately.) I do not work outside my home. (Again, the adrenal glands don't know the difference between rampaging tiger and customer service. Wait . . . is there a difference?)

Einstein is often misquoted as having said that true insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

For the month of December, I am concentrating on creativity and being vulnerable in the world. Allowing vulnerability to open me back up.

"You guard so fiercely. You may not get hurt, but - huff, puff - you won't get loved either." - Wolf, The 10th Kingdom

The Next Right Step - My Knees Will Thank Me!

I have knee pain. Not always in the same knee. Not all the time. But it's there, it comes and goes like the wind. Part of this may be because I carry extra weight. Also, because I insist on moving that extra weight. Or maybe I am just creaky. Maybe it's the squeaky wheel in me - the one that says, "Look! Look here! I exist! See me! Pay attention to me!" The one who will not feel shame for any of these things. Not anymore.

I will not tell you old stories. I am tired of old stories.

My daughter wants to throw out all of our Yuletide decorations. Most of them are handed down from my holiday-loving and well-decorating mother. I understand my daughter's logic. We have lived our old stories once, when they actually happened, and countless times since, when we revisited them and agonized over them and understood them and healed them.

Let's move on. Let's make new memories. Make new ornaments and decorations. New traditions. Let's be us, informed by those old stories, but no longer letting them hold the reins, no longer letting them drive our every decision, our every word. Let them be free, too. Let those old bones rest.