SONGS FOR WHOLENESS
This song came through during a patch of days where I felt okay, like myself, with access to joy, even, amidst months of deep despair. It hit me that while I felt good, probably the other shoe was gonna drop, and I'd spiral again. And that was okay too. In my family growing up, distressed states were shamed or quickly patched over. I learned that being fine and good was the only option. Slowly, I am allowing myself to be inside whatever experience I am having, and not try to wriggle out or shame myself. We're not fully present all the time. Sometimes we're stuck in our heads and spiraling. That's okay. I'm okay. We're not always on top of our shit, or even on the right path. Sometimes we don't have it together. That's okay. I'm okay.
Here is another song of deepening into the wonder and rightness of all feeling, of the aliveness that comes when all emotions are welcome.
And another! This one comes from a place of feeling the pleasure in all emotions. That we came here as humans to feel everything, even the suffering and pain. We are hungry, horny for all experience, for the deepest depth of emotion possible. What if we said "yes" to what is here, always? Submitted to what we are feeling? Let the feelings have their way? That is sexy. Here's how I work this song: in between rounds, I call out what I am feeling in that exact moment, saying "yes" to it. Give it a try!
This journey into full feeling was heralded by my dear pussy. I've suffered from vulvar pain for over a decade. As much as was possible, I pretended I wasn't suffering. I did what I needed to do to get through the day - never wear jeans, numbing cream or whatever topical I was hurriedly slathering on, as if it was no biggie to dull feeling in my pleasure portal. My skin usually looked totally normal, which doctors told me meant there was nothing wrong. I felt resigned and also annoyed and resentful. Then things got worse and I slowly, necessarily, started to shift my orientation, beginning to listen and allow instead of resist and ignore. I didn't want to be at war with myself anymore. I started to sing this song whenever my pain smarted, in gratitude for the important message from the tender depths.
Wow I guess there are a lot of these! This feeling thing is a deeper theme than I realized. This little song came through under the influence of MDMA. As the ecstasy began to fade, I grasped for it. The other side of pushing away "bad' feelings is chasing and clinging to the "good".
Alright! Here is the last of the feeling loving ones, for now. This is a mantra really, that I've held close for months. It is helping me honor myself from the inside out. I read the words in Martha Beck's book The Way of Integrity. I recommend it, and really all of her work. She is a hilarious and very helpful human.
It is heartbreaking to feel you have to be a certain way to be loved. That is how I was conditioned, how my loyal protectors believe I must live. A sad side effect of this is that the muse gets turned into machine. I sing this whenever I attach to an idea as a way to make myself worth loving.
As you may have guessed, all this feeling is healing work, which I often grow impatient with. There is a part of me who believes I should be 3 steps ahead of where I am. I sing this to give myself the slowness that is required.
I left my marriage recently. It was a really good decision. And there are some things that he would do, that are now on me. When I needed to return my mattress, which I only had to buy because he kept ours, I had to lug it to and squeeze it in the car. I felt awesome after I did - fiery and independent. I groove to this whenever I accomplish something that I've let men handle in the past.
While the ego gets a bad wrap in modern culture, it is really a remarkable thing that Earth created because of the beauty it can bring into being. My mentor Bill Plotkin says something like - the ego doesn't know what is worth doing, but the soul can't get shit done. They long for each other. Each has what the other lacks. They come together inside the human organism.
And the most sacred song to me, a deep soul thread that has woven me into place, wedded me river and fish, called me home.
