07/08/2024
Today marks 2 years since my Dad’s transition. Somatic and ancestral guidance have guided me through this grief journey, peaks & valleys.
I’m still finding it challenging to share about how this journey has transformed me— but I can say for sure I am different from the inside out.
As a child, raised by Patti and Richard (and their mismanaged anxieties, shame, rage), I spent most of my days dissociated. I remember looking out the window and pretending I was a butterfly, just floating through the wind.
The past several years I have been in deep reflection of why dissociation, numbing, and fragmentation were necessary for me. I’m immensely grateful for the skill of separating from my body— I truly mean that. I am beyond grateful for all my coping mechanisms, even the ones that might be considered self-destructive. They speak to the amount of pain, suffering and required body submission that I survived.
My parents transitions have brought up a lifetime of grief I was keeping deep in my body. I’ve been grieving their deaths as well as their lives. I’ve been able to speak many truths outloud that i wasn’t able to name whilst they were alive. It’s magnanimously painful and relieving. But what’s incredible is that I am in my body choosing to feel it all.
So many of the harmful beliefs about myself, came from them. And it’s a journey of self-actualization requiring full determination to process and set the record correct in my body.
My grief matters. I matter. What I went through matters. And it all gets to be set free. 🦋
My body practice has included: breath work, body work, yin and restorative yoga, sound therapy, physical therapy, somatic therapy, energy healing. I have pulled every resource I have spent my life accessing for the holding I am needing for this. Though this journey is my choice, my work, and for me, we were never meant to do it alone. Thanks to all who have held this container with me—I am learning so much about love, life, death and the in between of it all.
Dad, we look so much alike. You’re free from your suffering now Dad, love you.
