September Letter

It’s Spring!

For my clients in the northern hemisphere: you have officially started Gilmore Girls season. But for all us down in Australia (or Sydney at least), we are too busy washing ocean salt and sunblock off our skin, and sleeping with top-sheets only.

You might hear the chirpiness in my voice, yet despite just writing a pretty paragraph about rewatching Lost (the series about the plane crash on the weird island), and finding this quote from the show about fear that I was going to use as a metaphor throughout this letter, I realised that really, actually, that isn’t what is most useful here.

Instead, I want to re-begin with something else I wrote, a while ago, April maybe, back when the world felt quite uneasy; that in-between space where the heaviness of year is certainly felt, yet we can’t yet crawl into ourselves under Winter’s embrace. We’re amidst two worlds.

This is what I wrote one morning:

I watch the birds fly –

The tensing of their little bodies,

As they sit in motion above me.

I watch the birds fly –

The fullness of their span,

Pulling the world underneath.

I watch my own little body.

My tension without magic,

Motionless within me.

I watch my own little body.

Constricted.

Myself keeping it from the birds.

I think back to the parts of me in full force at that time – full fear – trying their best to keep me safe yet also keeping me from feeling it all, which I later realised, of course, is what I needed. What would it mean if I allowed these parts of me that I fear to have a voice? What would they do to me? Would I go insane? Can I trust myself? I knew that I could, deep down. And with time, I came to understand that the reality of embracing all these parts of myself is a much safer one, and a much more happy one. Reading over these words now I can see how I intuitively knew that these parts of myself I feared were actually only the birds themselves. Just little creatures who needed to stretch out and move forward, unconstrained yet gently guided.

I couldn’t see that at the time though. Then, happiness was separate to me, something I felt I couldn’t access, and something I was actively avoiding out of fear of what parts of me believed happiness meant. To me, happiness meant doing everything in my power to avoid panic.

For some of us, happiness means huge risk. For some of us, what makes us the most happy, is also what makes us the most terrified. Some of us are too afraid to experience happiness for the fear that it will be taken away. Some of us are too afraid to experience happiness because to a part of us, being happy means we are normal, and normal isn’t enough. Some of us cross state-lines or continents to find it. Some of us leave relationships to find it. Some of us convince ourselves happiness is boring. Or too hard. Or too rude. Or only allowed once we do all of our homework. Or never allowed at all. Not even chocolate.

We are, again, all between two worlds: the fearful yet comfortable place, and the uncomfortable yet joyous place.

To the me who was watching the birds, and all those who know I’m talking directly to them:

You’re right there.

Just step forward.

Look up.

Turn around.

You’ll find, if you listen carefully enough, these parts of us who are trying their best to keep us safe, they just want to cross over to this new world with you.

Lastly, I read something once somewhere, if I can try to remember:

You're not healing to be able to handle trauma. You already know how to do that. You are healing to be able to handle joy.

Meet Rachel

Meet Rachel! Rachel is a counsellor and provisional social worker. She is available to see new clients on Wednesday evenings.