“Where does your body hold a memory. The kind that holds a clue to help you understand your current terrain.” My friend and guide Jen asked as a way of orienting me to feel into where I was at the time, an extremely chaotic place. She was helping me find a “you are here” star for me to stand on before charting a course or choosing a way forward by recognizing some direction I held in my body.
The dictionary definition of Recovery is: a return to a normal state of health, mind, or strength.
Our bodies, minds and spirits have an imprint of “normal state of health” for us. They also have imprints of illness, trauma, pain. Memories, if you will.
Before the recovery work, my emotional terrain was born of hyper vigilance, fear, a dysregulated nervous system, exhaustion, depletion, stress, chaos. My body was familiar with all of these places. I was living in a constant state of crisis that felt normal. It wasn't natural. I had to figure out where I was so that I could start to make my way out of the dark to where I wanted to be. More importantly how I wanted to be and how I wanted to feel in my life and in my body. I’d been trying to lay a blanket of positivity over our lives to distract from the chaos, to make it seem like it wasn’t as bad as it was. Which was actually an act, a lie really, a form of self betrayal or denial over that which was true. We were suffering and trying to “just be positive” or “have a positive mindset” was killing me and kind of making me feel insane. Which looking back makes sense since I was trying so hard to divorce us from reality to keep the peace and make it look like we were all ok. Now they call that way of being “toxic positivity.” My friends called me “happy, happy, joy, joy.” I wasn’t facing the truth of my own feelings and the impact the chaotic nature of addiction was having on my mind, body and spirit or our family ecosystem.
Once I stood still, just for a little bit, I could say, “I am here.” Then feel with my body what “here” felt like and be honest with myself and Jen. “Here” was suffering, disconnection bordering on isolation and a duplicity that was a challenge to sustain. The first step was for me was wanting to feel again. I felt numbed by the stress on my system. First I had to feel the truth then I could start walking towards what I wanted to feel which was “a return to a normal state of health, mind, or strength.”
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