on top of the overwhelming realness of trying to survive every day, many dealing with mental & physical illness, financial job root chakra insecurities, post-pandemic social anxiety and relationship fallouts, and the insanity of everything disturbing happening on the planet, disasters, dysfunctional leadership, climate crisis, economic instability, there's this social policing happening that's adding to the energy of war heavy in the air, our minds and hearts.
it is a very important need for us to feel acknowledged in our pain.
a common shadow of this need trying to get met in an indirect way is placing blame, power, and responsibility on someone else to take that pain away by criticizing them or trying to control their behavior.
it's misdirected rage and grief.
yesterday i got mad at my partner for throwing away perfectly good cilantro stems which i found in the compost bin. i hold the belief that most or all parts of a vegetable/herb should be consumed, otherwise it's wasteful. a shadow part of me, that was already feeling anxious before the cilantro, saw the cilantro crime as the perfect irresistable moment to channel my latent frustrations about myself onto him. the cilantro was the surface trigger, the real underlying cause of my anger was something deeper.
he told me he felt blamed and judged with the tone of my voice. which at first i protested. "all i said was "seeing the cilantro stems thrown away is wasteful! just stating a FACT" i said with sassy defiance. but he got me there with the tone of voice thing. i caught the sharpness of my energy, the surge of self-righeousness, my momentary better feeling because i just expelled some of my bad vibes and crushed his ignorance a little bit. ha! got you! my way is the right way. your way is the wrong way. which then justifies the shaming and blaming.
i'm aware of how easy it is feel better momentarily blaming someone and being strict with their behavior than looking deeper into my own chaos, biases, presumptions. also perfectly fine to advocate for my "save the cilantro stems" but that extra sting in my energy had deeper shadow roots than just about caring about the cilantro.
there's a better outlet that won't be adding on to war consciousness -
when the deeper deeper deeper vulnerability is tended to.
i asked what he needed, and he replied with "gentler energy" as he was having a difficult morning too. the who's right who's wrong binary could be released when the priority is made to connect with what's really going on with each other underneath the surface. and not make assumptions about the other person, believing that if they don't act or behave as you would, that it's a threat.
it's hard to understand or see into someone else's humanity with their own complex traumas and history, to honor their non-linear grief process that doesn't on the surface look like how you're processing it in the moment, and not visible within the screen of our phones..
when you're deprived of having that deep vulnerable place within you presenced. this deprivation needs real food of safe connection. not more blame shame and judgment.
unacknowledged pain makes us lash out. and this deprivation is not nobody's fault!
deeper ancestral traumas of war and colonization are surfacing for many of us. it can manifest as numbness, anxiety, checking out, guilt, depression, aggression, endless sadness, fatigue, stomach aches, hypersensitivity, hair picking, hyper-controlling criticality, etc.
for each of us, the past experiences of our ancestors and the experiences of our own childhoods where we felt helpless, powerless, vulnerable, alone, and at the mercy of unattuned authority/parental figures are interconnected with the present-day triggers of war and global crisis.
our unseen ungrieved past is interconnected with the current symptoms and coping mechanisms we're employing.
but the void must not be avoided.
the chasm of grief opens wider for us to receive ourselves and each other, this is how medicine is created. from the wound.
