It’s been another difficult week for so many of us that have an empathic beating heart that has not turned to stone.
If you are alive, reading this you are hurting on so many levels. Whether you are triggered by your own trauma wounds
or grieving the life you never had, the welcome you never got, the death of someone you love, the endings
– friendships/lovers/ family relationships – it’s times like this that are strong medicine. We are all part of the
collective consciousness each bringing our own sensitivities, mortality, and grief to be witnessed.
As the Russian/ Ukraine war unfolds it is exposing the darkness, the unloved parts, the intergenerational trauma
so that we can transmute and heal our individual trauma and survival patterns into something that benefits the whole.
We are in the dark descent and have been since the pandemic begun and we need to find the courage to stay there
– to grieve our unmet needs a voice and let the old have a good death before we can use them as fertiliser to nourish
what wants to grow in its place. This is the power of words to heal, to speak the language of the heart.
To do so often takes us to the polarised opposite – the power of words that harm, the language of UNlove.
I wanted to share something about myself that you may not know about me.
I have always loved writing ever since I was old enough to hold a pen I would write little poems or letters
to my sister’s overseas and draw my own birthday cards. There is just something about ink and paint and paper
– the smell of the tools and the magic of making something out of nothing. It’s magical in any form
– to know the power of words to lift us up or break our hearts. I always found it so strange that saying
– “sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never harm me.”
Like emotional and verbal abuse is less traumatising than physical abuse – just because you can’t see the damage
done doesn’t make it any less destructive. In fact on the contrary, words do maim and kill.
These 5 tiny little words can bring more compassion and love into the world.
I have always used writing as medicine.
I recall writing a letter to my uncle’s new wife telling her how upset I was over something really hurtful she did to
me when I was about 10. I carried around the anger and resentment under layers of hurt into my mid-twenties
before I had the courage to sit down and write to a teacher who had caused me a lot of emotional pain during high school.
She would shame me for being too afraid to perform off the highboard at diving like my famous champion diving sister
– she was awful and used her words to break me down. I was sixteen at the time and was so upset that because of
her “misabuse of power” I never got my school colours for swimming even though I broke several records
and had my full colours for representing my country multiple times. It caused such a scandal but she refused to budge.
Being sensitive I felt so ashamed –
that somehow I was wrong, that it was dangerous to stand out from the crowd, that women couldn’t be trusted.
I did not know it at the time that this woman had her own trauma wounds around being unloveable and not enough.
My peers ostracised me and the bullying got worse than before.
When I began my healing journey I realised just how deep the trauma patterns of being persecuted
and killed by women run for so many of us and that we get to choose to stop the abuse.
I felt so relieved to get all that grief and pent-up emotion out of my head and onto a page.
It was cathartic and liberating and even if I hadn’t sent that letter to her or even expected any reply
I no longer had to carry it around with me.
She did contact me just before she died of cancer in her late 60’s to apologise
and told me she had not been aware of just how much hurt she had inflicted on so many others.
I tell this story not to make her wrong but to remind you to remember the people who countered
the darkness in others with their light – I had a wonderful math teacher who helped me to go from failing
to a B and in her loving, patient way showed me that anything is possible with the right support.
Long before language and the written words we connected and spoke through the felt sense of touch and action.
That love, is a verb and that grief and gratitude are both sides of love and that it takes a village to hold
and metabolism and transmute it. We need to be moved by words, what is left unspoken and what our ears don’t hear.
The lost art of inner beingness, the nonverbal communication and intuition that animals and nature,
music and dance stir deep within our psyche – bring us back to our heart space. To this now moment.
But I digress…… I know you are getting what I am putting down.
It’s okay if you don’t, allow yourself to get lost in my words, let them pass over your head like a cloud in the sky.
Let them go and later if you feel the urge pull them in backward.It’s all good.
My invitation in sharing my love of spelling something into being with the word
is that you follow your own inner muse, listen to what your heart wants to say and write.
Let your heartache, your anger, your joy move you to release, to heal.
I spoke about automatic writing as a powerful healing tool here.
Use your pen as a magic wand and tell your story.
Allow yourself to be awestruck every time you write, the letters are stitched together into a love letter,
a declaration, a command, or a poem that becomes your mark on the world even if nobody else gets to see it.
Let it simply be a polite, potent request to obliterate the fog that tricks you into numbness.
Let your tears drip onto your page as your words move your grief like a river
– let your words carry you like a leaf on the water. If you are feeling powerless, hopeless –
that you should be doing more for Ukraine, for your family, for yourself
let your words be the sword, the olive branch, the medicine for your soul.
Something you may not know about me is that I have been intentionally using my love of words to self-publish on Amazon.
I made the commitment 9 months ago to share what I know in the world of nonfiction with my grief and pet loss book
“Until We Meet Again”. ( its FREE on kindle unlimited).
Of all the titles on my list of writing, that was the one I thought would be easy, effortless because I know grief so well.
Little did I know how agonizingly, excruciatingly painful and slow it would be to get it moving out of me and onto the pages.
My aim was 30k. 4 months later it was over 111k and when I thought it was done with me,
I ended up in hospital with pneumonia fighting for my breath to stay alive. It was deep cathartic process of healing
so many layers of my own unresolved grief.I realised that regardless of my intention to get this book into the hands of pet lovers,
it was bigger than that at a time in the world where collective grief was at an all-time high.
I want it to be useful to everyone to help them to move through any kind of grief and loss.
If you have read either of them PLEASE leave me a review- they are necessary unless you have serious money
to get the algorithm to suggest the book so your support really helps me.
Then I wrote a little kids book on grief and pet loss and I have been working on a grief journal and memorial book that will
be ready in the next few weeks.I have also been writing poetry and dipping my toe into writing fiction books.
I want to use my love for words to bring more joy into my life and thought it would be fun and easy to write about
frivolous things like second chances at love, family drama, forgiveness, and mystery.
I spoke the written word a while back with the Legacy necklace which now has it’s place at the beginning of a book
I am currently working on. It is a story that every woman I have ever told it to relates to and there is never a dry eye in the room.
We as women have sat in sacred circles for centuries, it is in our blood to connect and belong in ceremonies to grieve,
to heal and to continue the rituals and traditions so we do not forget our humanity – where we come from and where we are going.
Which title do you prefer for a series that falls in the category of spiritual inspiration and small-town romance
The Medicine of US or Gifts of the Heart?
Little novellas of hope, love and humor to escape the brutality of these dark days. None of it has been easy and
it has certainly given me a deeper respect for great storytellers – it is an art form to make the reader fall in love with
the characters and immerse them in another world and a new skill I have yet to master.
I aim to publish my first little series in the next month in between the serious work I do in my trauma-informed coaching.
It’s been a big commitment and investment in both time and money and to be honest, the recovering perfectionist in me is
having a field day in tampering my joy and ease buttons.
I’m curious what books you read for pleasure.
Please let me know your favorite genres and authors and what you love about the stories.
I leave you with a little poem that helped me to keep my heart open when my daughter said some really
hurtful things to me this week. I know she is struggling right now with so much upheaval in her life with her father.
That she feels I have failed her and she has been angry since I moved to the UK 3 years ago. She had the choice to come and
live with me then and I am waiting for her. I knew that she would know when she is ready. `it’s been heartbreaking to be so
far away from her when her whole world is falling apart. the house she has known for 15 years is being sold, where ever she goes
next may mean she won’t be able to take her dogs and cats with her, she will have to leave the friends she has behind
– she has no control over any of it. I know I am the safe place where she can lash out and vent her deepest fear and her anger
and…… my heart breaks. I tell her I will be here when she is ready. I will always love her more now when she closes her heart to me.
I grieve for the little girl who slept at my breast and has grown up and pushed me away. I celebrate the woman she is becoming who
has the gift of language and words and uses them sometimes to hurt and sometimes to love and I will do my utmost to welcome all
of the words she writes on me with invisible ink that only I can see long after the moments have faded into the dark.
My soul prayer is that she never stops spelling herself into being.
Where ever you find yourself in your life,
may you keep your hearts open and write some beauty into the world together.
Much love always
your biggest supporter.
Sarah-Jane
She is seven
and experimenting
with the power of her words
as though she just grew claws.
She places a few together
and nudges them towards me.
Did that hurt your feelings, mama?
she asks with genuine curiosity
and even though I know
she doesn’t mean it,
I can’t help but flinch.
So she runs after the words,
bursting into tears,
trying to gather them back.
I explain how words get swallowed
and land in the heart
and as I hold her in my arms,
she grows quiet,
stops crying
and then wonders out loud
why we didn’t invent
an alphabet with letters
whose edges
weren’t
so sharp.
sam reynolds I adore you.