I am small, a little girl, but here I am trapped in a grown body, I feel 8, not 34, but I felt 40 at 12… I am small, and I need soothing and love, I go outside and all I can see is the forest across the valley from my house, I go climb the hill until I find myself in the forest, I lay down on my back, barefoot, I look at the perfectly blue sky and I’m listening to the light sound of leaves that move around on the tree’s crown, I’m grounded, I don’t know I’m grounding, I learn years later what I’m doing and how I’ve let the earth and nature embrace me and soothe the pain I’m going through…
Nature was the only one that could soothe my pain, soaking in all that was, away. It has been my alley in moments of hard grief and numbness, when there was nobody around I would curl in a ball and lay low as long as I could.
When there’s nobody around to acknowledge your pain, the suffering gets deeper, it cuts through stone and steel, and it festers in wounds that will ooze and bleed on everything you touch, and worse, when someone else is trying to clean and help that long painful hurt, you will scream in agony and won’t put yourself anywhere where you could be hurt again… it’s raw and real, and people can be unpredictable, so you’d rather make your own space and think 10 steps ahead before anyone could do any move to even come close to that.
I am curled in a ball, internally, but I am standing on my own two feet, I have been in a deep shock, I’ve lost my savings, but that’s not what hurts, I can still work my life out of me and still know how not to burn myself out… what hurts it’s the way I’ve been shattered into million pieces, someone who was ill-intended, had found my wound and kept pressing on that deep deep rotten callus, it looks thick on the surface, but it’s boiling inside and someone found the crack, the rupture within, and put a dagger with salt in it.
I am in shock, I am upset with myself, and I am operating in deep survival mode where no logical thinking takes place… I am upset with myself because I have been working for a while with a professional to find these wounds and clean them up and I’ve been blindsided by evil, I found myself in one of the deepest shocks I’ve been through and it resurfaced only when someone else brought it back to life…
But this time is different, I am embraced with help and understanding, I am offered care and support, I am given space to grief, I am listened to, I am held and brought back from my shock, and I am overwhelmed with love and protection, I am ashamed with my pain but nobody shames me for feeling how I feel or acting how I act.
It’s 2020, soon I’ll turn 30 and my life is in shambles, I’ve gone through summer with deep anxiety and fear, fear of losing my job, fear of losing myself, fear of having worked so hard for everything and not knowing where to go if all goes away…
I’m in the studio, I sit on the couch and look around at the work that has been done with other people, I’ve seen vulnerability that spoke more than words will ever do… I talk and talk, and talk for a long time, I’m given space and understanding, this feels like a therapy session, not a photo session, I cry like I’m small again and open up to a stranger that I’ve got to know through the work I’ve seen, raw and honest.
It’s been 4 years… I’m better than I’ve ever been, but then I’m not, I’m back again curled internally in a ball, I’m laying on the floor in the studio, I feel comfort, I reconnect with my body, I’m asked about my feelings, but all I feel is pain, lots of it, I utter “love”, I want to know love, unconditional, unjustified with no transactions, I keep my eyes closed and reconnect deeper with myself, I feel light and free…
Years to an end I’ve separated my mind from my body, heavy shocks would take endless time to repair and recover from, and pain and frustration would always linger in the background with every thought of it… but now, I needed a few days and I’m back on my feet, where did all that pain go? Where is the heaviness I’ve felt so bad? how come I feel so light?…
Black and white through pictures, as nature did as a little girl in colors of green and blue, rusty brown and faint yellow, I’m embracing myself, accepting myself, my pain, my grief, I express it and live it and let it go away… I’m grounding and, this time, I know.
