SARAH WOLF | WRITER, READER, GAMER
Menu
My Inner Worlds
Spring seems like it’s already here, not necessarily because of the weather (although it helps). But because my job has eased up. I don’t have to run on pure adrenaline, and my body has mostly recovered from that spike that got me through the winter busy season. My creative brain is wakening. I feel it perking at the oddest times, usually when I can’t sit down and write. The frustrating part about art—my muse and my schedule don’t often align. But when they do, it feels like magic.
Magic, did you say? I haven’t gotten back into my stories or fiction yet, but my monthly Dungeons and Dragons role-playing game has burst with renewed fun. Captain Lia is not a magic-user, but her two best friends and pirating buddies are. The D&D world is steeped in monsters and enchantment and sends me to a place where I can play with aspects of myself. It’s not always safe to try something new in real life, but a fantasy setting where harm really can’t occur is the perfect way for me to try on different hats or perspectives.
Consider the pirate stereotype…salty, villainous, greedy, most likely missing some teeth. However, my friends and I have created a way to play pirates that doesn’t go against our real-world principles. Lia leads a ship whose crew is considered family. She would die before allowing harm to befall anyone aboard the Skull fleet. She also won’t allow raids on villages; instead, we seem to give our bounty to those in need. Definitely not a pirate thing to do. I get to be a barbarian and a bad-ass in battle. It feels empowering to kill two monsters with one swing of my mighty sword. Historically, I’ve played magic users and always had to stay in the background during fights due to my delicate constitution. Now I get to play a physically strong character and stretch those muscles within myself.
Do you have a space where you can experiment with who you are and feel safe doing so? I’d love to hear about it.
0 Comments
Last night my friend’s mom died. I never met her, but I’ve worked side-by-side with my friend for almost six years. She called me this morning, sounding like she was in shock, and I’ve felt weepy all day. Last night I cried during yoga and had to leave before the Yin class I always take after Bikram. Thankfully Raleigh Yoga Company is an awesome studio, and Susan Heller hugged me as I tried to staunch my tears. For a few weeks I’ve noticed the days shortening, the sun sleeping longer in the mornings. I used to like this natural cycle and the season of introversion it portends for me. I liked feeling the thinning of the veil that separates our world from what lies beyond. Halloween and Samhain are still a week away, yet I already feel the presence of our ancestors. I don’t mind the extra sensitivity, but I’m not ready to lose anyone. My family has been fortunate in that we have not had the loss of loved ones (other than grandparents, which you expect to be on the other side when you're in your forties). All six siblings are alive and well. My parents are too, although Mom lives in an Alzheimer’s care unit. On the other hand, my friend has felt death since she was ten years old when her brother passed. She cared for her father, who had dementia, until he died. And then she lived with her ailing mother for years…until last night. I’m not sure I want to be introverted this winter. I don’t want to live in my cave and nestle in the cocoon that has been my safe shelter for as long as I can remember. This summer changed me. I started yoga, but I’m not going to say yoga changed my life. I was already changing and found a new practice that suited the me that I’m becoming. I want to continue this new path. I know that I need to shake the leaves off my branches like the trees do this time of year. I need to regroup and gather my energy this winter in order for spring’s beautiful blossoms to adorn my life. I just don’t know if I’ve ever had a dark time of year where I didn’t go dark inside. I intend to keep my candle alight during the coming season of change. As we move into true autumn weather in mid-North Carolina, I’m aware of how blessed and full my life has become. While I’ve had my struggles and low points in life, their memory magnifies the joy and peace I’m learning to accept as a natural way of living. My job is one I love, both the actual work and the people who surround me each day. I work hard beginning this time of year, and it won’t end until February. But again, I love the work. Summers have become sweeter as I’ve learned to enjoy the slow time and use it for fun, personal connection with family, friends, and with my deeper self. I’m astounded that Matt and I have the relationship we do. We’ve worked hard (that word again) to get to this place, but neither of us regret the time we took to work through the past obstacles life and our own stubbornness placed before us. I am so incredibly grateful for my morning hours and a supportive partner who gives me that time to myself. Matt gets up with me at the crack of dawn, although he’s not a morning person. I settle into my meditation chair with a comfy blanket, a heated neck wrap, my journal, and a cool fountain pen…while Matt feeds the dogs and makes me tasty french-pressed coffee that he delivers to my side table fixed exactly how I like it. There are evenings when I can’t wait to wake up and take that first sip of coffee. It’s that perfect for me. Our lives will always have those irritants that want us to choose their importance over what matters most in our hearts. Some days I fall for their wily shouts and cries of inequity. As I grow in love for all that is, I’m able to overlook that noise more than I could even last spring and hold close to me what truly is my chosen—the beauty in all that surrounds us.
The time passed where I could hide myself, yet still I hid. Others saw within what I wouldn’t—a strength, a keen edge used in kindness, a woman containing her power inside a shadow of her true self. Not for one second more. I choose to live fully and to consciously build the creative reality I have craved my entire life.
No more silence. No more shame. No more swallowing my secret.
At age 29, the year I found my talented therapist (see post here), I recalled a sliver of memory that shattered my foundation. I was sexually assaulted as a young child. My reason for going to therapy was to stop having panic attacks when I drove in the rain. After six months of building trust with my mental health partner, we dove to a deep place that stored my frantic need to control my life. I cannot express the devastation I felt as I came out of that remembered incident. I wouldn’t believe it at first, my mind telling me it happened to my sister, not to me. But the compassion and love in Jan’s eyes and voice as she coached me through that initial horror told me the truth. She knew. I think she knew all along.
Looking back over my life and my marriage up to that point, all the signs were there. Neither Matt nor I suspected my young past, but together we pieced the puzzle into place and both had to deal with an altered reality. He gave me the space I needed to heal, which took a lot of time. Actually, the healing has been ongoing because an additional layer will reveal itself, and I have to dig deeper to work through those “new” issues.
Each layer takes me further into my desire to give up the need for control that plagues me, to care for my self and for my body, to treat both well. It’s not my or my body’s fault that someone harmed the burgeoning four-year-old light that was supposed to shine in this world. I will shutter my lantern no more.
That’s what I’m grieving this summer. The loss of a childhood I never realized I missed. The loss of a potential we each are given. The loss of the choice to strengthen it or to let it dry in the streambed of my life. My flow was altered, but it wasn’t stopped. It has struggled to find the channel where it can roar with the power of not a stream, but of a churning rapid. Was my creative spirit fated to be broken so I would flounder through my years, longing to write the words I see in my head, yet too frightened of opening that portal and seeing more than I wanted to? There’s no controlling the artistic expression that feeds my heart’s longing and opens the gateway to my innermost pulse.
I guess that’s the fear I’m working through now. If I had my world shattered at age 29 by peering through the door to a healthier emotional state, how will my current life change as I open the creativity flowing through my veins? For the past three years I’ve intentionally worked on nudging myself through this chokehold. Seriously, it chokes me, a grip around my throat. Maybe that’s why I have neck pain, and maybe my spinal issues will fade as I free the voice waiting to be heard.
This blog is part of my journey to freedom. Yoga has been crucial for accessing these stale, stagnant remains of a life that no longer defines who or what I am. A secret spoken is a secret no more. It has no power left to generate the silence and aloneness with which I’ve felt I had to live.
I am rising from the ashes of an unconscious life, and I feel the power of a massive force hidden within. This picture of a planet rising from stormy cloud cover resonates.
|
Archives
April 2022
Categories
All
|