SARAH WOLF | WRITER, READER, GAMER
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My Inner Worlds
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.
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