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As I’ve worked on my own healing I’ve realised with greater and greater clarity that the experiences I’ve had in life have caused parts of me to splinter off. All of us have parts that, when faced with challenging circumstances, choose to become our guardians, separate from our sense of self, defending us from future traumatic events.
We split ourselves off from these parts in order to keep ourselves safe. In the past I’ve been told that I should choose my wording differently: ‘We become split off’ rather than ‘We split ourselves off’. After some consideration I’ve chosen to keep to my original wording, here’s why;
If I become split off from a part of myself due to a traumatic event, which, by definition, I had no control over, I am completely powerless. I have no power over the event and no power over what happens within myself. If, on the other hand, I split myself off from a part of myself, even though I do so unconsciously, I am actively doing something to keep myself safe. The power is mine.
Now this splitting off, while necessary in the moment, is rarely helpful in the long term, it can cause all kinds of havoc from anxiety and depression to unhelpful coping mechanisms. However the fact that a part of me was able to do it without even my conscious control tells me a number of things
1. There’s a part of me that’s dedicated to keeping me safe
2. That part has power in my life
3. Most importantly: If I have the power to split myself off from a part I have the power to reunite with it
So whilst that fracture might be doing all kinds of damage in my life, I know that if I can communicate with that subconscious part of myself I can do something about it. Fortunately the tools we use in our Healing Womanhood videos are perfectly designed to do exactly that.
Our theme for this month’s healing videos has been Whole. Week by week we've reunited with some of the parts of us that most often get lost along the journey.
We began with creativity, unpicking any unhelpful beliefs we may have picked up and enjoying a visit to our inner child.
Next we reconnected with our body. Any kind of trauma can lead us to lose a sense of safety in our own bodies and take to living completely in our heads so this one is a great start to returning to an embodied state.
After that we looked at spirituality. We consider what spirituality means or could mean to us as an individual and reflect on any times when we’ve been judged or ridiculed for our beliefs, leading us to hide or abandon our spiritual side.
In our fourth video we moved on to sexuality. For those of us who’ve experienced sexual trauma a really common response can be the rejection of our own sexuality as a means of keeping ourselves safe. We can also have this response even if the trauma was that of another woman or if we’ve just witnessed how women’s sexuality is received in the world. This video gives us the opportunity to reunite with this beautiful, sacred and incredibly valuable aspect of our life force with potentially amazing results.
Our final video makes space for any other parts that have been lost along the way. You may have a part in mind or you may not, either way this video supports you in inviting home any other parts that got left behind. You can repeat it as often as you like each time you identify another lost part.
Our wholeness is something that can never be taken away from us, trauma researcher Arielle Schwartz offers us the wonderful phrase ‘you are not broken, you are simply hurt and in need of care.’ I hope that this week’s videos can provide a little of that care for you and if you need a little more, I’m here for you, get in touch for one to one sessions.
You can find the free videos on our YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@healingwomanhood
And the deep dives in our Patreon community patreon.com/healingwomanhood
Looking forward to seeing you there!
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