Writing through pain and committing to presence
/At the end of last year, I made a few commitments with myself. One of them, was to write on my book every day of the month of January. The other one, also relevant to the month of January, was to show up on video (full body) every day for 21 days to guide others through the Morning Star Practice.
These two commitments were made at different times. The challenge I thought of back in November. The commitment to write ever day on my book was literally just before the festive season.
In terms of the book, I was finding myself stuck again in not knowing what to write about next or even finding the motivation to show up.
I have recently discovered my knack at receiving guidance for some things, like an idea of what I should write about in the book, allowing for that idea to just vaguely surface, and then, as it feels uncomfortable, I just quickly push it down into forgetfulness. It’s a neat trick. One that has been escaping me.
Who likes to deal with painful memories? Who wants to be reminded of uncomfortable thoughts? Not many people. I certainly do not like pain.
I spent New Year’s eve quietly, doing a puzzle, on my own and generally missing the midnight festivities due to distraction, only being reminded of them when Rufus the dog starts barking non stop because of the fireworks. I had been feeling some sadness that day, but wanted to be more cheery somehow, because it’s a new year! Well, I should have known better, that the more I try to ignore an emotion, the bigger it becomes.
The rest of the night I spent awake for many hours until I picked up my journal and finally fessed up to being sad. Not knowing exactly why.
This made me reflect on how I still get affected by these expectations that when we go into a new year we are all meant to be happy. Hug each other. Be merry.
I shared this on an instagram post, saying that I was actually feeling sad. That to me, it felt just like another day of the year. That if time had not been invented we’d all be going on as if nothing special had happened. And that I was actually feeling not a bit excited for the beginning of a new year and even less of a new decade.
One other person, got in touch with me and said that they felt exactly the same. That somehow, made it all better. I did not feel so alone in my lack of excitement.
A few days later, as I had been showing up to the page to write in my book, I realised that it’s no wonder I had been feeling low and sad. It felt like a revelation. It was an important realisation and a really big thing for me, because it felt really kind to realise this.
As I was explaining this to a good friend, in a phone conversation, it became even clearer that by committing to sit on my desk every day of the month of January, I was also committing to sit with my pain every day. My book is about connecting to my inner child and sitting with her and her experience of childhood sexual abuse, and about other painful experiences that lead her to learn life lessons that still affect my life in the present.
In the first two sittings of writing my book at the beginning of December, I wrote my inner child description of the abuse, with all the words. All the words.
This was super painful and I didn’t really realise it at the time. I’m quite the expert at dissociating in extreme emotions. It comes with the experience of trauma.
The same week, I felt called to write of the impact the abuse had on my sexual life and my mind was blown at the clear threads I was uncovering by writing about it. Things I had not yet realised.
It felt super intense. I did not know what to do with it.
The day after the conversation with my friend, I showed up to the page and these are some of the sentences that came out:
‘Showing up, every day, to look at my pain. To look at my Inner Child’s pain. To see her sense of loss and desperation. To watch her lost look of hurt. To understand all the threads of pain that connect her experience in the past to my experience of the present.
It hurts. It is painful. It is confronting. It is uncomfortable.
It is my duty. It is the only way I can make it up to her.
It is the only way I can honour her pain and her courage.
I sit at my desk every day willing to see the pain, willing to listen to her howls, screams, willing to sit with her silence. I watch her look of sadness and sense her feeling of abandonment. She has been abandoned by me so many times, just like she was abandoned and disappointed by the other adults.’
This is only a little bit of it, but it gives you a taste of how intense it can be.
And then, I realise this morning, as I started the Morning Star Practice 21 Day Challenge, that it is exactly the perfect thing for me to be doing at the same time as this commitment to sit to write and commune with pain.
As I try and find the best words to explain what the Morning Star Practice has given me over the last year, to try and explain why it can be helpful for so many phases of life and different people, I find myself needing it more than ever during this month of January.
It’s like the universe, or whatever entity you want to assign this to, lead me, guided me to committing to these two things that support me into going through. Going through the pain, to come out, hopefully on the other side and into love.
The Morning Star Practice will be providing me with a daily practice that makes me feel solid, rooted, landed and anchored in the present, in my body, my breath and my very human experience.
This is what I need, so that I do not become overwhelmed by the pain and discomfort that comes with looking and being fully present in the past. Giving voice, to a part of me, to my Inner Child, who has felt voiceless all of her existence.
Because I have committed to showing up live for 21 days, for other people and for myself, I will not be able to forget or invent excuses not to do it.
Every morning, I can come back to this feeling of being rooted, anchored, present in my body, reminding myself, that I am here in the now, and here, what happened in the past, is no longer happening.
Pelagia Pais is an Intuitive Coach, Healer, Artist and Writer. She is currently writing a book in connection with her Inner Child, exploring her experience of childhood sexual abuse and other painful memories from the past. Giving her Inner Child, the voice she felt she lost very early on and healing her relationship with herself.
You can find more about what she offers, as well as read her blog ‘It’s not all happiness and coconuts’ here.
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