the antithesis of fear

a body and soul at rest

TW: if the topic of anxiety and mental health isn’t up your well-being alley today, I encourage you to pause from this reading and enjoy a different week’s newsletter, or perhaps take yourself for a walk, sketch, stretch, sip on tea, call your mom, run around a bonfire in your birthday suit… whatever nourishes you:).

Dear Readers,

The turmoil and suffering in the middle east arrests me. You too, I’m sure. May hope prevail, and may we each find active ways to support broken communities and grow a more peaceful earth.

Now, per my poem sent last week as the first of a two-piece newsletter, I offer its counterpart: 

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I feel a tremendous amount of gratitude to be alive and breathing, and to be okay. 

For some time, I really wasn’t. 

It was a collision of immense, traumatic stress and self-betrayal around my 32nd birthday that ejected me into the dark waters of anxiety; knocked off by a roiling wave, I went under, whipped and dragged to the bottom of the sea. I felt as though my soul had been pinned down under the weight of an ocean; it was all I could do to cede what remained of my existence to the only feeling in me left: fear. 

I both attached to and defined myself by my guilt, shame and suffering, while simultaneously fearing and avoiding them at all costs. I tormented my soul with deep and excruciating pain, in order to avoid feeling and processing it through my body. When I look back on that period of my life, the image that reappears time and again is of my body floating upward from the bottom of the ocean, to eventually surface, fill with gas, and bloat numbingly, lifeless.

And numb I became, because to engage with my whole self felt like such a terrible threat. So, guarded from any possible trigger, I stopped reading books and playing music. I became unavailable for most folks in my life, apathetic toward the natural world and ritual, and disconnected from my ancestors. And I could, by no means, bring myself to cry, meditate, create, or write. (Perhaps the most tragic casualties of them all… as those four practices, since childhood, were always integral to my processing and healing.) Anxiety had been a stranger to me all my life, but oh, how very quickly fear enabled it to become my protector; while in the same, shallow breath–partnering as my destroyer. 

Tenuous circumstances beyond my control, in tandem with the pandemic and a pregnancy, soon followed… a feast for my insatiable companion. I experienced terrifying panic attacks, chest pain, frequent vomiting, periods of sheer paranoia and insomnia, unbearable intrusive thoughts, and a constant hunger for oxygen. It’s so hard to find words to express what it felt like to at once exist unconsciously outside of my body, while my body itself went through an actual living, very alive, kind of hell.

Eventually, the circumstantial floods did recede. I simplified my life, kept my family in focus, grew and bore a second, joy-filled baby–my world’s pace became incredibly slow and wonderfully calm... but my unchosen protector remained trapped within me in all its destruction. As soon as my eyes opened in the morning, my body still immediately braced itself for a sucker punch to the gut… several times a day, I would have to set my little cocooned newborn down, hunch over, and try, to breathe… to an extent, every single one of the physiological effects carried on. And the disconnect from so many parts of myself that would ever make me feel alive again, also persisted.

The storm had passed, but Lord, I had work to do if I wanted to become conscious and at rest in my body and soul. I had not yet processed the events of the past few years, because I had abandoned my capacity to heal. Furthermore, I had not forgiven myself for the pain I had caused, accepted the pain I was in, or understood the pain I had allowed others’ actions to cause me. 

That said, to step back and see my bloated body still bobbing in the water, and my soul buried now so far deep below the surface, the task of becoming whole again felt paralyzingly daunting. 

I took small steps toward healing. I couldn’t persuade myself to be moved by the sight of a redtailed hawk staring me dead in the eye from a scrub oak, but I could enjoy morning walks in the foothills, so I committed to that daily. Meditation and prayer repelled me, so I started with stretching and yoga. Making intuitive art and music felt beyond my capacity, but cooking and baking tapped into my right-brained dominance without causing me to shut down completely. I met with a therapist, I worked through anxiety-reducing techniques with a healer, and practiced writing even if all I could do was document the events of my day before my anxiety kicked in and overcame me. 

I made slow and steady growth over the course of a year or so, before moving to Maine. I can’t quite put my finger on it yet (although that essay will come together soon enough) but right now, it’s all very sacred and tender… In these last few months, I have been able to dig deep, painfully deep, in recovery of my soul. The more I push through, the less power anxiety and fear have over me. Most of the physical manifestations of this protector/destroyer have subsided (truly, only in the last few weeks, like I mentioned, this is fresh progress here). This has actually physically exhausted me, as my body and soul come to re-learn rest.

I am beginning to recognize myself again. To feel deeply, to talk to god earnestly, to make art, and to write freely. I am conscious, and awake to this world, and no longer floating the surface of my life. (Which was, at a time, the very most I could do.)

It’s been a work and healing of forgiveness, acceptance and letting go that is my responsibility alone, and something only I could/can carry. But what I can say is this: if it hadn’t been for earth angels in my life who encircled me and kept me from drowning body and soul, I wouldn’t be here. I am eternally, eternally grateful to our families; Chase’s sisters who kept the proverbial porch light on for me, for us, no matter what. The safe space their friendship and their homes provided can’t be compared. My siblings and their companions, who held infinite, committed emotional space and security, as well as unparalleled wit and humor in precisely desperate moments. The unwavering gift of loving friends and colleagues who, at times literally, picked me up off the floor and cradled me until I felt brave enough to stand up on my own. And my dear Redwing students–one of my greatest blessings on this earth, those sweet eyes and loving faces grounded me in the purest form of hope. 

If I could wrap up this reflection of gratitude by indulging the maritime metaphor with which I began, I’d like to do so by acknowledging my two lighthouses on either side of me, both emitting a directed beam of loving and supportive light continuously sweeping, circling back to me and my family every, single time: my parents. My wise and powerfully, lovingly present moon presiding over the ebb and flow with calm: Liesl. My precious pearl and symbol of spiritual transformation, a treasured arrival amidst the grit and grain of suffering: Freja. And the solid rock outcrop of the sea, unfazed by constant and sometimes brutal oceanic motion, outstanding conifers and ferns growing out of seemingly nowhere, nature’s anchor ever-steady, ever-present: Chase. And then of course, my little healing, Granite stone: dear Granny pup. 

Life is sure a trip ya’ll.

I appreciate you readers so very, very much. Bless you and thank you for being on this earth with me, and accepting my writing as an offering to our shared humanity. If you feel so inspired, please feel free to pass along my essays/newsletters to folks in your circle.

Keep your flame alight,

Corinne