Belonging is the Bridge…

Belonging is the bridge between our inner world and the outer world.

When we truly belong, it’s safer to compassionately be receptive to others, because we have a taproot of belonging that fosters a deep sense of support greater than our individual capacity.

It is also easier to share our medicine, hearts, and gifts to others when we know that we will be received, valued, and encouraged.

​Before we ever learned to reach for connection, our bodies were asking: Am I welcome here?

When we don’t feel safety in belonging, it’s hard for the nervous system to truly allow for yielding into a wider support. You can think of this physiologically and metaphorically. The first need we have when we come into this world as infants is to be received, welcomed, and held.

Yielding is the first basic developmental movement pattern.

Before effectively pushing, reaching, grasping, or satiating - the foundation of those efforts must come from a fully embodied trust in the safety to yield.

When that doesn't occur, our efforts are fragmented and often filled with tension or disembodied collapse.

When basic safety and belonging don’t fully greet us as infants, the developing autonomic nervous system is the first line of defense. We either yield into the available support, or we physically and psychologically contract.

The basic, unconscious question “Am I welcome here?”, and primal protection that develops when we are not welcome remains embodied at the foundation of the nervous system as the brain, lived experience, and protective strategies become more complex as a person develops.

This primal protection is embodied as an implicit memory – not a memory that we explicitly remember the details of, but more of a fragmented sensory experience of emptiness, loneliness, and fear that’s often clouded by symptoms - mental, emotional, and physical.

When we don’t feel welcome, we pull away from present experience. We pull away from the body. Dissociation and the flight response become our good friends in the moment of needing to protect ourselves from an unwelcoming environment, yet hold us back later in life when we desire more presence, connection, and self-trust.

This is why having a marginalized identity and/or developmental trauma requires not just internal individual work, but collective social justice, and community healing.

Trauma = overwhelm + alone.

Healing begins when we don't have to be alone with the overwhelm.

When we take away being alone in our experience, a greater opening can begin to unfold. We begin to experience being held in a wider container of safety.

These are the basics of trauma recovery: processing the overwhelm in tolerable amounts within a container of relational safety so that the unintegrated trauma response that lives in the body can be metabolized.

The unconscious will not release its protections until there’s established trust that safety is consistently available. This is why trauma and chronic illness persist without needs getting met. And this is why community and a circle of support is vital.

Friendships and chosen family are deep balm to those of us who did not experience a sense of belonging during our upbringing, family of origin, or who currently don't feel welcome or safe in this society.

I do this work because I know what it's like to suffer with chronic illness and complex trauma. I have the lived experience, and I have learned many hard lessons and tools along the way. It's important to me to cultivate spaces of healing and safety in this world, and that's what I intend to bring into my work with others.

I hold a lot of gratitude for the indigenous wisdom of ritual, community, plant medicine, and connection with the land – something we can honor, remember, and hold reverence for.