the stacking dolls of who we are

“Who am I?” 
“What am I doing here?” 
“I feel like I don’t belong here.”
“I have always felt like there is something big I am supposed to be doing here.”

These are the thoughts I hear the most from the women I work with. Being a highly sensitive woman in a world that has not been supportive of our natural strengths and abilities, forces us to armor up and seek control. I mean seriously...how else could we have made it in a not-so-sensitive world with parents who didn’t see our truth or in school systems that made us follow the leader and disengage our creativity? We got the wrong memos with a heaping side of deeply rooted & distorted ideas and visions about who we are. I think about it like we were toned down into a sepia filter when you should have been seen through a rainbow filter!!! So how do we turn the colorful lights back on?

I keep a set of beautiful stacking dolls on a shelf in my office as a reminder of how complex we really are. Every version & age of who you “be” lives within your body. Every moment of joy and every moment of pain. Every time your tender heart was broken and every time you were told your sensitivities were wrong. We have all the layers and stories swirling around in our subconscious and in our cells. 

So where do we even begin? I have found that when we only shine the flashlight inside without significant support, it activates our inner army of protection. (That is partly why we feel like it is just too much! Because they have full control of not wanting things to send us over the edge.) I remember thinking often...what exactly am I scared of? When I realized that I had a cauldron full of fears, I could then start to see that some were mine, but many were my parents, and so many were inherited from a world full of memos that said I should always be scared.

Take a moment and look over your life story and see really what it has been like as a sensitive soul in the energy of fear. Our little nervous systems were not equipped for processing a world like this. So what did you do when it was too much? Most of us freeze our energy because it gives a sense of control and because of the times when we really gave space to our big feelings, we were often shamed for it. So we started young holding it in, gulping it down, turning off our lights. We learn to survive. 

Please pause for some quick facts...as an HSP you are more affected by the subtleties of what the world news is saying, what horror movies are imprinting, and what your mom says is true, because she heard it from a friend. We carry fear differently than most do. We sense the layers behind the words. It is important for you to honor that it the truth of who we be. 

So what am I scared of inside me? I have many different parts that are scared of being vulnerable, being hurt, exposed, finding a skeleton that I am not even aware of! But what I was really scared of was loosing control. There are stories enmeshed in my cells that say something is wrong with me, so much is wrong with the world around me, so it is just better to stay gripped to a sense of safety, however that looks for you. One of my teachers would then chime in here and say..."So, how is that working for you?" "How much life are you feeling from that place?" "How much of your soul gets to move through you when fear is driving the car?" "How does your body respond to always having to be in control?" 

When we move around the inner furniture it shakes things loose that our minds tell us we don’t want to know, face, or express...because life is too much, we are too much, this is all too much...and what the mind doesn’t tell us as it avoids our inner hygiene because of it only overwhelming us, is that creating a new narrative actually frees us deeply to make more space for who we really are. It is like cleaning out the basement full of shit you don't need or want to hold onto anymore, so you can create a healing temple in that space instead. 

We are complex- there is no doubt about that. We are relational, energetic, emotional, and physical- human transformers. When we are not connected to our emotions, we can not be connected to our little girls that live inside waiting to be seen, heard, and expressed. When fear is driving, we constrict our bodies, hold our breath, and we only have a fine line of availability to be with our Wise Self...our intuition. This innate wisdom & higher self version of who we truly are, she speaks simply, softly, strategically. Truth is clear & simple. The answers to who you are reside in the beautifully weaved, invisible garment that you are made of.