Maybe that pain was never yours to carry

Trauma can be passed on from one generation to the next. But suffering does not have to repeat itself. We can break the lineage by choosing to be a liberating force of change for our families, children, friends, and community at large.

Healing begins with nurturing ourselves and deeply seeing who we are. It begins with pouring love and forgiveness on the parts that sting most. It is the willingness to embrace ourselves completely, a gentle process in which we learn how to be with pain without becoming it.

The stepping stone into this kind of inner work is to create a sense of inner safety for ourselves. This means developing a capacity to be with ourselves, to meet the entirety of our experience in a way that feels empowering as oppose to overwhelming. We want to be able to stay present with whatever arises, to meet hurt and discomfort without shutting down because the experience becomes 'too much, too quickly'.

We want to first be able to feel safe being who we are no matter what arises within us. We want to build trust in our capacity to witness our humanness, knowing that we will not be consumed or devoured by any of it. We want to know that it's ok for us to show up for it all, still taking it one step at a time. We want to know that we can be fully present with our emotional body and simultaneously develop this capacity to take a step back and witness what is going on inside us. We want to know that we can strike this balance. That we don't need to bypass, dissociate or transcend any of it because awareness holds it all. We want to know that there is enough space for anything to arise and be met with tenderness. We want to know that we can be free to be who we are and that it is not a risk for us to do so, no matter how uncomfortable things may become.

We want to know that we can give ourselves permission to open to the fullness of our felt experience and trust ourselves enough to walk this path of liberation.