Wellspring Wednesdays|Week 19: Stagnation
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Learning to love yourself is exactly that — a learning process. Accepting yourself as you are in this exact moment, in this exact part of your healing journey, that is the secret sauce. No matter how far you’ve come or how far you think you should have come by now — none of that matters to your true self. Your authentic self only cares about the effort that you put in and the work that you are currently doing. It is proud of who you are right now. You can remember that this whole trauma recovery road is a process. Because of that, there are going to be times where you feel like you are flying through this growth thing and then times that you feel stagnated.
I heard something powerful this week on Glennon Doyle’s podcast from her guest Chanel Miller, a trauma survivor, who was talking about feeling stuck. Glennon asked her “So that’s what you’re saying, you bring it back to yourself? All these things were happening, and you were swept up… Going to that art class, was that your way of insisting that you were still in there?”
Chanel replies: “Insisting that I’m still there and that things are still changing. Because when you are in your past, you feel like you are stuck. And you have to look at the small changes. It’s even helpful to go on a walk. If you walk the same loop of your neighborhood every day, I would challenge you to look for the certain factors that are different each time that you walk. You have to know that life is in motion and that it’s impossible to get stuck even if you feel that you are… Art is what forces me to pay attention to these smaller changes. Art also helps me because when I create these creatures or people, I create really whimsical, odd landscapes and beings. I think about how if I am to put my pencil down and mute myself and not do anything at all, if I am to give up on myself, I would also be giving up on all of them…Protecting the things that I make is non-negotiable. That helps me respect myself and my work.”
Glennon’s wife, Abby, answers “My gosh … the beautiful metaphor here is that all of us have an interior world, some of us don’t know how to draw or create beings, but we have an internalized space that if we don’t get it out of ourselves, then we are only actually living in our past, and not able to create a day or create something that could save us or heal us — that is so f*****g amazing.”
So sometimes as survivors, we feel stuck in our world … but the beauty is that the world is always in motion. Time is going to continue to tick. If you take a moment to notice, nothing is stagnant. No matter how slowly something is moving, it’s still moving. A rock may be planted down heavily into the soil, but the earth itself is rotating, so therefore the rock is technically rotating as well. The same air that is around the rock this second is now a different bubble of air around it the next second. Like Chanel said, “it’s impossible to be stuck even if it feels like you are.” The work that you have inside of you — whether it’s focusing on your trauma recovery, advocating for other survivors, creating anything from art to writing a book, sharing your story with a stranger, becoming a more present parent, learning self-compassion — that’s your work. And if you want to choose (yes, because it is a choice) to not show up, not participate in your calling, not pick up your pencil and create whimsical characters — then you are choosing to not actively participate in the movement and growth of the world around you. It doesn’t mean that the world stops spinning or that time quits ticking along. It just means that you are left living in your past. What’s beautiful is that at any moment, the opportunity to rise out of it and participate in your healing and growth is available to you, and you can rejoin the already set-in-motion reality of the present moment.
This is just food for thought for you today. I am still chewing on this myself, but I think it’s a great opportunity to discuss how we heal, how we grow, and how the work never ends even when we don’t want to keep showing up. I’m interested to hear your thoughts on this, so please reach out with comments or questions. As a trauma recovery coach, I think it’s important to share impactful things with curiosity and then see how it lands for my clients. I guess, for today’s episode, I’m kind of seeing how it lands with the entire interweb community of survivors.
So on a final note: Accept yourself wherever you are in your journey; respect your progress. Share your insights. Keep going, even when you feel stuck. Keep going even if you do something really small — even if it’s just a moment to celebrate something small that you have done. Love yourself no matter how slow the growth. Keep the momentum going. You aren’t stuck; nothing is stagnant. Practice makes progress. You are doing amazingly well.
