If trauma is held, then it no longer is.

The bigness of trauma scares people away. We’re not used to allowing people to have their emotions. We either want to shut them down or rush to soothe them.

A big prerequisite for any kind of wound to heal is to give it support, not management.

How many times have you felt grief so strong that it made you want to explode?

It feels awful when other people hurt, because we know how it feels in our own body to begin with – the overwhelm, the loneliness, the helplessness.

If you were to hold your own pain as cleanly as possible, then the “enemy” would no longer be the feeling surrounding it.

The bigness of trauma needs witnessing, not abolishing.

When you can regard a person in the eyes without flinching - because their pain is just there, not something that needs damage control - then a lot of wonderful things can happen.

The truth is we all hurt together, and no one really knows it. We’re too scared to say it, because we know and fear others won’t like it.

If that fear unravels and allows expression to travel forwards, emotions and thoughts are met, solidarity rises, identification grounds, we become one and walk together.

Pain - emotional, mental, physical or spiritual - is here to be held.

How would you hold your own today?

When you do, what changes in your body?

And in the way you look at the world?

Small steps can have huge ripple effects.

What kind of pillow or nest does your pain call for today?

Can you dedicate the next five minutes to it?

Perhaps it’s all it takes.

See where it leads you.

Love,

Elena