What does it mean to truly turn towards yourself?
All parts of you – the shadow banned, the prized, the parts that get you pats on the back, the gifts, the shields and masks?
Which way will the sunflower turn surrounded by millions of suns?
-Allen Ginsburg
Turning Toward Myself:
I imagine a sunflower, tall with a seed-jammed rotating head, pivoting on it’s long stalk, finding the sun. Dial by dial, the summer moves across the landscape and is carved out by the dry heat and cicadas, turning into autumn.
I see myself as the slender 13 year old with a head full of hair. The physique of a sunflower’s shadow. I imagine what it may have been like for her if she turned towards joy and dove into the cool water. I see a heron’s beak, gracefully plunging in and catching hold of something. What may it have been like for her if she knew her worth was invaluable and natural? I see her rising out of the water smiling, with the golden heat glowing on her shoulders.
I can still feel that girl, even now. It’s like she dives into my cool water and I get to hold her. I get to feel the bubbles lift from her grin and meet the surface as she crashes up and through. I get to be the blue sky with those crisp white gulls. I get to be the dusty stones under barefoot as she runs back over to the grass to flop down and just exist.
And I get to be the wet pavement too, with all those little puddles of oil slicks. And there she is again, walking like a sunflowers shadow, with a cigarette to somewhere. I get to be the stranger’s couches and the beds and the hallways. I get to be the sunrises that held her while her eyes could barely summon looking out. I can still feel that girl even now, like a hollow stalk at the end of summer, waiting for the wind.
And I get to be the wind that blew her over. I get to be the deep freeze that settled over the land. I get to be the dark chamber of pine forests that led strange bird calls to her ears while she walked, with her busted compass and not even a dim light. And I get to be the curve of her neck and gather of muscle as she looked up and realized there were stars all over. I get to be what happens when she laid down in the snow, feeling warm, and fell asleep.
And I am here now as the chain of ancestors that woke her up. I am here now as the hands of all those people who curled their fingers around bucket handles and watered her. I get to be the the dry sticks crackling and splitting open with heat. I get to be the stones that contained the fire, and the men who lit the fire, and the women who sang and sang and sang.
You have this vital realm in you, too. Where you hold yourself as a sunflower head scanning the sky. And you are also the sky with it’s white hot radiance and a strange crow that calls out over the fields. You expand into witnessing and watching it all.
The Compassion:
You have a place inside of you where all the energy spent seeking for someone to choose you or save you still exists in it’s free essence. What is blocked is not lost. What is lost is not really ever gone.
The beautiful thing about compassion is when we train ourselves to enact it, there are no limits to what we can meet within and therefore transform our relationship to. It’s in the meeting that compassion comes alive. You see yourself in moments of hiding, shame, fear, jealousy, martyring, and suddenly there’s a choice like never before. The choice to center yourself in your own story, to connect to what you were longing for, and to hold yourself in that. And then it’s to give yourself what you needed from others.
Maybe you needed permission, recognition, to be told ‘you’re right you’re too young to be an adult’, maybe it’s shared celebration, safety in joy, vulnerability. If there are parts of you longing to be chosen or saved, what is underneath that? What happens when you are chosen or saved?
Belonging? Acceptance? Rest? Space? Be with this.
Capacity and Choice:
How do we choose compassion in the moments we turn towards ourselves, instead of further self-victimizing, shaming, or abandoning?
In my 1:1 Work this looks like developing a relationship to the Nurturing Voice, over time. We create personal symbology that represents Nurturing and Turning Towards. We practice what it feels like to connect to this in the body. We practice titration when a strong urge to run, fight or shut down emerges, so that you can sustain receiving nurturance for longer. We expand capacity to be with what we desire to feel.
Because often the very thing we want, we are unable to receive because the lack of it has registered as a threat in our bodies. And whatever it is we actually desire that we aren’t experiencing yet, often has a ‘counter-vortex’. A place where we get sucked into why we haven’t received it yet. That’s where we tumble down into our pain story and into the big sensations that feel like they take up all the room in our bodies. Or we feel nothing and a numb freeze settles over the land.
It’s so important to have mentorship here or empathetic mirrors who understand the necessity of patience and process. Especially towards ourselves, and especially in the culture of instagram and click-bait, we fall under a spell that immediacy = real. And it’s not true. The process is not finality. Without others reflecting this back to us we can get trapped chasing our tails so much that we dig a hole, and keep circling the bottom. We think it’s never enough and there’s no way out.
But the process is not at all finality, compassion is a super-power that can be trained, and you are wired for thriving. Turning toward yourself is the way through.
May you keep remembering this. Compassion xx
Maxine
*To go deeper with my process in mentorship you can apply for Nurture Your Nature here. This is 4 months of 1:1 Coaching for women, to align your needs, desires and values for the embodiment of your thriving. Full details here.