My Personal Path on the Awakening Pilgrimage

Over the last 11 moons, I have walked with brave souls. We have laughed, cried, fallen onto our knees, danced and built an unbelievably beautiful community.

We have witnessed one another in moments of courage, vulnerability, resistance, fear and extraordinary becoming. We have held space for one another, sometimes with words and sometimes simply through the sacredness of remaining present.

What We Investigated Together

Over these 11 moons, we have investigated how to:

• Move from understanding to awareness.
• Understand the importance and expression of masculine and feminine energy.
• Investigate the comprehensive distinction between healing and trauma.
• Experience the sacred rhythm of the spiritual path, and when to advance and when to retreat.
• Dive headfirst into exploring the eight energy bodies and the sympathetic nervous system.
• Look at our original wounds in order to understand the most traumatic experiences in childhood.
• Dance with individually breaking the cycle and becoming fully ourselves.
• Look in the unflinching mirror of radical self-honesty.

What I Have Learned

This is what I have learned on my own personal journey over these 11 moons:

1. That before the brokenness, the wounds, the trauma and the pain, I was whole. Nothing broken, nothing to fix. Nothing to feel less than about. There was always something beneath the story that remained untouched. Something that trauma could influence, but could never completely take away.
2. All my life, I was taught and believed that I must always give more than I ever dare to ask in return. This became my blueprint, and over-giving, people-pleasing and leaving very little for myself became the norm. I am learning that generosity does not require abandoning myself in the process.
3. I learned that not every emotional feeling needs to be picked up and carried by me. I can witness another person's pain without making it mine. I can love someone without becoming responsible for everything they feel.
4. I learned that I am allowed to say no, to not keep on giving what I do not have and to not keep on giving what I do not want to give. That I am allowed, and it is safe for me, not to pick up every emotional hand grenade that is thrown my way. Sometimes love looks like holding. Sometimes love looks like putting something down.
5. I learned what real presence feels like, how to regulate my nervous system so that every single breath is not one of feeling unsafe. I learned that presence is not somewhere I have to arrive. It is something I can return to. Again and again. One breath at a time.

The Question That Was Answered

If I do not use my trauma to propel me forward anymore, what will I use?

For so much of my life, pain created movement. Survival created movement. Fear created movement. Trauma gave me something to push against.

But what happens when I no longer need an enemy in order to move?

What I have been shown by the Pilgrims, and what I have discovered and awakened within myself, is that other people can affect how you feel about yourself, but they cannot ultimately give you lasting self-love, self-worth, self-respect or self-esteem. These are things you learn to give yourself.

And perhaps this is the movement now.
Not running from what wounded me.
But walking towards what nourishes me.

And the person who must begin giving these things to me is me.

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