Language before language.

I had a melancholy day yesterday. It’s funny and ironic to me that I’m writing that, that its even noteworthy because it wasn’t too long ago that I had a melancholy life, personality, way of being. That every day felt, to some extent, how I felt yesterday.

She’s a familiar feeling when she pops her head up, when I feel her heaviness, like a weighted blanket. The dark veil she lays over everything in my path. As the days goes on and she hangs around, fear starts to creep in. A worry that she will set up camp and refuse to leave like she has in the past.

The fear used to force me to hide from her, to pretend I couldn’t see her, bury my head, my mind, my awareness in a book, in mindless watching or scrolling, in a never ending list of tasks. 

Yesterday, I did do some of those things, I felt myself looking for ways to turn away from her when her effect on me started to overwhelm my senses. I also did some different things yesterday, some reasonably new things. I cried out in the open, I let my tears be seen. I honoured my need to go slowly with the day to allow for the weight of it. I muddled through quietly the things that needed to be done, one foot in front of the other in the direction of days end. 

I asked for help humbly, I let them see why I needed it and I was honest with them about my capacity to hold what they brought to me when I was already feeling so overloaded. When they were all in bed I tried something brand new, for the first time, I sat in session for and by myself. I gave my body an invitation to show me what the heaviness was AND what it needed from me.

I sat in stillness and silence to see what was there, as has been my practice for years now. The new part was being able to intentionally connect and communicate with my felt sense, with the part of me underneath and also beyond what I think about how I’m feeling. What it told me was beautiful, heartbreaking and also perfect. The way it allowed me to move through the feelings without going anywhere, without tying myself up in knots, without layering more stress and trauma on top. For the first time, maybe ever, I was able to feel the intensity of something big and support myself through it.

I learned this in three months. After studying the body, mind and spirit fervently for years. After years of journalling, meditation, processing practices that could only take me so far. My body and its language before language has a seat at the table now and it has brought so much depth, so much clarity, so much healing to the table with it.

Today is not a melancholy day, it won’t be a melancholy week or month or year. It won’t drag on, it doesn’t need to, because I heard her and I acknowledged her and I let her take me to what she needed me to see. I simply sat in connection and communication with my body and felt sense and asked it to help me through something that I was struggling to face. 

Let me know if you’re curious about adding this tool to your belt, adding this practice to the way you take care of yourself, in order to take care of everyone else 🥰