Hi,
Every life leaves a wake. This is the nature of passion, inspiration, heartbreak, and error, the residue of choices made by a version of ourselves we may no longer recognize. Our capacity to evolve hinges on something deceptively simple, yet almost entirely untaught. That absence of a true cultural rite of passage reverberates outward, into our cities, our country, our world.
We have arrived, as a species, somewhere strange. Strange enough that we must explain the strangeness to one another, because it sits so far outside the natural current of human wisdom. Greed and trauma account for much of the darkness. But if we are honest, much of it has been shaped by our own hearts by the avatars we have constructed and come to inhabit.
The places the heart leads are not always kind. But they are ours. Our lessons, our moments. These intuitive, often subconscious ways of moving through the world are what have brought us here. Some among us receive the darker lessons and turn them outward projecting anger rather than turning toward curiosity. It is an understandable reflex. It is also one worth examining.
I love myself so much,
so I can love you so much,
so you can love you so much,
so you can start loving me.
Recently, I another EMDR therapy session, focusing on the speed of my own defensive reactions both at home and with the people I love most. What surfaced was the recognition of growing up as the youngest, in an aggressive family. And that I have been riding dark waves alongside them. When they collide with me I was forced as a child into survival mode. As an adult it comes across as a push off or 'defensiveness'.
When we cannot hold a feeling, we tend to release it onto those nearest to us. I am learning to pause before that release and to check in with my body, to notice what is moving through me before I choose how to respond. This is my work right now.
Perhaps it is yours, too. This month, I invite you to explore your own inheritance and the emotional DNA running beneath your behavior. Where does your essence actually come from? What feels genuinely like you, and what feels like a behavioral pattern you simply formed but never questioned?
Only by stepping into the darkness do we stand any chance of finding our way through it.
Sending Love and Light,
Matthew Schildkret
Founder & President
Late Sunday Afternoon
Knotted & Blessed
