It starts in the Dark, outside of my field of vision, outside of my consciousness.
Then there’s a Purge. An expelling, if you will.
Then I put on my waders on and dig through the bile to see if there’s anything good for y’all (only shared after a DEEP cleansing and polishing lmao 💎).
If you’re familiar with the grating sensation of hearing your own voice, you can imagine how excruciating the creative process is. This is the Artist’s Karma- to suffer and to alchemize our pain, then suffer, then alchemize it again. We call it Living, and everyone else calls it Art.
I had a natal chart reading with Umi Jenevieve (who is incredibly gifted and y’all should check out her work) and we talked about my masculine-dominant big three: Aquarius Sun, Aries Rising, Sagitarius Moon.
I recognize what feels like home to me - my passion, my fire, my fury, comes off as a little too warm, too spicy, too bitter, too pungent to others 😅
Like a stinky cheese, sour citrus, or spicy chips - I’m best paired with something that will balance me out lol.
I hope when you read my words you might:
Give the reading a skim to see if its for you today or not
Give the reading a slower read when you’re in the mood
Make it a vibe. Come meet me here in the dark - put on headphones, find solitude, under the covers or the expansive sky.
Press play on the playlist paired with the offering
Have some way to process what comes up for you - a walk, a journal, a voice note, a trusted friend to chat with. expel your pain :) find the gems. keep them for yourself, bury, or burn. if and when you feel called to, you share what you learned with your tribe.
And isn’t that just what the best of friendship is? Holding each other’s hair back while we puked after one too many and then cackling about it the morning after?
Trigger Warning: You might be if you currently avoid pain, death, suffering. For those of us who swim in it, I hope you find respite here.
Whether physical, psychological, or spiritual; whether we’re experiencing it ourselves, witnessing it, or ignoring it; living in a Capitalist system is inherently Violent and therefore Painful for ALL. [Remember Billionaire Despair?]
Most of us aren’t even conscious of the spiritual pains we endure. How many things in your life right now do you accept as is? Even if all we get is inexplicable sensations from our Body or a tiny whisper from our Soul saying ehhhh IDK about this, when we ignore and dismiss our Body’s Wisdom, we experience Sprititual Pain.
There are two types of people in the world.
The people who are feeling their pain - acknowledging their trauma, processing it, healing it and breaking cycles of generational trauma.
Everyone else is unconsciously perpetuating cycles of generational trauma.
Capitalism has bewitched us into unconsciously accepting the suffering of enduring and unconsciously perpetuating this system through Fear and its manufactured siblings - Shame, Perfectionism, Anxiety, Denial, Progress is More, etc.
very well-researched and presented suite of writing on this topic as it brings to life the human/collective condition under our current status quo.
Once you’re aware of the basic dynamics, you’ll see the patterns play out everywhere.1
But okay - say you’re cool and chilling right now, everything’s pretty good. Maybe you’re like oh I’m so little what’s little ole me gonna do up against capitalism wahhh so big and scary and everywhere it’s too hard.
Y’all please You are WARRIORS HEALERS ARTISTS CHANGEMAKERS TROUBLEMAKERS ORGANIZERS DESIGNERS STRATEGISTS ANALYSTS HARMONIZERS MAKERS FEELERS TEACHERS very smart very capable VERY inspiring people.
Second of all, if you’re not inspired by yourself (yet!) or moved by the idea of contributing to Collective Good, then at least consider what this might do for your sanity and wellbeing.2
When we don’t acknowledge and feel our Pain in healthy ways, the energy doesn’t go away - it festers and rots and corrodes us from the inside out. The repressed and suppressed pain inevitably finds it’s way outside, even when we try our hardest to keep it inside or look away.
Understanding our systemic conditions and the way Pain is politicized is crucial so we have a better understanding of Pain and its relationship to the Human Condition.
The closer your body aligns to the white able-bodied norm, the more the world is designed to mitigate your pain, the more your body and your pain is valued, acknowledged, validated. The more you feel you have to lose when you experience pain. The more we unconsciously perpetuate pain.
The more your body and its conditions diverge from the norm, the more your pain is invalidated, dismissed, suppressed, and exploited. The more people turn away from witnessing your pain. The more we unconsciously perpetuate pain.
For both groups, both the oppressor/oppressed identities that live within all of us, the medicine is to become more AWARE, consciously choose more Principled Pain 🏆, and learn how to alchemize, transmute, process, and/or release the rest.
A more Liberatory world is not one Free from Pain, but rather one that has developed a healthier relationship to it.
Liberation requires us all to work with our Pain - how to become aware of what’s hiding in the Dark and work with what rules us from the Shadow.
Take what you need, leave the rest.
Principled Pain 🏆
If I could wave a magic wand and have one thing be different about the world, it would be to make people awake to their Pain.
It’s when we know what Pain is ours versus what’s been inherited, that we’re able to decide what we’ll continue to choose to endure, and build our capacity to tend to the rest. And certainly not continue to self-perpetuate it - sheesh!
In what is one of the most annoying counter-intuitive pieces of wisdom in healing: it is only when we are conscious of our pain (in that we can see and feel it, even when we can’t release it) that we’re finally not ruled by it.
A concrete example - Immigrant Parents wear their Discipline, Work Ethic, Sacrifice as badges of Honor.
But our Parents also tend to be less reticient to acknowledge the ways in which these same good values, in excess, manifest as chronic mind-body conditions. And when they don’t have awareness of these conditions and their true root cause, they’ll inadvertently pass along their Trauma - even with the best of intentions to not.3
I think that’s why it’s so hard for our parent’s generation to confront their histories and practice accountability. It is painful to have made the best decisions, have sacrificed so much for this beautiful dream for your kids being happy safe successful, and still end up in Middle-Age feeling on some level like you failed - both in your parenting and in your self-abandonment.
So if you’re reading this right now and you’ve got a job, a higher education degree, healthcare, a roof over your head, a laptop, the internet, your Hands, Head, Heart. AND on top of that, you’re taking the time to read an essay on Healing, you’re on your journey of Awakening, I’m sorry - do you know how of an absolute weapon you are? ⚔️
The work of surfing our Suffering and choosing Principled Pains is a Privilege. And sometimes they even turn into Pleasures! We’re sick lol 😈
To me the Principled Pain is one that is able to hold both/and while Senseless Pain is more unconscious and binary. As you can see, things can fall in either column depending on the intention and implementation. Anything in extreme requires an opposite action as an antidote.
So over the next few days, I invite you to bring your awareness to your Mundane and Sacred Pains. Can you map them out? What have you chosen? What has been chosen for you?
Problems v. Pains
I’m also going to need us all to get a little bit more real about the difference between our Problems and Pains.
Problems are solvable. They respond to our analyzing, experimenting, solutioning, strategizing.
I love problems!!! Problems are just an opportunity to Play and Scheme. Most fun ones are followed with a Plot.
Pains on the other hand are the body’s sensations and boundaries that keep you from being your most authentic, free self.
I deal with chronic pain that more controls me than I manage it, so often I have no choice but to surrender to it. Which has also helped me become chronically grateful for those moments when I do find relief.
In those times, I swim in the beingness of my body. I move, I shake, I stretch, I dance, I lay in the grass.
I lay and cry in bed for hours because I can. I hike and sit in the forest and look at the ocean for hours because I can.
@annalaura_art
As we become more resilient and resourced, our work is to get better at solving our life’s Problems so that we have more intentionality and capacity in our pursuit of Principled Pains.
In the same way that you train your body to tolerate the discomfort of training for a marathon, training your Mind and Body together to widen its Window of Tolerance builds our STRENGTH to deal with the Universe’s inevitable fuck shit.
The closer you are to Yt-Normativity, the more blissfully unaware you are of your body’s conditions and conditioning, the harder you have to work to address cognitive dissonance and the pain you unconsciously and inadvertently perpetuate when you don’t.
The further away you are from Yt-Normativity, the more your natural sane mind-body reactions to an insane system are pathologized and labelled as crazy, dysfunctional, disordered, demonic.4
So forging a partnership between our Minds and Bodies through our Nervous System can be gnarly and defiant work. We’ll likely feel Sick through it. If we’ve been avoiding or suppressing our emotions, we’ve weakened our Body’s natural capacity to metabolize and heal. It might take us time to find a new normal.
For those of us with chronic conditions, this work is delivered to us. We struggle for a long time and then as soon as we get a sniff of oh there’s another way, we slide our way into a Healing Journey to find relief.
