do the turtle
Sounds like a disco dance...
Trees, I hide a lot of the time. My curtains are permanently drawn and I have to force myself to use the phone. Oddly writing is far easier for me than talking.
Learning to feel safe is a long process. My wife tells me I have swapped awareness of my surroundings for hyper vigilance. It's as if I can only be so aware of anything, that there is a limit to how aware anyone can be and most of mine is reserved for how people - including herself - are feeling and about to act at any given moment. I'm brilliant at it. Yet fail to notice a tree down the lane has fallen over.
But we are creating a new path through the woods. There is a path through the woods called "the path we always take". It is broad and well trodden. It leads first through a smelly bog where we get wet and stinky. Then it rises into sharp and jagged rocky slopes where we trip and get bruised. Then it goes through a meadow where we are chased by wasps and stung. We burst out of the woods where we are smelly, bruised and stung.
This path has been created for us by our abusers and perpetrators and society and everything else.
But one day we stop and think..."hold on. Today I am going to create a NEW path through these woods, one that doesn't end up with me getting smelly, bruised and stung." So we get a map (Pete Walkers work is an excellent one) a flask of tea and some sandwiches and set off. We avoid the bog and the rocks and the bees but we can't avoid the undergrowth of brambles and stinging nettles! We find we have to unpeel the brambles from our clothing and skin, and trample down clumps of nettles (and get stung a few times as we do so) and whoops, we tripped over that hidden log...And so we emerge from the wood sweaty and exhausted and stung. And when we look back, instead of seeing a new path we see a darker line through the undergrowth to tell us where we have been.
The next day however, we can see that darker line and use it to guide our way. The brambles are a bit less problematic, but we avoid the nettles, in fact we stop to stomp them down more. We forget about the hidden log though and go bottom over nipple. However we *know* next time we will remember where it is and avoid that pitfall.
So we come out of the wood, look back and see that the line of darker green is more defined, and that although we are scratched and a bit bruised it isn't as bad as first time out.
The next day we remember the hidden log and step over it! However we slip and get stung...but we got back up and marked where the slippery bit of our new path is for future reference.
When we come out of the wood we can clearly see where we have been and feel pleased for remembering where the hidden log was and also that we marked out the slippery bit. And that there is no nasty smell, no rock induced bruises and no wasp stings. Things are looking up.
So each day we re-create that new path, making it wider, getting to know where the easy bits are, shoring up the slippery bits and making it much easier for ourselves. It still takes effort but we know its effort well spent.
But what happens to the old path as we create the new on?
Because of our lack of use, it starts to become overgrown; one day it will be as overgrown as our new path once was. As overgrown and as difficult to access. Our new path however becomes broader and easier to use through our use of it.
And that is what it is to inculcate a new mental pathway. A new way of being. It is (I think) a lovely and hopeful analogy. I hope it is a helpful one as well, Trees.
