The beauty of a woman soaring, especially when liberated from clipped wings.
What healing shame may look like...
This is a new newsletter celebrating the healing wisdom of our hearts.
Here, we focus on all the ways mothers can contribute to healing - both personally & collectively.
Posts comes out 1 - 2 times a week.
More coming soon.
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I wanted to write today about the fear we have around trusting the longings of our hearts - if only, to dislodge a little of the fear you may have around trusting something that you’re heart is asking of you…
Recently, I’ve become aware of something my heart is asking of me, that feels so uncomfortable to trust. It’s made me get curious about this stage, where we’re not quite convinced it’s safe to trust the longings of our hearts. As if we feel that what we’re longing for is too much.
As well as this, often what our hearts are asking of us, feels so new, that we worry, that were we to honour it, we’ll enter terrain so unknown that we’ll not be able to find our way back home after. Hence we find ourselves clinging to the mountain edge of what we now know not to be true, and the wide open space that is the unknown of trusting our hearts.
In this space, there’s a vulnerability. And we can find ourselves looking to others for permission.
Hence, we may look out at the world of social media, and scour other people’s stories: who’s survived the witch burning by trusting this specific thing?
I’d argue, this has a place - up to a point.
The real magic will come when we allow our hearts to allow us to be led to one of the 4 P’s - a Platform, Place, Person or Pactice that’ll bring about our next wave of healing.
My sense is that the 4 P’s who’ll serve, illuminate and support our next part of our heart journey, are unique to each of us. This is why, though we can receive a kind of permission field from others on social media, we need to practice discernment that we’re being true to our own path, instead of attempting to replicate others.
This, takes courage.
So, below is an offering to all those who also stand on this frontier of knowing that whatever’s been happening in our lives needs to evolve, and yet not fully ready to embrace the direction, or even conversations that on some level we know we need to, in order to be true to this longing, this ache, this pulsing, this inner scratch - however it’s manifesting as a somatic feeling - around the space that is our heart.
If you have no time to read further, best piece of advice i’ve received is from someone who I received mentorship from last year, Joseph Jarwoski. When you know to act it comes as a somatic knowing. via the body. It’s a yes you can’t deny. (But may indeed ignore!!) So this isn’t a rush. You’re not forcing yourself to leap before you’re ready, but you are at least in exploration of perhaps one day, being prepared to leap…
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Much love,
Laura xxx
THE FEAR
So, the current circumstances of your life are no longer fulfilling.
Something, or someone, or maybe a cascade of information and events have made you aware that on some level you’re lying to yourself. Change is needed. Yet, instead of being curious about and playful about what your heart’s asking for, your brain is freaking out - it’s 2nd priority after safety is, “energy conservation” after all.
One thing that can help diffuse this place of stickiness is if we spiral back to your childhood, how were your needs, wishes and desires met by your primary carers?
When you expressed a wish to be a unicorn, instead of ridiculing your seemingly unrealistic desire, did an adult in your life come down to your level, meet your gaze of wonderment and take the time to sense the pure desire behind that wish?
Oh darling! You long for magic and colour and joy and delight! Yes. How can I bring that to you in another way?
Or maybe when you expressed a wish to stay with your best friend for a sleep over & instead of your parent shutting down and letting you know that your wish made them feel rejected, for now they’d be alone. Instead, they said - wow you really love that one on one connection Right? And all the fun you have over there. How about I take you & pick you up & then tomorrow we really hang out?
How about when you felt sad - for whatever reason - did an adult came to you & say: Oh my darling these feelings are a part of life. Come here, let me hug you. It will pass. I’m here till it goes?
Because, perhaps it’s never the detail of a desire, a heart longing that’s the thing to focus on, but instead, the essence behind the longing.
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(And if any of this resonates, I deeply recommend you check out John Bradshaw’s book: Healing The Shame That Binds You).
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We know now that children will do whatever it is they need to do, to make sure that their primary attachments remain as secure as possible. This means that if you’re a child for whom your parents are too distracted, or preoccupied or whatever it is that means that your needs just don’t register for them as independent of their own, you grew up from a very early age learning to push down, and eventually completely ignore your own, and often priortise the needs of others, simply because that’s how you learnt to survive.
And yet you’re human.
So we also now know, that to some degree those needs have found ways to be met whether via distractions, addictions, dramas until we reach an inflexion point and the way we’ve been hiding out, just cannot continue any longer.
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For me this is the great gift of those daring to speak the truth, no matter how socially unconventional that may be.
We hear other women daring to give voice to the most private of longings and we think and we see that on some level, yes, they’re being thrown to the fire, but in another, my God, at least they’re making attempts to create oxygen for all that lives within.
And as a result, out of the caves, slowly, other women appear.
And it’s in this space, that we can become a little braver. For here, we get to see two versions:
The part of us in denial of our greater truth, which as Bradshaw points out causes a kind of soul death.
And the part of us that senses the healing and expansion that will happen if we trust what our hearts are asking of us.
For it’s when we start making tentative steps in the direction we’re being asked to go (trust the essence of the longing, release the detail), we drop into deeper authenticity. And one that we discover is in constant renewal.
It’s as if the heart journey is akin to emerging from the chrysalis, only to discover the next longing it’s asking of us, we find ourselves in another chrysalis, only to emerge a butterfly and then so on and so on ad infinitum.
In other words, the heart journey is a constant rising of the Phoenix.
And on the other side, is this more authentic version of you, which allows you to drop into an expanded sense of your true self: Source. Essence. Love & Freedom.
Summer holidays are here… my two children, Eve & Jack - friends discovered everywhere.
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So my sense is, to the degree that we’ve healed this shamed child within us, she’s a kind of gate keeper to any of the adult longings that are wanting to come through.
And I can tell you from this place - where I am feeling into longings and aches of my own heart, both how scary it feels, how vulnerable I feel - and also, how I’m learning to release the detail, and trust the essence. Also not to push, to allow. To wait for that somatic YES.
And also, the friendship of the intelligence of the heart and the knowing of our gut. That’s key.
And here, I’m learning not to follow others paths, or blueprints so much. No matter how amazing others say they are. I just trust my body. Defer to my heart for what’s right for me. Release what I feel is needed to be released.
And the more I do this, the more unconventional in a way the wisdom that comes, but I can see wow, how it looks out for me. In a way that others just couldn’t forsee.
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So I hope in some way this speaks to any inner struggle that some of you may also find yourself in.
Personally, the tipping point for me is once I recognise a truth, at least personally, I find it very hard to unrecognise it.
Also, because my heart and to some degree, I believe that the reason I chose the life I have, is to experience this kind of real deep healing, because I know and value what healing can look like, it does kind of win out on all other things in my life. In other words, eventually, the burden of continuing to pretend that my desires and needs are wrong and an inconvenience, eventually becomes a kind of unbearable situation for me not to go towards that which I know, or sense will bring healing.
- The hills ARE alive -
The last point I want to make is that a lot gets spoken about, and I’ve spoken to this too, and so not done such a good job of clarifying what I mean - about how lonely heart journeys can be.
My experience more and more is that loneliness exists when we’re refusing the call of our heart, once we embark on the adventure we’re being called on, all the 4 P’s flow into our life and we find ourselves once again in flow. Back into the heart stream of our life so to speak.
And this is the piece I feel social media will fall short on. Great, it speaks general truths; but it won’t be able to speak directly to the nuance of your own journey. Only the authority of your heart can do that.
So, for me currently, I have a few people showing up. People I can really download with. Both who are highly unconventional women. Who I trust. Plus, there’s a synchronicity at the moment in my life, in all the emails, posts etc coming my way, all confirming this uncomfortable place in me, where I recognise where I’ve not been honouring what really wants oxygen.
Confirmation from the universe if you will.
All this gives me confidence to keep trusting, even if it feels scary to do so.
It’s like that poem.
“Come to the edge….” by Guillaume Apollinaire which I like to re write a little, so that instead of “he said,” we have our “heart asks.”
Because at this point, we’re like, no way. And our heart beseeches of us… come to the edge. And again, we say, uh uh.
Until eventually, we do..
“…and they came, and they were pushed… and they flew.”
Whilst I cannot confirm that I’m actually flying yet, I know one point I will experiment, to see if my wings are strong enough - from this most recent chrysalis phase, to let me soar onto this next phase of my life.
This next evolution of my heart journey, as I’m coming to understand it.
(HEART journey stands for = Healing. Evolution. Authenticity. Reciprocity. Transformation).
- my daughter Eve, tuning in -
After all, isn’t this what we want for our kids? That they discover they have wings.
And so, perhaps we can begin to hold the same intention for ourselves.
For there ain’t nothing more beautiful then a woman soaring, especially when she was born with clipped wings.
With much love,
- keep trusting, keep healing -
Laura xxxx
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What Others Are Saying About The Newsletter:
“Laura amazes me with all she is doing to heal and bring people along on her journey.” Dee K.
"Reading Laura’s newsletter makes me marvel at her journey, exploration of self and life. Her zest for living and searching. For me, she is a natural wonder!” Tracy H.
“I want to tattoo these anecdotes all over me!! All the blocks are familiar and I know them only too well but the anecdotes are fresh and new and heart led and I LOVE them. I will be practicing them all. So thank you sister.” Chessy T-W.
“Simply beautiful!” Julia M.
“Your newsletter cracked me wide open… so deeply mirrors the threads in my life that are pulling me this way and that, and is such a contagious beacon of light to that part of me that knows…” Eliza P.
“Laura your words are so powerful, every time I read them, somehow, each time, they are right for the phase I am going through. I love your writing, and I love you helping us feel that indeed we are not alone with our experiences!” Natasha D.
“Thank you so much for writing your newsletter…I wanted to try and convey how much I relate to what you’re writing about in the newsletters.” Alex MH.
“A wonderful accompaniment to my morning…” Skye G.
“Laura's willingness in her life to keep an open heart has been a continual thread of connection, and I love how there are some people who mysteriously circle in and out of your awareness with interesting junctures where your direction is shaped by theirs; Laura has inspired me to be more full in the expression of my heart, in ways she probably doesn’t even know! Whenever we share our writing or our song, our dance or art, whenever we honour the creative fire that is, always burning within, it will leave a mark for people to follow; for their hearts in turn to recognise.” Charlotte H.
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