Downshifting: Bearing Witness To Self

"Do you love yourself enough to listen, with the ears of your heart, to all the voices of yourself speaking?"
Beno Kennedy

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A couple weeks ago while driving my truck, I felt a pop as I was shifting gears and suddenly my clutch was out. I had nothing. I couldn't shift into third. I forced it into second which gave me a little control, but something felt tight and off. Luckily I found myself on a slow Port Townsend street with a parking lot down to my right and was able to turn off the road and coast into a spot. When the tow truck arrived the driver pointed out what I had missed--my clutch cable had ripped through the decades-old bulkhead so the clutch was just hanging loose rather than being tensioned enough to allow for gear-shifting. We found a welder and a new cable and then I was off to research my plane ticket to Europe.

The next day I was determined to buy my ticket. I had found a great deal for a week before I had planned to leave. My friends encouraged me to go for it, but when the moment came to confirm I couldn't do it. After much back and forth I decided to let it go for the evening and headed out to Wooden Boat Fest. My friends kept encouraging me to buy that ticket, even threatening to buy it for me if I didn't do it by the end of the day. The pressure built and by the time I got home that night I was a wreck--suddenly questioning the whole trip. That night I realized there was a part of me (which I had been ignoring) that was screaming at me not to go. Now her voice was being heard and I had to listen. She begged and pleaded until I conceded. I wouldn't go at all.

~~

My resolution for the year had been to "stay with myself;" to end the pattern of abandoning myself and my own needs for other people, for love, for the problems of the world; of giving myself away to negative self-talk, to self-harm, to overwhelming judgement and projection, and taking too much on. In my particular conversation with universe, when I make a declaration like that the world tends to meet it, usually in the form of challenge. This year has certainly challenged my resolve to stay with myself through relationships and all sorts of other opportunities to prove it. I've definitely fallen short of this at times, and I've risen to it at others.

In the conflict of this trip to Auschwitz and my ancestral lands I immediately wondered if this was the final challenge of the year: that in order to stay with myself I would have to go back on my word to hundreds of people, my grandiose public intention, and my own belief that I was ready to do something like this--to completely shift gears. Surrendering to that possibility/seeming reality was clear, heart-wrenching, and terrifying.

I stayed up for hours sobbing and talking (mostly listening) to this part of me who did not want to go--the one of me who is most wounded and most scared. She exists despite the parts of me that are raring to go, always up for an adventure, who are not afraid. She exists and I can't pretend anymore that she doesn't. And, of course, there's the one who argues and says: "umm, hello, we've already faced like most of our worst fears. what's left to worry about?" Yet, the tenderest part of me says "No!" And I wonder if not listening to her would be a violation equal to another person pushing passed my "no"?

"So, I won't go then."

~~

I woke up the next morning feeling ill. I spoke with a friend/mentor who listened and affirmed my process, and then I tried to get up the courage to change course--meaning returning all this money people had donated and essentially saying "I can't do the thing I said I was going to do." This is a phrase, I am realizing, I have often avoided at great cost to self. To make the announcement, I decided to wait for a few days, probably out of fear, maybe out of wisdom, but mostly because in my confusion the day before I had gotten a tarot reading from a friend. It essentially said at this point there is more "power" in staying, and "disappointment" yet opportunity in going. But it also said there was more information coming. I decided to wait to see what aid might come along.

It was not lost on me that my ability to shift gears in my truck (a primary relationship in my life and therefore a faithful mirror) was reflecting to me something about shifting, slowing down, changing plans. When it popped, I was coasting on pure momentum for a bit, then gravity. How much of my trip is being propelled by momentum rather than desire anymore? And honestly, how many of my choices have I made because it seems easier for me to surrender to the enormous gravity of the world's problems and grieve, than it is to stand up and embrace some weightlessness and joy for a little while.

I realized the parts of me that had finally been embracing joy in my life were already holding their breath until the trip was over. Parts of me were shutting down completely at the thought that I would be traveling alone for almost 2 months in countries where I don't speak the language (scrambling as I was to learn them--yes, multiple) with no scheduled transport or accommodation for the most part. It was horrifying to me that I might force that upon myself when parts of me simply weren't ready or willing. It's not that I think any of us are ever ready for what comes our way, but the main protest inside me was: didn't I just gone through my own personal hell and back several times over? Why would I inflict this on myself--especially right now, when I have finally established a sense of safety and home, and found a place to heal?

I started to wonder if the whole purpose of creating this journey and building all this momentum was so I could learn how to stop it.

~~

"Do you love yourself enough to listen, with the ears of your heart, to all the voices of yourself speaking?"

Through this process I am starting to really understand why two of my primary mentors use this question as a foundation in their wilderness soul guiding. Listening to all the voices of me takes a lot of love, patience, awareness, and difficulty, and I am only just beginning that process.

I have been calling this trip to Europe my Bearing Witness Trip, as I had planned to be attending the Bearing Witness Retreat at Auschwitz as part of a larger bearing witness to the lands and history of my ancestors.

But what if the most important thing I can do right now is to shift gears and start by bearing deeper and more-sustained witness to myself?