Last month, I found myself recovering after being sick for a few weeks. I was steadily getting a bit better, day by day. A little more energy, a little more ability to eat, a little less napping :-). I was nicely encouraged, after having been more or less flat on my back for over a week.
Then, one morning, something was radically different. Not more energy, not more ability to eat, not less napping. Instead, it was something else, something hard to put my finger on. The only way I could put it was:
I was myself again. Even though I still had more physical recovery to go, something critical in my healing had happened.
What had happened? In some shamanistic traditions, there is something called “Soul Retrieval.” I am not an expert in those traditions myself, but I’ve always found that phrase evocative, and that’s what it felt like. For a while, part of my being had gone away, and now it was back. It wasn’t the same as feeling better or feeling less sick. It was something about me being me, and knowing I was me, now.
What a relief! I hadn’t really known that something about me was gone, but now that it was back, I definitely knew it, and was so, so grateful. Welcome back, me! So nice to have you back. I missed you. Now I’m me again. Phew!
Do you know what I’m talking about? I’m guessing you do. It’s something we all experience, one way or the other. Some examples:
- I’ve been working somewhere that wasn’t a good fit for me, but I couldn’t quite identify what was wrong. I changed jobs, and find that I’ve returned to myself. I’m here again.
- I’ve been anxious or depressed for a while for no specific reason, and then one morning I wake up, and something has changed inside, I am me again, I’ve come back.
- I’ve been grinding out work for a long time, and finally find time for a vacation. It takes a few days, then suddenly, one day, on the beach or on a hike or out dancing, I come back to myself. My good friend — me — has returned.
This is a pretty common experience. I like to think that perhaps when life is hard, we store some part of ourselves away in a safe place, and when conditions make it good for that part to be back with us, it returns. There’s a cost to that safety, though: we have to somehow show up for life in a partial way. It’s a lot more work than when we’re fully present; we’re always treading water, no matter what.
Sometimes, of course, the conditions for soul loss are much more significant. Traumatic experiences, whether one-time or ongoing, can cause this kind of injury. Trauma-informed practitioners talk about the “fragmenting of identity,” and how important recovery of important aspects of ourselves is critical for healing.
Aspects like:
- Our ability to trust
- Our innocence
- Our creative selves
- Our capacity for bonding and intimate relating
- Our self-love
And so much more. An aspect of the internal system of our self needs to be seen, honored, and restored.
Constellations works to bring about that kind of restoration. I frequently work with clients who are struggling with a life pattern that stems from trauma, and constellations is an especially elegant form to re-include our full selves. Many clients experience it quite concretely as a soul retrieval — a welcoming back home of an essential part of themselves they weren’t even clear they were missing.
When have you experienced a part of you returned to your self? Can you imagine what it might mean, in modest or big ways, to welcome home all parts of yourself? Please post your thoughts, stories, and questions on my blog, below.
I believe, and my experience is that if I push a difficult feeling, sadness, depression, or any unpleasantness away it either goes underground in that hidden place, or intensifies. On the other hand, if I hold those difficult parts of myself with love and compassion, that is when I feel balanced, and I feel that all of my self is present.
Yes, that definitely supports wholeness!