Align With Love

Two days after he was born, my son Lucas passed away. Yesterday was the 15th anniversary of his death.

I know you haven’t heard from me in quite awhile. I’ve been on a deep inward journey. 

If you follow me on Instagram or Facebook you’ve seen this photo that was taken on the day he died. 

I’ve been exploring the profound gifts of this trauma, and am in the process of writing my first book. A book that weaves together my own story with the resources, tools and practices I use every day. In there, I dive deep into the impact the birth and death of my son had on my life. 

My husband has a line in one of his songs: “Life has a way of breaking us down, so we can be born again”. When I look back on the level of pain at the time of Lucas’ death, I never could have imagined all the wisdom that has come through as a result.

A lot of intense emotions have come up this past year. As I write our story, I relive the memories and the trauma.

The inner critic voice has come up saying, ‘you should be over this by now, you’ve been working on this for so long’. 

Yet I know from years of doing healing work that there are layers upon layers to every experience. 

Yesterday I hit an intense layer. I was stuck, so mired in heaviness.

It felt like a subterranean roar that I was struggling to contain. I could feel myself ready to pick a fight with my husband or lose it on my daughter just so this anger and grief could have a way to escape. 

It happens a lot in arguments, right? A big feeling is being pushed down and not given permission to be expressed, and it bubbles up in a fight over something mundane. 

When grief, rage or frustration are stuck within us they block our energetic flow, our joy, our openness to others. 

When we’re in this place of contraction – all we create is more contraction.

I see this all the time with women who have unexpressed pain in some part of their lives. It renders them paralyzed, unable to shift, stuck in a spiral of even more tension.

Instead of creating a blowout with my loved ones, or shoving the feelings down and distracting myself with food or Netflix, I called my soul sister, Jody, and asked her if I could come over and share a body tale with her. 

Also called swamping, a body tale is when you allow your body and emotions to fully express themselves through movement, through vocalizing, through releasing.

I laid a sheepskin on Jody’s kitchen floor, while she set a timer for ten minutes and sat on a pillow across from me. I folded into child’s pose and turned off my mind. 

I let my body take over. 

I wailed and sobbed and shook. I stretched and moaned. And I gave permission to that roar.

For 10 minutes, I let my body have her way with me.

When the timer went off I laid in Jody’s lap and cried for a few minutes.

I felt relieved, freed and opened. Jody made me a cup of tea and we went to sit into her sunny backyard. We sat in silence at first, and then after a few minutes picked up our conversations where we’d left off the day before. 

My grief had been given a voice, and now I was ready to go through my day with flow and ease having moved those intense feelings with honor and respect.

I was reminded how powerful it is to let my body speak – to be held without explanation, to be able to just express what’s there. 

You don’t even have to be upset about something in particular. You can simply let yourself have this. And if a feeling comes up that surprises you, don’t try to figure out where it came from. Let it move. 

We all have emotion within us. If it’s allowed to be expressed, we can step into our full power and not be crippled by the past.

If you have a woman in your life that you trust to hold this level of intimacy with you, share this practice with her. You can take turns. And if you don’t yet have someone you can be vulnerable with in this way, give this gift to yourself. 

Set a timer for 5-10 minutes and allow your body to feel, to emote, to move, to vocalize. If you’re afraid someone will hear you, have a pillow nearby to shout into. Use any props you need. When the timer is up, sit quietly and notice how you feel. 

Allow yourself the time to ground, and take 10 long slow deep breaths.

Come back to yourself knowing that you have given yourself a huge gift. The gift of release. 

Sending you so much love,

Liesel