Let’s be real. We have been traumatized. For the last four years, we’ve been living with an abuser and his enablers. So now that we’ve gotten to a space of safety and change, first (in the words of Ma$e and P. Diddy) it’s important to:
- Breathe.
- Stretch.
- Shake out everything that you’ve been holding in your body.
- Then let it go.
After all, stress and trauma live in our bodies, so it would make sense that you might have been feeling tense, have had body aches and pains, any other ailments pop up unexpectedly in the last several years, if not the last year.
Coupled with the abuser in chief, we have also been coping with and living through a pandemic. Something that has shaken us to the core, taken us away from our ‘normal’ daily routines, from friends, family, and what was once and always familiar. Then we were forced to figure it out on our own.
While we may have started off going through the pandemic and subsequent quarantine with positivity, optimism, excitement, and consequently a lot of adrenaline…that faded to fatigue. It also shifted to thoughts and wishes of returning to the old days. When things were predictable, routine, peaceful.
See, living with an abuser of the sort that we were, nothing was predictable. Nothing was ‘normal.’ He promised to come in and shake things up. That he did. Just not for the better. We’ve all been living in a snowglobe that’s been shaken up….ALL THE TIME.
Even what seemed to be ‘good’ or ‘positive’ only appeared so in relation to all the other negative, hurtful, harmful and toxic behaviors and rhetoric he engaged in daily.
It has thrown us all off balance and equilibrium. Makes sense.
Adrenaline, cortisol, norepinephrine…all the stress hormones that have been very active within us lately (and not to our conscious knowledge nor consent) are not meant to sustain themselves over long periods of time. Only for short bursts.
So give yourself an opportunity to decompress.
Breathe.
Stretch.
Shake.
Then let it go.
And be gentle in your process.
If you find yourself angry, be angry.
If you find yourself on the verge of tears or actively crying, do it, let it go.
If you find yourself fearful for him (or his minions) coming back to do something else, acknowledge that fear as real and valid, be compassionate and understanding with it, then let it go.
If you find yourself reveling in the joy of this newfound freedom and hope, revel away.
If you find yourself numb, that’s fine too.
Do what you need to do.
Because we all need to engage in self-care as we prepare for the undoing and rebuilding. The dismantling and reconstruction. The old and the new.
It’s time to let go of what is no longer needed so that we can open up to what is possible.