He was outside shoveling the fresh snow that had fallen overnight. I was standing at the stove, cooking an early lunch for the boys and staring off into the woods that were sparkling with the crystals of snow that had fallen the night before.
As I stood staring blankly out the window, I recognized that I was thinking rather than being present with cooking or looking at the view that had originally caught my attention. Why was I in my head, I wondered. It would have been easy to process that question in my mind, but that simply meant doing more of what I had been doing. As I shifted my awareness into my body, into presence, I realized just how uncomfortable my body felt. The discomfort in my body is why I had dissociated into my mind. And as I processed that thought, I was back in mind and avoiding my body again. I laughed at myself.
I shifted my awareness back to my body. I felt unsettled like I wanted to crawl out of my skin and get away from myself. My chest felt heavy and tight, and I noticed that my breath was quick and shallow. If my skin was something I could crawl out of, I would have. But try as I might, I couldn’t actually climb out of my body; the best that I could do was disassociate to my mind as a way to get away from the sensations happening in my body.
I took a slow, deep breath and brought my awareness to the feeling of my bare feet in contact with the wooden floor. I held my awareness there, just feeling the contact between my body and the floor. This was a way of being in my body but not being with the uncomfortable sensations that were occurring. I realized that the sensations happening in my body were overwhelming, which is why I had disassociated to my mind. I knew that if I just tried to feel them without resourcing myself I would disassociate again. I kept my awareness at my feet and even shifted my weight, noticing how the weight shifting felt. When I noticed my breathing had slowed and I was no longer taking shallow breaths, I slowly brought my awareness back to my chest, arms, and stomach, where the sensations had previously been overwhelming. I didn’t go right into the center of my chest because I knew that would feel like too much. I started by noticing my shoulders and then moving my awareness slowly towards my chest. As I moved closer to my chest, I began to ask myself what emotion was connected to the sensations happening in my chest.
Guilt. It hit me like a freight train.
I felt guilty that he was outside shoveling while I was inside. I had spent so many years of my life as a single woman or with partners with whom I didn’t know how to share responsibility. I felt like I needed to do everything by myself. It was a pattern that I was actively working hard to break. I was very aware that I had attracted partners who were willing (and happy) to let me carry the responsibility inside of the relationship because I didn’t know how to share responsibility. I own that, 100%. There were versions of me who would have pointed the finger at past partners and said, “You didn’t want to be an equal or carry responsibility.” But this version of me knew better. This version of me knew I had been attracting partners who would prove my stories of men not being trustworthy to share responsibility with correct. If I wanted to experience something different, I needed to hold a different story in my conscious and subconscious. I had shifted that story a couple of years ago, and the evidence was outside shoveling the snow; he was capable of being an equal and capable of being responsible. And yet, I wasn’t fully healed around that story because here I was, feeling guilty that he was out shoveling while I was cooking.
I felt the guilt inside of my body, and I loved that part of me deeply. This was the part of me that had protected me for so long, making it easy to love. I had outgrown the need for this protection. I had better tools now. As I felt the guilt, I felt it slowly melt away and leave my body, and in its place, I felt safety and worthiness. There was a warmness, a stillness, a calmness, an openness where contraction and unsettled energy had existed just moments before.
I slowly opened my eyes and watched the sunlight shimmer on the snowy trees in my backyard. I could hear the scrapes of his shovel against the frozen earth. I walked towards the window and caught his attention. He smiled at me, and I smiled back.