A Space Big And Wild Enough For All Of Our Wolves
Desire, grief, writing, bodies: healing is making space for all parts of our experience.
Great news! I’m currently in the process of writing a book proposal. (SQUEEEE!!) So as to devote more of my time to that project, my newsletters are going to be less frequent for the next little bit.
In the same way that mushrooms are the visible, fruiting bodies of vast, underground and unseen mycelial networks, the visible part of trauma in our life often shows up in the form of binds: tensions, contradictions, or conflicts that feel like they must be resolved, but that also feel like they’re impossible to resolve. This tension inevitably leads to feelings of shame, pressure, and ultimately helplessness, which more often than not are what stands in the way of taking action towards our desires and dreams.
The most prevalent bind in this season of my life is the tension between my deep, wild, urgent desire to create–to write, mostly–and my limited physical, emotional, and energetic capacity. This shows up for me as the painfully draining, almost-constant chatter in my mind that’s trying to answer this one vital question: Am I doing enough right now?
Am I really too tired to write?
Should I try to write even though my capacity is low?
Is it ok for me to take a break right now?
Should I push to sit down and write?
What happens if I can’t write today?
And finally, the kicker, the question-to-end-all-questions:
Will I ever be able to write a book with the limitation of this burnt out, Autistic body?
Which Wolf Do I Feed?
I’m constantly trying to figure out what’s at the root of this chatter: is it desire and momentum to grow, or is it pressure fueled by shame? In other words: is the drive coming from inside, from my true, authentic self, or is it coming from the external pressure of what I think I should do in order to be worthy, to belong?
When there is a should, there is shame, and in this case, shame–which I understand as internalizing the failures of our environment–means a hell of a lot of internalized ableism. I cannot separate how I feel about my capacity from the persistent, pernicious message that bodyminds like mine, and like those of other disabled, neurodivergent, burnt out, and/or chronically ill folks, absorb from our culture on the daily, which is: that we’re just not good enough, and that it’s our fault.
The fear of extracting from myself–that is, to demand more out of myself than is sustainable in order to satisfy the demands of capitalism–is pretty much perfectly matched by my fear of not “living up to my potential,” which is an incredibly bullshit concept that has plagued me my whole entire undiagnosed-Autistic, gifted-and-skipped-a-grade life.
It also doesn’t help that it’s damned hard to tell the difference between the pressure of internalized capitalism, and the desire to create and express yourself when your writing is so closely tied to your livelihood.
Inside of you are two wolves: one wants you to express your true, authentic nature and desire, and the other wants you to work your ass off so you can survive under capitalism. Both wolves are writers. Is it possible to feed just one?
The irony isn’t lost on me that a huge contributing factor to my low capacity is the fact that I am burnt out from 44 years of trying to fit my neurodivergent bodymind into a neurotypical mold, and that if I had been able to honor and accommodate for my capacity earlier in my life, I might not be so burnt out now, and my capacity maybe wouldn’t be so low. All the same, I’m not going to correct this by continuing to force myself into a way of being that I’m not built for. But damn if my nervous system isn’t going to try to apply the strategy that led to burnout in the first place over and over, even if it no longer works, because it used to be effective as shit and now my nervous system is a hammer that sees nothing but nails.
I guess the question isn’t so much, Is this desire or is this pressure, but rather, How do I respond when shame uses my desire to create for its own extractive means? How do I attune to and nourish my desire to create without fueling the shame?
From Either/Or to Both/And
So the bind that I’m facing is, I WANT to write, but often I feel like I CAN’T write. On the surface, my desire and my low capacity seem at odds. Binds are a feature of the experience of trauma, because a traumatized nervous system has little space for nuance and complexity. The pressure of the bind is that my nervous system needs only ONE of these to be true in order to feel safe: either my desire to write is the true thing, and therefore I must push to follow this desire no matter how I feel; OR, I don’t have enough capacity to write, and therefore I shouldn’t even try.
A nervous system optimized from trauma and scarcity loves a narrow either/or choice: cut and dry, black and white, either this thing is true or the other thing is true, but never both. But post-traumatic growth, wherein we create safe conditions to expand our nervous system capacity, invites us into the spaciousness of the both/and, where endless subtle fades and washes of gray make room for the depth, complexity, and nuance of our actual lived experiences.
So I can widen my lens, and allow for meaning to expand and, with it, to find gentler, kinder, more deeply transformative answers.
I wrote above that when there is a should, there is shame; what I also find to be true is that where there is shame, there is grief.
Shame and pressure are adaptive responses learned in early childhood to not having our needs met by our environment of care. If my caregivers can’t meet my need for attachment and authenticity, my best hope for survival is to internalize that it’s my fault, turn away from my fundamentally human needs, and work my ass off to try to be whatever and whoever my environment needs me to be.
Said another way: if my capacity to do things is low due to the fact that I’m Autistic and find the world overwhelming and draining, and if my early environments of care failed to attune to and accommodate for my divergence, my only resort is to conclude that there’s something wrong with me, that I’m fundamentally bad, and to then work myself to the bone to try to be good, which almost always means to have no needs. That’s the story shame tells in my body.
This lack of attunement from early caregivers is experienced as heartbreak, which results in tremendous amounts of unfelt, unprocessed grief in our system. This grief, although unseen, keeps the whole architecture of shame, pressure, and striving to be good intact and chugging full-steam ahead.
In the narrow world of a traumatized nervous system, there’s only room for two options: I’m either good or I’m bad. When I zoom out and make room for nuance and complexity, I find a secret, third thing: I am grieving.
I am grieving a world in which my distress is witnessed and believed.
I am grieving a world in which my capacity is honored and respected.
I am grieving a world in which my needs are accommodated.
I am grieving a world in which I am free and safe to move and grow and create at my own pace.
I am grieving a world in which humans are guaranteed a safe, secure livelihood because there’s enough to go around, and we care about everyone having enough.
I am grieving a world in which there is room for divergence, for a wild variety of lived experiences, for a wild variety of needs.
A Space Big And Wild Enough
Trauma repair is in large part about creating enough safety in the nervous system so that we can hold all of our feelings, all aspects of our experience, even what looks and feels contradictory on the surface, and claim all of it as ours. Healing is about wholeness: it’s about calling all aspects of our experience home.
I feel very strongly that trauma is, at its root, a spiritual wound, which needs a spiritual salve. It also happens that relationship with Spirit or Source, or what my teacher Jenn calls a larger container, allows us to create the kind of vast space in which all parts of our experience can roam free, where all parts of our experience can belong, where the tension between the two wolves eases and ultimately dissolves because they are free to roam as they wish. It’s a space big and wild enough to hold all of our wolves.
My word for 2023 is DEVOTION. For me, devotion is that space which is big enough to hold both my desire, and the grief that my capacity doesn’t match my desire. It’s the space that (I am learning to) turn to when my inner capacity narrows, when the tension gets high and buzzy like I’m holding an angry swarm of bees inside. It’s the larger container that I dump all my unresolved binds in when I’ve tired of trying to solve them on my own and say, Here, you handle this.
(Another BIG mood for 2023 is, We don’t try to figure out anything alone anymore.)
I’ve learned to identify that when my inner discourse is at its most desperate, it usually means that I am in a low-capacity moment. Which in turn means that, in moments when I am despairing that I will never be a write a book because of my limitations, my efforts are going to be more fruitful tending to my grief than forcing myself to write.
One of the ways I have been practicing this is through my journals, through a daily-ish practice of Desire/Capacity/Prayer.
It’s just as simple as that: I create a header for each Desire, Capacity, and Prayer. Under each I write:
Desire: What I want to do that day. This is not a to-do list, it’s a heartfelt wish. I find the part of me that wants to do things needs to be heard, regardless of whether or not I have capacity to do shit that day.
Capacity: What my capacity is that day. This is also very simple. I sometimes use a green light/yellow light/red light shorthand, where a green light is, Yay! I have energy to do things! and yellow light is, Not quite sure, proceed with curiosity, and red light is, Yeah maybe take a nap.
Prayer: What do I need to know or hear or ask for in order to be able to hold both my desire AND my capacity, and any tension that might exist between the two.
I’ve been experimenting with this practice for a couple of months now, and it’s been really useful. More often than not, the prayer part is really asking for help to hold the grief. I don’t know if it’s helped me be more productive, in case you’re wondering, but that’s really not the point. The point is to help ease some of the tension from the binds of trauma. The point is to let all the wolves take a nap. It does help a lot with that.
I may not ever fully get rid of the fear—which is really grief! always fucking is!—that I won’t be able to do all the things I want to do. In fact, I know for a fact I won’t. I’m 44 years old and my body’s ability to function is not trending towards improvement.
But what I’ve found to be absolutely true is this: the more tension I hold inside, the harder it is to come to the page. And the less I’m alone with my pain, my fear, and my grief, the less it feels like my capacity is an obstacle, and the more taking small, meaningful action towards my desires and dreams feels possible.
For me, that’s what healing is really all about.
🌈 One of my favorite—and most popular!—offerings is my Grief Magic course, where I teach my process for making safe space for & tending to grief, and it’s only $33. (If that amount is out of reach, just reply to this email and I will give you access to it for free, no questions asked.)
🌈 Materials shown in journal pages above: Journal, Hobonichi A6 & Traveler’s Notebook; stickers, Jetpens, Baum Kuchen & Stasia Burrington; washi tape, Taylor Ryan Design & Jetpens; stamps, Journal As Altar & Traveler’s Company; Tombow Dual Brush pens and Gelly Roll pens.
🌈 Do you love when I share journal content? You’re in luck! I'm going to be teaching a course in June on using journals & planners to practice trauma repair, with guest teaching by my pal Erin Fairchild of
! Keep your eyes on this space for registration to open in early May.🌈 I will get to see Peter Gabriel live in concert in October. He is one of my favorite artists of all time, and I have such a deep relationship to his music. I got to see him live in 2002 in Vancouver and it was a dream come true. I can’t believe I’m gonna get to see him again, I ugly cried when I got the tickets. Apologies to the folks seated near me at the Austin show as I will most definitely be sobbing through the entire set. Anyway if you’ve never heard the 11-minute, live version of In Your Eyes—my favorite song of all time—please do me a favor and listen to it, LOUD, today. (Boom box optional.)
Oh, the joy I just experienced at reading about your love of Peter Gabriel and what his music has meant to you. This is the cherry on top of a post that resonates so strongly with me. Finally seeing him in concert years ago was one of the highlights of my life. A Secret World Live is what I've used to shift myself out of a funk for over a couple of decades now.
Such a wonderful post, Fanny. First, CONGRATULATIONS! Book proposals are like the worst homework ever and, after I did one, I swore, "Never again!" and independently published after that (started my own imprint; stay away from KDP). Taking that on is huge and hard and you deserve hugs and applause. Second, as someone a little older than you who also grieved the childhood/parents she should have had, you will, indeed, get beyond the grief. It moves away from you somehow, transforms into something else. I think for me it was realizing that no apology would make it better, there was no way to get a do-over, it just was what it was BUT it helped make me the person I am, and I kind of like her, so... What you are doing is showing the way for others, so they have a smoother road. Lastly, it's so hard to write for a living and write for yourself (I ended up doing bookkeeping so I could keep the writing all for me, LOL), so more hugs and applause for doing that. I struggle with chronic fatigue and know both the physical and creative crash that comes when I wear myself out. What you are doing is A LOT and bold and brave and amazing. Endless hugs and applause. Just remember to be kind to yourself. We can forget to do that. xo