Freedom In Restraint

Oh it has been a minute since I last wrote! So hello dear community. How are you?

I’d love to say I haven’t written because I was traveling and celebrating life, because I was expressing freedom and fun, but that would not be true.

The truth was that I was navigating a family crisis. One that entailed mental health emergencies, decisions made with little clarity, support to other family members, texts and phone calls till my fingers and ears would hurt. I will not get overly specific here but to say the least it was a trying time and also a liberating one.

For many, family crisis creates traumas to be healed, and while I noticed that to some degree, approaching it with all my tools, an understanding of energy and the knowing that all things can contain magic and healing if we let them, I found something very different.

I found liberation.

Although I admit at times I was anxious, upset, overwhelmed and felt incredibly frozen, once I remembered that peace lived within me, that joy was always an option, my system would return but not just to my baseline but to a more liberated and free state. This darkness, this trapped feeling, that I was witnessing in my loved one, and empathicly tuning in to (not fun when its very dark) had powerful medicine.

You see I wanted to avoid and be done with the situation, but I knew that was not truly an option, boundaries and healthy choices sure, but this was something that needed dealing with. But what began as trauamtic for my system became medicine. How could it be?

Many unhealed wounds would surface and I would feel trapped from truly moving forward in other areas of life. I wanted to work more, and be creative all the free things but instead I felt restrained.

There are two main meanings of restraint; one in which you are physically held and unable to move freely and the other referring to self control and moderation by choice. While I am mostly referring to the first meaning, I do find it interesting that the ability to control ones actions is its’ sister meaning. Because there is freedom in that too.

You see my family member eventually required medical attention, and if anyone has been in any hospital there is a feeling of both releasing responsibility in order to heal but also giving over personal freedoms. That is amplified in mental health situations. This however is not a punishment. It is liberation from the habits that imprison you. But can oddly feel like the prison itself.

As I witnessed this in them, it became clear in me:

Sometimes it is lifes’ prisons that frees us.

Not long after this idea, I got to work with a client, who had a special spirit visitor from the other side who reflected this same message, one personal to their story.

I have met a couple people who have spent time in prison, and while it was by no means a happy experience, many often expressed that there was an odd surrender there. And another family member expressed the same during a time when her baby was in NICU for months during covid, and she would sit alone in the hospital with her. Nurses walking about, no where to go, no ability to change the situation but just to be, she said the fear and time to sit and surrender it liberated her.

I very much hope that your situations do not find you in such extreme scenarios. But that you can apply this to the small moments, when we are sick in bed, an injury that limits mobility, a situation we are powerless over, the limited range of movements of the final few weeks of pregnancy, jobs that we need that feel stifling, seasons caring for others with very little time to yourself. And if its the big ones, then the message and the gift are all the more clear.

You can find love and liberation in all things. There is nothing that does not contain healing and spiritual energy but it is our choice to call that out of it. We must seek it and invite it, and hold out hope that even if we lose our balance many times, the strength of coming back is molding us not breaking us.

We live in a world that preaches boundaries and self care and they are amazing but there are moments where they seem like jokes to our life (of course adapted boundaries and self care are good). There are times where it’s actually absurd to make yoga everyday, or where your pottery class matters more than the suffering of a loved one. This doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen, but sometimes life is not about clean lines but about the messy and the beautiful, we can’t maintain this forever but we can sustain it for the right amount of time.

And when you are there, trust me when I say this: the healing lives there. It lives right in it. Surrender the resistance and command the blessing from it, you will see.

And finally when things settle, know when the prison is unlocked and choose to leave. Go towards your freedom on the external whenever you can. Choose the life that lights you up again.

In internal freedom,

Avery