There is a mass of thought on the law of attraction. Of bringing good things to yourself through envisioning, dreaming, believing. On the seemingly opposite side of the spectrum there is the hard slogging of a deep therapy where you are trying to figure out what you feel and why and the feelings are difficult and you haven’t got anywhere near the “what might be” stage yet.

And then there is the huge space in-between. The truth that matter responds to vibrations. That our thoughts impact our physical health and that our energy field extends beyond our skin.

Throwing ourselves into affirmations doesn’t work. It has a place. But it’s not enough.

Inner work is painstaking. We sort through what is there for us - the beautiful and the truly ugly. It is detailed present moment work. And it requires an ever so slight leaning into the future.

Here is my example.

I have a wound around being mothered. And a wound around myself as mother. I have spent a fair amount of time being angry and devastated around both of these wounds.

But as things have started to shift I am having to work really hard. Harder than before when I was just angry and sad.

My colleague and I were sitting beside each other at a talk on intergenerational trauma. The therapist presenting was talking about her client’s inherited trauma. And her own. When her client had a baby she spoke of the bond between them. My colleague, knowing my wound looked at me with love and took my hand.

I froze for a moment. This is not my story. This is not what my body knows.

Part of me wanted to snap my hand away.

I looked down at her hand holding mine and I could see that my palm was resting on my thigh and that half of my hand (my fingers) was in her whole hand. I was half in and half out.

My next impulse was to move towards her. To offer my full hand and to take each other fully - hand in hand. It felt like an ocean inside me - an ocean wave slowly and hugely moving towards her. Fear - not a shaking fear but a deep gut fear that I associate with the possibility of hurt - kept me from moving.

So I consciously withstood her hand and let her hold me just as I was. Her love. I let myself enjoy it in scraps of moments foraged out of the pool of anxiety and longing in which I sat.

And there we were. Presenting therapist. Her client. My colleague. Me. Mothering and being mothered. It was like a web where at every node was a mother and at every node a child.

And that’s the work.

Not perfect.

But real.

We can come to know our wounds. To express them and express our feelings about all the things that have happened to us. And then we can choose to experience having as well as losing. Loving as well as hurting.

It isn’t easy to change ourselves in this way. In fact it feels pretty terrible to start.

"Nobody loves me" becomes "I am loved". In moments. Hard-earned hard-won moments of articulating what is happening and what we might be able to do. Bit by bit. Trying and then trying some more. Allowing, and then breathing through the allowing.

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