I have been in this raw journey for a while now, asking how is it that I can be my full self and create communities of acceptance, love, acknowledgment, celebration where we can be our fullest freest selves. This pandemic has truly forced me to be my full self with everyone, most strikingly my family. I left New York City, my home to be with my family – and all my childhood fears surfaced before I came home. Will I be able to express myself? Can I cry? Will I be more afraid and have no one to comfort me?
So many times during this pandemic I’ve been so at a loss I had to tell the truth about how I was feeling. It’s been a back and forth, always going to my parents when I really needed to, taking the opportunity to uncover more about my fears, to develop new or deepen grounding practices to rely on myself. And today after a few days of being ravaged by chronic headaches (TMD), a few days of telling myself again and again – if I could just cuddle with my family and emotionally be with them, I could do this forever.
Almost two years into the pandemic, almost two years of falling apart and mending myself over and over again with different practices, strategies, supports, friendships, family — I am realizing what I have off and on practiced with all my friend and community groups, that that is my raw way of being. I have avoided completely being soft throughout the pandemic because I was in a practice of learning to care for myself first before reaching out. But softness is ME and I am it. There is no need to strategize, to calculate, or to wait for crisis to be soft. When I called Raw Movement, raw movement, it appealed to the strong assertive parts of me and now I am realizing what my “raw” is, it is often soft and tender and gentle. I am realizing/questioning: What does it mean to be potently soft? Strikingly tender? Undilutedly gentle?
In order to emotionally survive this pandemic , I am being asked to surrender to the raw tenderness that I am. To allow that to pour over my being, to re-inhabit my softness. Now that all the practices and deconstructing allow me to access my body and to be settled enough to connect, I am being asked to surrender to a new way of being. Soften, then surrender. How raw.