Where is there possibility in your life to remove pain and create space for freedom?
I hope you were able to enjoy some time for reflection and rest this past weekend. I kept it super low key at home. As the “Happy 4th of July” texts came through and filled my social feeds, I sat and reflected on the disconnect I feel to celebrating limited freedoms and also the ways in which we give up the freedoms we do have.
I have questioned blind patriotism for many years now. I am grateful to live in a country where I can speak my mind and have choices in how I live my life. I don’t feel that gratitude should equate to silence about the ways that complete freedom for others and myself remain elusive. The history of our country is one of intentionally removing freedoms from people: Native American genocide, enslaving Black people, Japanese internment, our current prison system, and children separated from their parents at the border and placed in cages.
Every time we fail to acknowledge the pain that has occurred and continues, we are burying emotions that do not go away but rather accumulate in our collective soul. Unprocessed pain sits like lead on our chest. We struggle to focus on anything other than the pain. The energy needed to focus on survival removes the mental, emotional, and physical agency to be free. Until we as a nation choose to change systems that oppress people, we are just moving the weight around but never fully removing it. We are insisting that people live in survival mode instead of being free to think, feel, and move as their spirit leads them.
I consider coaching social justice work. We all have different strengths that can be used to enact change. For many years of my life, my place in this work was as a systems leader. In the past three years, my place has shifted to supporting individual healing and freedom. When many healing souls gather together they become a healing community that is ripe for revolutionary thinking and moving.
There are privileges matched with intention that have helped me to reach personal freedom in many parts of my life. There are areas of my life where I want more freedom, and I am trying to figure out what that could look like. Once I begin to see, feel, and hear it I will know how to pursue it. The personal work I have done over the years coupled with listening and seeking to understand oppression helps me to decipher when the path to freedom is within myself and when it is bigger than me and needs to be fought for on a larger scale.
The weight of silenced pain from generational and current harm can be pushed aside and buried within; however, that pain accumulates and takes up space in our body. When I sit with the discomfort that comes with acknowledging pain and work to process the discomfort in my body, I give some piece of it the opportunity to leave me. Over time the pieces of pain that leave are opening space for long deep inhalations of new air and possibility. I can feel the swirls of air circulating in my physical and spiritual being as flow begins to take up the space that was previously filled with the weight of survival.
My authentic self surfaces in flow. She opens her wings and takes up space and finds her voice. She creates and pursues love and joy. Every time I have moments of freedom, I crave more for myself and for others. To me, that is the intersection where healing individuals come together with space to dream of more and demand it as our right. We deserve the right to live freely as our authentic selves.
Amiga, te quiero mucho y quiero lo mejor para ti. How can I walk alongside you in your journey for personal freedom and our collective freedom?
Quiero saber te ti. Where is there possibility in your life to remove pain and create space for freedom? Where is there possibility for you to support removing pain and obstacles to freedom that others are enduring?
