This morning I woke and my heart was trembling.

Palpatations are something I have become accustomed to this last year. One of the consequences of the mold poisoning I experienced now more than 6 years ago is a heartbeat that often shows some irregularity, or so I have been told. Maybe heartache was the culprit. Maybe both. 

As the transition of menopause starts to sink into my daily life, the palpitations are sometimes a little too much to hold. This morning was one of those mornings, I was finding it a little hard to breathe, feeling the need to take long and deep inhalations and exhalations. I knew I needed support.

In the inner suburbs of Melbourne there is a community acupuncture clinic that I frequent. There is something about the fact that these beautiful people have created something to serve the community in this way, that I have come to love and appreciate more than seeing someone privately. There is something about healing together that I really love. 

I parked my car in the 2hr parking lot around the corner, and walked down the main shopping strip in disbelief, nursing deep heartache. The street that used to be my playground when I was in my early 20’s, was littered with homeless, drunk, stoned, and deeply broken men.

On every corner.

I walked tentatively as one of the men who had made his bed in front of a modern cafe, hurled verbal abuse at an elderly man passing by. A metre away, behind the glass window separating his bed and the coffee machine, a small girl wearing pink fairy wings sat with her mother drinking her milkshake. 

I was bewildered that of all the cafes avaialable to choose on the strip, the mother would choose to sit in this one. 

How desensitised have we become to the pain in our world? To that in others, and in fact to our own? 

I’ve been navigating my heart this last week, my own pain as I grieve the loss of a significant relationship in my life. And tending to it with as much love and care and compassion as I know how to. It is not easy. It is so much easier to distract. To stay desensitised. To throw myself into my work, into social media, netflix or any other means we as human beings find to soothe or numb our pain. But I want to feel. I spent most of my life up until the age of 40, not feeling. And I have learned in my years of losing many loved ones, dreams, visions and parts of myself, that on the opposite side of grief and feeling my pain, is love and joy, and the more I can surrender into the arms of grief and the whole gamut of the human experience, the more depth I feel in myself, and the more connected I feel to the world around me. The more connected I feel to my soul. 

Maybe if these men had been given the opportunity and the holding to feel their own pain along the way, they wouldn’t be making the streets their home today. 

At some point in these men's lives, who they were… their exuberance, their essence, their longings, their anger, their frustrations, sorrow, truth, was made wrong. Not allowed. Something or someone shut that down, and in the shutting down something vital was lost. What I saw there was the extreme representation of losing oneself. Or what indigenous culture would call ‘soul loss’. 

In the work that I do with women who are reclaiming their true self, a part of their soul has also been lost. Without fail through our work together, we always meet their pain, and though the representation of that pain is not as visible as what I saw today, it hurts just as much. When we are not given the permission to be our truest selves, vulnerable in our need for love and acceptance, we lose something vital.

Francis Weller talks about soul loss. A concept that our western culture knows nothing about, yet would do very well to devote some time to understanding. In traditional cultures soul loss is tended to as one of the deepest wounds, and is treated with utmost care, yet in our modern culture we are often given a pharmaceutical prescription to numb the pain.

The scene on the streets today reminded me of the profound consequences of ignoring our pain and denying our true selves.

To truly heal, I believe we must grow a new value around vulnerability, where it is celebrated and not shamed. Learning how to be with, and embrace the depth of our feeling life and the entire gamut of the human experience, for it is the inner-compass we have that directs us to our highest growth and the gateway to freedom, love, connection and joy.

By acknowledging and honouring ourselves in this way, we reclaim lost parts of ourselves and connect more deeply with our true essence or soul, and one-by-one can mend the fabric of humanity.

Maraya

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