I attended a gorgeously connecting women ritual as part of welcoming the Winter Solstice here in Australia on June 21st. We all created a flower mandala, slowly and patiently working in silence.
As I was arranging my little piece. I was slowly unwrapping these rose petals, and reflecting…on how this was a very similar process to the one of the SoulWork of healing and transformation.
It felt so symbolic of what inner work is like. That slow unpacking of deeper and gentler, and more vulnerable inner parts, that we do not regularly access, due to various reasons.
As I was giving each petal its time, its needed attention, I arrived at one leaf that looked rugged, wrinkled and old…oh those parts of us that we aren’t very eager to connect with, to embrace. We normally dispose of them, so that they do not make our mandala ugly, unattractive to others, out of symmetry.
So I stopped, I held it with love, I witnessed its rough edges, I touched them with gentle fingers and placed it next to the rest of the petals forming my little shape…
I acknowledged that part of my story, which had all these imperfect little petals. Those inner parts that crave attention, time and equal gentle care.
The more I looked at it, the more I owned it. The more I accepted it, the more I loved it.
I was thinking about how often do I slow down to do this?
What is my immediate response to parts of me that are imperfect?
Do I discard them in the bin? Or do I include them in my Becoming…
I also had another response, as I was going deeper and deeper into the rose bud, and the petals were becoming even more fragile.
Some would rip in two as I was pulling them apart…
This, I thought, is how we need to tend to our process. When things get too deep, too painful during the process, we have to know when to Stop.
We have to know when and how to rest, replenish, wait…patiently, until the process allows for the next step. And then the next.
Lots of women I work with, go either straight to the center of the bud filled with impatience to get to a particular place, grasping an idea or an image of what success might look like. Only to get lost, overwhelmed or too wounded to continue.
Others, who have had way too much personal trauma, would shut off at the very first signs of the petal’s rip, and would forever freeze at this moment, never to be able to face anything resembling pain.
Getting into the Goldy Lock’s speed of the process of transformation is so challenging, especially at in a culture of Quick fixes, and the fast nature of life and pressures.
Slowing down and calibrating one’s own pace is, in actuality, a big part of the healing.
Knowing, discerning, pausing, un-freezing … are all indications that you are on the right track of your own unfurling inner rose.
Love,
Aleks
Aleksandra Staneva, PhD - Internal Family Systems 