I love this time of year! Like a jack-in-a-box I feel like my energy is rejuvenated and the warm sunshine gets me out with a renewed enthusiasm for life. This is exactly what Mother Nature does to us and as we turn the wheel once more back to the beginning of the seasonal year after a long time in hibernation we are being asked to jump into action, get busy and get creative.
And what a time of hibernation we have had, a time of such restriction and extreme on every level.
This has felt so frustrating for many, painful and traumatic for others and this is important to acknowledge. There are others, and I count myself in this group, who are very protected by the difficulties our society can throw at us and have come through this time, not only unscathed, but having learned and grown from this experience. For that I am truly grateful but I know I need to look at what is going on here and how to give back.
I have spent the last year, learning and exploring the concept of collective trauma. This is something that gets passed down the generations and I believe that no one is spared of this, living in our modern world. Whether we were the winners or the losers in the many battles throughout history we carry the pain and pass it down to our offspring. This means that the new generation have those pain responses hard-wired into our psyche and our nervous system without the actual experience of the trauma itself. With each generation being brought up under this emotional strain there is an understanding that develops, that this is ‘normal’. The need to heal or even recognise it as a thing gets lost in the chaos we create out of the conflicts we build into our way of living together,
Each new year is a chance to reinvent ourselves, to hook into Mother Nature’s natural impulses and emerge from our cocoon afresh, let go of our layers of pain and dig a little deeper to find the gold, the love, below. Each year we fail to do this and emerge the same as we always were.
What will it take to drop further down into the wealth of healing available to us all? We will only take the first steps on this journey unless we are made aware of the possibilities that lie beyond the door we need to open first of all.
Staying in our heads, within the limits of our ego mindsets will not help us find this. I believe we would do well to drop into our connection to Mother Earth and let her work through us. This is the energy of the archetype that this month carries, the ability to just be, let go of thought and judgement and tap into our creative selves, the part of us that knows the way forward instinctively, just as the trees and flowers grow out of the seed, so we can grow out of the huge ocean of love and compassion that lies beneath the sea of grief we all feel or numb ourselves from.
Let’s not fear this journey but trust it is a path that once started can only lead to a better way of living, free from the pain we are terrified of looking in the eye, and free to blossom into who we are destined to be.
