I used to know this woman, a survivor, who was a fitness trainer. She loved exercising so much it was actually contagious. She and I used to go dancing a lot. At the time, there was a song called “Free Your Mind” with an anti-prejudice message. The chorus, which was most of what we could really make out in a noisy nightclub, was “Free your, mind, and the rest will follow”.
My friend adapted it to “Free your ass, and the rest will follow”, meaning “be in your body and grounded and everything gets a lot better”. It has a lot of truth, and has stayed with me. When I moved to another town, she made me a dance tape as a goodbye gift and titled it “Free your ass and the rest will follow”. When I need to ground, shaking my butt or dancing helps a lot. It’s hard to be clenched up and anxious when your butt is relaxed. Try it.
So this morning, after writing about my internal debate over my mother and whether I have more than just the one main abuser (*I removed this post because I was getting homophobic comments on it), I went to a place I go to do do a walking meditation. During the meditation I came to this.
It doesn’t matter if there’s more abuse I don’t remember. What matters is, can I live my life as fully and joyously as I want to? It’s been my experience that by going out and living passionately, the stuff that gets in the way needs to be cleared comes up. If it doesn’t get in the way, it’s irrelevant at this point.
The only tricky thing is when my unconscious hides my limitations from me (like being unaware that I clench my hands or jaw in sleep until it does damage).
In my meditation walk, I suddenly had a flash that my new motto was “Free your vulva and the rest will follow”.
What this means to me is that I need to stop clenching my vulva, in order to improve my vulvadynia, the sensation in my vulva, and hence, my sex life. I also need to unclench my passion and creativity (symbolized by my vulva) in all the other ways that they’re locked up. So instead of whining about how unmotivated I am to do my singing, I need to press into the resistance instead of allowing it to smother me.
Now, I know from past experience that my resistance is extremely well developed, and battling on to create anyways is a central struggle of my life so I’m not going to promise great results here. However, just as focussing on keeping my hands, feet and neck warm has unexpectedly resulted in me being more grounded, I have a suspicion that keeping my vulva relaxed will have good, but as yet unknown effects. If it brings flashbacks, so be it. If I suddenly find myself singing or making love, so much the better.
My vulva is not free, but at least now I find myself wanting it to be free. Thank you for this.
May your vulva become free, Kelly. Nice to meet you. I had a look at your website and art. Looks like you’re doing some neat stuff. Nice to see another Canadian out here.
By the way, I’m still doing the keeping the hands, feet and neck warm thing and it’s gotten a lot easier to do it consistently. I remember to check on them at least once a day, and take steps to warm them if they’re cold. I’m sure I’m a lot more in my body.
A friend lent me this thing that massages your back for you. It has two balls sticking out of it that rotate like someone is digging in their thumbs and working on knots. It works really well and I’m doing it daily, and noticing that I’m a lot more relaxed and have less pain in my neck and back.
Yay, self-care!
SDW
This sounds great. I have been working on uncleanching as well. My body is in so much pain and cleanched up. I am excited to hear more on how this is going. Good and healing thoughts to you.
Kate
Well, so far my unclenching is helping my ability to get creative. I was able to practice singing yesterday without resistance. It’s amazing how the body and the mind/soul are so interconnected. For someone who hasn’t been in my body for large parts of my life this is always a realization….
SDW
I absolutely love it. May we all free our vulvas!!