The inner world

Where would many of us be without the inner world to sustain us, to help us make meaning, to provide a source of nurture and support so often denied to us in the outside world? For me coming to know and trust my inner life and feelings as well as hunches and intuitions and ways of making meaning saves me. And lately it is getting to be such a relief not to be so besieged by that inner critic that is full of denigration and that has invalidated me so much in the past for my so called ‘isolation’.

We had a very rainy day yesterday and it forced me back inwards as exercising outside was not an option so that put paid to my two walks a day plan that Jasper and I started on a while back.. its okay, i have to remind myself its best to be flexible in life and introverting can be fun. I get to read and watch things on streaming, and I still do a lot of exercising with yoga and weights and such.. I never sit still for very long periods with my PTSD condition and that fact I spent so so long in freeze states. I watched something that really distressed me yesterday on cyber sexual abuse and misogyny called Hunting its not the usual thing I watch but it provided such an interesting insight also into the way schools can operate as it surrounded a group of students in two schools in South Australia and I was drawn to watch it as it featured Australian actors Asher Keddie and Richard Roxburgh in lead roles of one set of parents. The Moon was in Cancer yesterday and today so it was interesting to watch something that featured families as well as a mother’s struggle to see how her son could so easily become swept up into bullying due to his own emotional confusion.

Today the rain has eased, its not as dark but still over cast, we are moving towards the final quarter of the last lunar cycle, I believe there are 6 days or so remaining until the new moon in Libra so the Moon in Cancer squared the Sun in Libra sometime yesterday. I think Cancer time is a good time to go inward and I was delighted this week to receive two wonderful books I ordered The Believer : Encounters with Love, Death & Faith written by Sarah Krasnostein whose last book The Trauma Cleaner I heard interviews about but did not get to read.

The second I ordered is a book on the healing power of poetry called Saved By A Poem : The Transformative Power of Words and the truth is that I do feel I have been saved by a poem many times, reading them when I was in the depths of despair or even having them sent to me by an older therapist when I had broken therapy to come home.. (that particular poem Wendy sent to me was written by T. S. Eliot) and writing them too. Being able to cry as I have shared many of my emotionally laden poems in therapy with Kat has helped me both to move the trauma and longing out, as well as make better sense or meaning of them.

The author of that later book I mentioned Kim Rosen suggests we read poems that resonate deeply for us out loud to feel them in our body. I also know the delight I feel when a poetry blogger shares a spoken version of one of their poems.

Thank God for the inner world and the inner work, it seems now with all of the controversy over mandatory vaccine passports and the issue of where we will be able to go is looming large.. I try to steer away from controversy here but I honestly do not feel safe to get the vaccine, I have had a compromised immune system due to breast cancer and a friend of mine who had it recently ended up having a heart attack following it.. For me, I live largely alone, the only people I see are people at the grocery store or cafe,or my neighbors lately. Even therapy has been by distance since about 5 weeks ago..

For me I can endure this solitary state and nourish myself inside of it. so maybe I will just have to learn to adjust to not going as many places and not being able to eat out at cafes or restaurants.. to be honest it does not bother me. .. I have my lovely companion Jasper and I know we connect deeply both heart to heart, soul to soul and body to body. For me lately I am seeing that I do have enough to sustain me in my inner world and with my inner work, as lonely as that has felt at times I also find it nourishing now.. So today I just wanted to write a post on honoring that truth.