True Belonging Inside of the Storm
In the past I have betrayed myself to “keep the peace.” This choice isn’t benign. When I betray myself, a brick lodges inside my body, either as physical pain, anxiety, resentment, or general irritability. I grab the forecasted cloud of conflict and swallow it whole…[Read More…]
Black Indigenous People of Color + Safety + Security + Felt Safety
What does it mean to feel safe?
When viewed through the Polyvagal lens, I think of how our environment impacts our nervous system. After a conversation with a colleague who is a neurodiverse woman and POC, I realized how my own privilege as a middle-class white woman deeply influenced how I thought about and answered this question. Our first reaction is often to view the world through our own eyes, our own experience, race, and privilege. If I can acknowledge this unique lens, my subsequent review, in theory, can be more flexible, wider. To widen the lens is to become curious about what it means to feel safe for other populations.
Before yesterday, when thinking of safety, I was mostly thinking of felt safety. Does an individual feel seen, heard, known? Is there space and understanding for someone to be as they truly are? These questions spring from a combination of my personal experiences and my experience as a mother raising a neurodivergent person. When we have felt safety, we are in a regulated state, or in polyvagal terms, a ventral vagal state. This is the foundation of our physical health. Our autonomic nervous system influences how our hearts beat, how we breathe, how we digest food, and how we sleep. In order to have felt safety we must first have physical safety.
Safety is defined as “the condition of being protected from or unlikely to cause danger, risk or injury.” It implies a benevolent parent, person or agency with power is creating safety, protection. I think of animals and how they guard their young. Guarding + protection=safety.
Security is defined as “the state of being free from danger or threat”. So, in this case, there is no protector, only the protected. I think of a video game, with an invented world, where once you arrive at this level you have no predators. It doesn’t seem real or have the possibility of becoming reality. But then, I think about powerful white men, I think of 45, and how it appears that he, they, live in this video game reality here on earth. Who is the predator to this population?
What does safety, security, and felt safety mean for BIPOC in America? How can this group of people find felt safety when they have yet to find physical safety let alone security? Who protects them from danger, risk, and injury? What imaginary world exists where they need no protectors, because they have no predators? How far away from felt safety is this part of our country when oppression, racism, and whitewashed history pervades all policy, news, publications, entertainment, and power?
What’s more is that safety comes in levels. One level of safety is built upon another. Protection from a threat can create safety. Removal of a threat can create security. But felt safety is up to the nervous system. Our vagus nerve, or soul nerve, as author Resmaa Menakem lovingly calls it, determines if we feel safe or not through a process called neuroception. The vagus nerve senses our environment using afferent neurons(information travels from body to brain instead of brain to body) to decide if we are safe or not. This is unconscious, immediate, and is a part of every moment of our life.
Current and recent research on single-event trauma is uncovering data that trauma influences genetic codes for several generations. The trauma that slaves endured lives in the DNA of slave ancestors. The trauma of the genocide of Indigenous People lives in their DNA. Every single micro and macro aggression that BIPOC have endured, lives inside of their bodies. They inherit their ancestors’ traumas when they are conceived and growing in their mothers’ wombs, and then they are born into an unsafe and insecure climate. Us white folks have our own inherited trauma: the trauma of colonialism and the memories of the brutalization that Europeans committed against each other for centuries. This lives in our bodies too, along with the moral injury of White Supremacy.
A child’s home life is a vital factor in creating safety and shaping their nervous system, but when the larger culture outside of their home includes systemic racism and oppression, the safety and security they may have at home doesn’t stay with them when they aren’t there. In America, it isn't even possible to create a home free from the larger toxic culture because it leaks in through entertainment, the news, and systems of power. The lived trauma of every generation is embedded into their DNA. The condition of one’s own life shapes the nervous system and influences one’s ability to feel safe, even if there is protection from threat, or if the threat has been removed entirely. Felt safety is created; it isn't inherent.
When protection appears, or threat is removed, felt safety takes time, healing, reparations, unraveling. This work happens in the presence of security. Protection is necessary to heal trauma. One cannot heal and protect oneself at the same time. The roots of trauma can only be untangled while someone is watching the door for predators. Felt safety in America is a privilege for white folks. We must change this. We need to create a circle of security for transformation and healing in our country. Safety can be on the horizon if we dismantle racism at every level of policy and power. Felt safety can and should be a birthright for every human on this beautiful planet. It's important that we understand how our race, gender and neurodiversity impact which level of safety we are striving for. We are not born into the same safe space, not yet. We can do better; we must do better.
Turning My Face to the Light
From the outside, I was committed to helping him grow his academic success and resiliency, one spelling test at a time. On the inside, my stomach was in knots, and the friction of my inner wisdom was screaming at me, "THIS IS WRONG!" I woke up today feeling hopeful and confident. Yesterday was full of negative thought patterns and downward spirals. Yesterday was not a … [Read more...]
Blue Diamond
I have faith that our combined internal compasses will lead us to the next blue diamond as a family. I understand and accept that we will travel over mountain passes and through storms. I also know along the way we will find spectacular sunrises and sunsets and maybe even a few perfect turns in knee deep powder. Continue reading here…
Mom Guilt
Three years ago, in the middle of a very difficult time, I decided to begin a dedicated yoga practice. I went 3–6 days a week using my ever-present capacity for hustle to try and support (expediate) my healing process. It was, of course, transformative in the end, but the real process felt akin to surviving a procedure to remove all my skin.
It was similar to the raw exposure I experienced after EMDR sessions with my therapist. Raw, skinned, healing. I made an agreement with myself on my first day at the yoga studio that I would show up as I was in any given moment. No pretending. Not here. Who cares what others see or think of me? (This is still not easy, but I keep trying!) The teachers would talk about our practice on and off the mat. At first it was coming into my ears as blah blah blah, but at some point, the words settled in my bones and took shape and meaning.
For me, the practice was about not pretending for one hour at a time, but instead focusing on myself, my body sensations, and the emotions stored in the corners. For me, yoga swept out the corners releasing emotions that had been stored for decades. The class, the teachers, the practice, gave me space to hold them, let them sit, and then roll through me. Sometimes this looked like a lot of tears; sometimes, it felt like my old stomachaches from when I was six years old were back for a visit. A few times it turned into full-blown panic attacks. This was/is my practice. A scheduled time to know myself outside of others. To reclaim what space, I inhabit outside of being a mother, a wife, a daughter, a friend, a healer. It wasn’t fun or pretty. I was saving my life.
Each class became a transfusion of healing. Past, present, and future healing all disguised as asana (yoga poses). The off-the-mat part of my yoga practice was bringing this knowing of myself into my home, my family, my relationships, and into the world at large. This capacity to know myself, to hear what She had to tell me, and use this as my guiding light, is at the very center of my health now. If I lose this capacity to hear, know, and follow what She knows, everything else begins to crumble.
My family suffers when I fall apart. My son, who is a brilliant, complex, differently wired teenager, whom we homeschool, will start to spin out in his own way too. I understand and accept that I am the nucleus of my family. This does not mean I waive the right to be an individual, separate, whole person. But finding my space wasn’t easy.
The conundrum of this whole story was the wretched mom guilt I felt every time I left home for a yoga class. Crushing guilt. Pressure on my chest, pressure from the inside and the outside. For months, I was always sprinting to the door hoping I made it in before they locked the doors. Dozens of rushed, almost missed classes later I asked myself “why are you always late? You live 12 blocks away, what is underneath?” Guilt. Mom Guilt. Urban dictionary defines Mom Guilt as “guilt a mother feels anytime she takes time to do something for herself, outside of work, that does not involve her children.”
I felt so bad about leaving home that I waited until the last possible moment to leave and maybe catch the class depending on red lights. I felt guilty as I rolled out my mat and hustled to begin my practice. Then, there would be a moment where She would rush in, and I would see her, know her for the first time that day and bow my head in gratitude that I had survived the crushing weight of mom guilt long enough to make it to my mat, so that She could lift the boulder off my heart. It felt so good to be there, even though I never knew how my practice might be hijacked by the release of my stored trauma. It still felt so good and right and lifesaving to be there.
The guilt of leaving for yoga class stayed with me for over a year. I had to leave hundreds of times before I could know that no one died while I went to yoga! The world was still spinning! My idea about how dangerous it was for me to carve out regular time for myself had nothing to do with the actual impact my leaving had. My son was fine. Eventually, he was probably relieved to have a break from me. And of course, the practice, the knowing, listening, and healing helped everyone. My family became healthier than ever before. I became a much better mother to him. But what if the Mom Guilt had stopped me? I don’t even want to know the answer. It's dark and makes my stomach hurt. Smoke monster dark.
I have been thinking about Mom Guilt as I contemplate the new reality for families during COVID-19 and shelter-in-place guidelines. How mothers are out there likely working from home, helping their kids switch to eLearning all the while helping their families weather a global pandemic. No big deal.
I am a student of the polyvagal theory and now I know the science behind what I always knew in my gut. That you can’t hide your mess from your kids. You can pretend all day long, but their nervous systems are constantly scanning your nervous system to see if you are OK, so that they can be OK. The question children are always asking is “am I safe?”
Some children will be like me and be natural empaths with an acute ability to read and know others’ feelings. And let's be real, how much safety can we feel during an unprecedently global pandemic? So, these mothers, who are scared themselves, are all trying to act as if they are not scared, meanwhile trying to do ALL of the things (and probably feeling like they are falling short anyhow)—that they can spin and spin, hustle and hustle, and not feel like they are doing enough.
Where does this come from? Where does my own crushing guilt and fear that I am not doing enough as a mother come from? I think we have inherited these unreasonable expectations from our culture (another gift of the patriarchy). The very idea of a great mother is her ability to not have any needs. Glennon Doyle speaks about how we idolize martyrdom in mothers. It’s true. We have some ancient cultural beliefs that mothers don’t have individual lives except when all their children are happily asleep. But this is not possible if we are pointing our compasses toward health! Moms absolutely require tending. Especially now. If they can’t have a practice where they have space to know their inner voice and hear it, their health suffers, and their children aren't able to lean on them.
In the polyvagal world we call this co-regulation. When a person is dysregulated and “out of that safe feeling,” they can use the nervous system of another person who is regulated (safe) to return to a regulated and safe feeling again. If Mom Guilt is crushing all the possibility out of the opportunity for moms to cultivate their own wisdom of self, co-regulation isn't available for their children.
I would like to see a revolution in how we explore our understanding of what healthy parenting looks like. That parents are born out of whole, integrated individuals that yes, transform as they become parents, but also continue to be their own unique selves built around a flame of inner knowing that they continue to tend and cultivate throughout their lives.
I am a tree (specifically a redwood tree)
I spent last week in a human cadaver dissection lab. People came from distant lands and foreign countries to join this expedition into the body. Our leader Gil Hedley read us poetry every morning and refers to us as “somanauts”. We held hands around the bodies on the gurneys, we called them our teachers. I am different now. Changed. I have studied anatomy for 25 years, but this was different. I have worked with cadavers on and off for 10 years but again this was new. I held the scalpel and hemostats. I cut the tissue. My fascination turned to horror time and time again. Sometimes I was able to steer my mind back to the Fascination Hall I had paid to visit, and eventually, the wisdom of my body would keep asking for a break; a whisper at first, then louder and louder, a toddler ready to leave tugging at my lab coat. I would remove my lab coat and surgical gloves to escape outside to the natural world. The trees were simpler to sit with. The dead bodies were natural too of course, just more complicated for my hands to make peace with.
Four years ago, I sat and watched my dear mother-in-law, Betty, leave her body behind. It took less than a week for her body to transition from living to dead. It was a beautiful thing to witness. Yes, it was hard, but loss always is. Witnessing her leaving, and holding space for her was an honor. Our bodies are a beautiful vessel even when lifeless. Words stop making sense when I try to work out the space between the dead and the living. I can still hear Betty’s voice and council. I ask her to help in energy healing sessions and she obliges. I dream about her sometimes and when I wake, I have memories of her skin and the shape of her body when we hug.
Gil speaks about us being “one body” and that the particular form that houses our spirit is a model of the larger unit. This is a new perspective, I like it. It brings more reverence to our individual shape with less pressure to conform to some ideal. There is no ideal! Just the living and the dead. How lucky are we to be among the living? And yet, what if the other side is not so far away after all? I visit the spirit of my dog, Max, regularly and every time I do, he licks my faces and runs around me with immense joy. I feel my loved ones with me every day, they are not gone.
But back to the trees. Someone asked me the other day what my spirit animal was. A redwood tree, I responded. I know it doesn’t make sense with words, but my body knows. I think of my dear friends like my sister trees. Scientists have discovered that trees share nutrients through their roots. Even across species. Gil dissected a heart showing us the blood vessels and how they loop around and look like a root ball of a tree. He talked about the vortex forces of rivers and blood vessels and how they are the same. All over the body, familiar forms show themselves. The superficial fascia, which we pondered may represent the Divine Feminine, resembles the structure and organization of grapefruit. Is all life more closely woven than we realize? Yes. Our teacher in the lab had black skin. When we dissected the pigment layer of his skin away from the epidermis we were astounded by its mass. It was a few cells thick. Thinner than the most delicate tissue paper. Yet, wars, hate and the gravest injustices humans inflict on other humans are often based on this minuscule division. We are made of the same tissues throughout our whole body, yet we have an infinite amount of combinations. We are all the same yet uniquely our different selves. I love us. My admiration and respect for the human form are renewed, deepened and folded over on itself in a million ways. I will let the new understanding integrate into my knowledge in every massage session. I will understand that the trees and rivers are models of us or us of them. I will strive to be a sister tree, connected to my fellow humans here on Earth, my loved ones on the other side, and a constant student of our human form, trees, rivers, skin, and hearts.
Expansion Perimeter
Can our kids do better than us? If they have the same unhealthy patterns as we do, can they shift, heal, and expand beyond them? No. It’s a hard truth. Gulp. Now, our children don’t always have the same struggles as us parents, but if there are parallels, and we aren’t working on our stuff; can they just move past us? I don’t really think it’s possible without support. Perhaps if they are in therapy and receiving support from a professional it’s a possibility. What I have noticed in my life over the course of the last few years, is that my son has a beautiful emotional growth spurt about a year after my own. I realized this was happening and it blew my mind. It was an intense electric, all-at-once understanding. I felt enormous pride that my own struggles/suffering/growth/expansion had a positive impact on his own interpersonal development and then immediate pale horror with the understanding that he probably wasn’t going to move through an unhealthy pattern before adulthood if I wasn’t working toward healing our shared struggle myself. This parenting stuff is no joke. If a child is dealing with shame but her parents aren’t able to openly discuss the issue; how can the child heal? Shame grows and thrives in secrecy. How do we heal it? Discuss it. Discover we are not alone. Suffering is not unique. If a child is dealing with addiction and her parents aren’t curious about their own addiction patterns, how can this child heal? This isn’t about parent shaming, it’s about creating understanding around the reality that how we exist inside of our own bodies, hearts and relationships lands on our children in a deeper way than we realize. If you have poor boundaries; will your son or daughter be a pushover filled with resentment? It’s likely. Is all of this black and white? Good and bad? Nope. Yet, it all matters. If we are curious about struggles, and we lean into discovery and growth, we model this for our kids. If we share little tidbits about our journey, we give them language for what their bodies already know. If you drink alcohol after your kids are in bed, this truth is not absent from their knowing. If you are fighting with your partner and your children don’t hear you; this event isn’t absent from their life. The Polyvagal Theory helps us understand how their nervous systems can sense it, and because of the intelligent, interwoven way our autonomic nervous system impacts our physiology, their bodies will respond to these events. These physiological responses may present as stomach aches, headaches, irritability, difficulty with sleep, trouble with relationships, friction at school, etc. We cannot hide our humanness from our children. Why not shine some light on our experience for them. Share little tidbits of struggle and how we are seeking help to grow and shift. A lifehack I learned in therapy is to simply tell your children if you're having a rough day. I about fell out of my chair when our family therapist suggested this to me. “You mean tell the truth!?” Flash forward a few years and I have begun to do this. I share bits about what is going on for me. I tell the truth. Because guess what? His body already knows the truth. I am simply taking responsibility for my own emotions and not leaving him to try and sort through it without any language. Personal growth is indeed very personal; however, the ripples go out; always and in all ways.
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Massage Therapy and the Safe and Sound Protocol
I have been using the Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP) in my massage therapy practice for several months now and am seeing a significant decrease in my client’s pain. Some individuals carry extra tension in their bodies. They have hypertonicity, meaning they have tight muscles. Yes, we can practice mindfulness and awareness and drop our shoulders and focus on decreasing tension in our face, our jaw, our hands. But ultimately, the amount of tension we have in our skeletal muscles is determined by our nervous system. If an individual is in a mobilized state, her nervous system is in a fight-or-flight mode, and she will have extra activation or tension in her muscles. Dr. Stephen Porges explains this relationship between the nervous system and muscle tension in his Polyvagal Theory (PVT).
When I discovered his work and read the full PVT, I instantly understood why some clients continued to be trapped in pain patterns even when they had a dedicated self-care practice. Dr. Porges created the SSP to encourage a state shift in our nervous system to a setting of safety. It’s not creating neuroplasticity; it moves the train to a different set of tracks that have been there all along. I initially discovered SSP when searching for interventions to help my son who has a diagnosis of autism, dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, and ADHD. Dr Porges’ initial research focuses on how the SSP impacts the population on the autism spectrum. SSP creates a setting of safety in the individual’s nervous system increasing their capacity for social engagement. For my son, this means increased eye contact, more prosody in his voice, greater communication, and less sensitivities to being touched. It’s profound really.
As I studied, many stored away questions started to be answered. Why did some of my patients struggle to make the necessary gains in physical therapy after joint replacements? There was often a disconnect between what they wanted me to work on to help them and what their body would tolerate. I began thinking of this phenomenon as body PTSD. Their nervous systems had not recovered from the trauma of surgery and was responding to my hands as if I, and massage therapy, was not safe. The body, and more specifically the nervous system, responded to me as if I was a threat. Yes, I could get the nervous system to calm down and upregulate the parasympathetic nervous system by avoiding the injured area and using massage therapy elsewhere; yet if I returned to the area in recovery, the nervous system would return to a mobilized state. Before you know it, the hour is over and not a lot of progress is made. Then I discovered SSP!
I started using it with a few individuals with frozen shoulder symptoms. I would put the headphones on them and play the music. I would work on the adjacent areas until I could see an upregulation in their parasympathetic system—scratching around the nose and mouth, stomach gurgling, and deeper, more relaxed breathing—taking anywhere from 7–20 minutes. Then, I would return to the injured area and right away things were different. Muscle tonicity was lower overall, and the superficial muscles were guarding less. The specific points that were struggling became obvious. These trigger points are where the true tension was all along, yet the other “guards” kept the doors closed to my hands. Suddenly, I could gently and specifically treat the individual troubled areas creating more movement in the shoulder. Hour long sessions were yielding wonderful results. Also, these clients weren’t experiencing tenderness post-session, which can often be the case with this type of work. Why? Because I wasn’t working against the nervous system. Their ventral vagal branch was activated, the train was on the track for rest, digestion, safety, social engagement and healing. Also, people’s bodies tell the truth to me about what is hurting in a new way. Old injuries uncover themselves to me and let me treat them and coax them into greater healing. These sessions project them into healing in a dramatic way. Often massage therapy can be a “wash, rinse, repeat cycle”; people have their perpetuating factors, and I do my work, and then I see them again at their next session, and we repeat. This type of work is still a part of my practice, but now there is new work happening with SSP. Sometimes I will discover a new holding pattern, release it, and the body fundamentally changes. When a pattern is interrupted, greater healing emerges.
These deep centers of pain and holding often store emotion. Our bodies are interwoven; we don’t store experiences that are pleasant—we store pain, fear, grief, and other difficult emotions. Uncovering them requires deep guidance on my part. Trauma informed care is necessary when working with these complex cases. More and more, I have been using Reiki to increase my ability to lend my regulated nervous system to their nervous system for co-regulation. Massage therapy is co-regulation. SSP with massage therapy is supercharged co-regulation. Sometimes there are tears, but not always. Sometimes my clients will share what is happening for them using language, sometimes not. Language isn’t the only way to process. Yes, naming emotions and events helps some, but not all. Having a therapeutic environment to process is the single greatest factor. This work is humbling and awe-inspiring. I am constantly amazed at people’s capacity to heal. Our bodies are intelligently designed to heal and regenerate. Yet, this only happens when the nervous system is in the safe setting. SSP creates the setting for healing and restoration to be possible. My research continues daily as I explore, learn, and expand my understanding of pain and the Polyvagal Theory.
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Polyvagal Theory and Co-Regulation
Mammals have evolved to live and thrive in community. We laugh differently when we share laughter as opposed to giggling on our own over a book or funny moment; our brain responds differently when we share laughter with others. The same is true with crying. Our bodies experience crying differently if we are alone or with someone. We are linked, and more specifically, our nervous systems are linked. I am a deep empath and have always been able to feel, know, and understand others’ emotions. My body feels other people’s emotions. It can get complicated. I have had to learn how to cultivate this gift and to learn how to control it as much as possible, which requires a dedicated practice for cultivating my knowledge of self; if I am clear with what is mine, then everything else is not mine. If I am not conscious enough about this, other people’s emotions literally feel like my own. This awareness presents as visceral, gut feelings. It’s interesting to be me.
When I discovered Dr. Stephen Porges and the Polyvagal Theory (PVT), I suddenly understood so much about my gut feelings. Dr. Porges coined the term neuroception. The vagus nerve is the largest cranial nerve in the body, and 80% of it originates in our viscera, or organs, much of it in our lower digestive tract. These nerve endings are sensory-motor neurons; they are scanning the environment for cues of danger or cues of safety. In my case, it overlaps with intuition. For me personally, other people’s emotions are instantly picked up and the information is sent to my brain stem for processing. This all happens pre-thought. My body responds to my environment before my mind has a chance to weigh in.
My stomach hurt for years on end when my parents divorced as a child, and even now, 35 years later, sometimes during yoga, my six-year-old stomachache returns. I will try to reason my way through it with questions like: what did I eat that is making my stomach hurt? did I eat too close to class? Ha ha ha! Very funny. No, sweet sister, it’s just your trauma re-emerging, looking for a way out. Something about the safety of yoga and the intention of being in my body, creates a space for this healing to be possible. As I continue to heal, other people’s emotions are clearer to me, and yes, I can often feel it in my body, but now I don’t usually confuse it as my own emotions as I did before. Progress. So yes, there is an overlap with neuroception and intuition, but for me, at least they are not the exact same thing.
I would love to do more research on the subject with other individuals who have the gift of clairsentience, the ability to know and feel others emotions. My trauma history plays a role in this, so that is an ongoing factor. I can use this gift in my massage therapy practice when helping individuals process pain and trauma trapped in their physical body. I will run into an area in their body that feels different and will show up as an emotional issue more than a physiological one. I will ask my body what is here? and then there is an answer. It’s usually simple. Our core emotions are few—usually it’s fear or sadness. I can offer Reiki to supercharge my nervous system and my own ability to self-regulate.
When I am regulated, my client’s dysregulated nervous system can then use my nervous system to create balance or regulation within their autonomic nervous system. From a polyvagal lens, we are co-regulating. Most of the time, this is done without any language. Our nervous systems are communicating. This is a more extreme example, but co-regulation is an inextricable part of our human experience. When you hug someone you love, for more than four seconds and your body does that sigh—boom!—you just co-regulated. When your child begs you to stay longer for a bedtime tuck-in—boom!—they need your nervous system to co-regulate.
I have a history of panic attacks and dissociation. I understand enough about myself now to know when I am dissociated. The numbness is glorious, and I feel invincible. No one can hurt me, nothing can, because I am numb. I also know I can’t get out alone. I literally need to hold the hand of a loved one. Hand holding is also a shortcut out of panic attacks for me. I have been in the middle of a panic attack with my son nearby who asked what he could do. “Hold my hand,” I said, and I was instantly back in my body and could breathe again. It was totally surreal, and I bet I’ll remember the powerful and instant transformation for the rest of my life. He is the safest person on the planet for my body. Is it because I made him? Because his nervous system was created within my own? I am not sure; we have a long history of co-regulation. I delivered him myself (don’t worry the midwives were there) but I pulled him out and brought him to me. I held him for more than an hour before anyone else touched him. I nursed him for 18 months, and it was a profound tool for when he was injured, sad, tired or scared.
This is the same explanation for when my stomach is in knots when I am at the grocery store and a parent is being cruel to a child. My body senses danger, pain, and fear. I can feel the parent’s rage as well as the child’s fear. I am curious about this conversation of empathy, co-regulation, neuroception, and clairsentience. I have a unique vantage point, and I understand that we all fall on a spectrum. One simple truth is that we are all impacted by one another nervous systems. Some more delicately and profoundly than others, however, co-regulation is a part of our human story. When someone you care about is in distress, notice if you can pause, breathe deeply and offer a hand to hold. Perhaps there will be transformation. Think of how we could change the world by offering safety to others one moment at a time.
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VirgilReality
I have just returned from Sante Fe to my “normal” life and my head and heart are still spinning. I was trying to find language to express how the week in Sante Fe had been and my new friend Jen, said “Yeah, you have been in Virgil Reality”. Yes!!!!!
In 2018 Native American artist Virgil Ortiz from Cochiti Pueblo had an artist residency at Colorado College and a museum show at The Fine Arts Center here in Colorado Springs. My son and husband signed up for the two classes he was teaching because, #opportunity. When we decided to first homeschool 5 years ago, we studied the work of John Holt, his publication Growing Without Schooling, and more specifically his book Teach Your Own. A few main principals emerged, first, children and people in general are always learning, unless you interrupt this with an outside force. Second, when someone or an organization is offering something you are interested in, do it! Volunteer, apply for a job, ask for an internship, sign up for a class, lean in. So, we leaned in, still leaning actually and it’s amazing! My husband Daniel asked Virgil is he would like to come for a studio tour, and he agreed. After seeing Daniel’s work, he asked if he would want to collaborate. Woop woop! A few weeks later we invited Virgil over for dinner and after being in our house for only a few moments Foster showed him around his home workshop and Virgil discovered some modified Nerf guns and was excited about his discovery. He asked Foster if he could use them in the movie he is creating. Foster agreed but also began sketching new weaponry. Virgil was impressed and asked if he could create what he had sketched. “Sure” responded Foster nonchalantly. During dinner Foster proceeded to create the weapons in a 3d software and Virgil was surprised again by Foster’s abilities to so quickly create beautiful, original designs that responded to Virgil’s own characters he created so seamlessly. New relationships were born, and they have been creating together ever since, all three of them.
Virgil created a ReVOLt showroom in Sante Fe ,NM for the 98th annual Indian Market. He had created similar relationships with other artists in other cities and invited several of them to join the pop up art show. It was impressive, fresh, awe inspiring and so much fun to be a part of. Foster had a wall of weapons and Virgil introduced him over and over explaining how impressed he is with Foster’s talent. He coached him through the awkwardness of discussing his art with people. Foster has autism, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, ADHD and profound dyslexia. School was often a painful experience for him and created significant depression which would turn down the volume on his life force and he would create less and less of his own work. We have tried a few different schools and one of the indicators of how well he is doing is the volume of work he is or is not producing. Does he want to wake up early and create all day every day? This is how I know if he is well or not; by observing his daily practices around exploring, creating and designing. Most of his work is done at home or in the studio with his dad. Sante Fe was his first opportunity to display his work and present and discuss it with strangers for 10 hours several days in a row. This was very challenging for him and brought up some old stories centered around shame and failure.
Virgil created a piece of traditional Cochiti pottery about Foster and his Twice Exceptional challenges and strengths. It was moved from a Scottsdale gallery to the ReVOlt showroom and last week was the first time Foster and I had seen it. The first night the gallery was open we had a VIP tour come through and Virgil asked me to talk about Foster and explain his Twice Exceptional strengths and challenges. Um, I was really choked up and it’s the first time I have ever publicly spoken about it to a group of people. And the pottery was there, Foster too. Phew, it was really intense. This was the first night. More people came, and I became more comfortable talking about it. Virgil introduced Foster and his work over and over. He met high ranking politicians, performers, Disney creators and so much more. Virgil coached him through it, our new artist friends cheered him on. I was on standby for as much or as little co-regulation as he wanted or needed. He was fiercely driven by his desire to sell some of his art. All of this created a powerful and magical environment for expansive growth. He transformed over the week. Seeds of confidence were sown and tended. Old stories fell away and new ones created. Expansive growth occurred. Years’ worth of social skills group and Applied Behavioral Therapy couldn’t have created this much growth and opportunity for him. Why? First off-safety. Virgil picked incredibly talented, forward thinking, revolutionary artists to join him. And, they were all Kind. Safe. The type of people you can co-regulate with. Their regulated nervous systems created the petri dish for Foster to grow new social skills. Their love, support and kindness were his substrate. Add the motivation of making money and the relevance of his art and boom, ingredients for life and new skills. Magic, really. He has new social skills that he relied on yesterday at our local farmers market. He Initiated conversion with a stranger. When it was time to leave and head back to Colorado, I sort of tried to reign in my overwhelming emotions when I thanked Virgil. I didn’t sob, but there was no way I could keep a steady voice when I expressed my gratitude towards him and the growth opportunities he created for Foster.
This experience felt whole, integrated. To openly discuss aspects of Foster’s school life that were steeped in shame, in one hand, and his triumphs in the other, was a brand new experience for our family. Foster has always created amazing inventions, machines and art, but it was done at home and largely unseen by society. To be celebrated as this unique, whole person, and his creations, was deeply healing. The magic of this stills stirs in my chest. My heart is full.
“Falld” is part of the Taboo II series. Below are images and artist statement by Virgil Ortiz.
“Growing up and living with Dyslexia, Asperger syndrome, and ADHD is an unimaginable personal and social challenge. During my time at Colorado College, I had the opportunity to learn from 15-year-old Foster what it’s like to live with these disorders. As a kid, he thought he was a failure. He showed me one of his own drawings illustrating how he felt about his failures. He saw himself as an extended figure, surrounded by the words, “falld”, meaning “failed” – an intensified expression of his personal feelings and perception. He felt he had to pull himself up every day, so I put him at the top of the mountain, the apex of this piece. He loves to mountain climb, so that seemed appropriate. The other figures are carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders and at the same time, getting ready to toss Foster’s “drawing” away as he overcomes his feelings of failure to achieve personal success. I see him standing tall, entering a place of non-duality where the understanding of his neurodiversity can have its meaning outside and separate of how and what it means to others.” -VO