WordPress says that I haven’t journaled for four days, but it feels much longer. It feels like so many things have happened. Some projects I have been working on for months have finally moved to a new stage. I was given new options for finishing my Reconciliation certificate – another process getting unstuck. I have found that a few timid wild strawberry plants on my back yard have grown into a patch. But most importantly, and quite unexpectedly, I went to my first therapy session. It didn’t feel cathartic, but afterwards I felt lighter and calmer, as if the emotional and somatic storm has calmed down and constant inner dialogue has paused. I know better to believe that this condition will last, but I do have my next appointment, so I am not afraid. It is a long journey and I am curious who I will find at the end of it, or along the way.

I have to pause and hug myself for all the work I am putting in this year into healing. I have to pause and admire how everything in inter-related. Would I have sought therapy if it wasn’t for that fateful conversation with Nicole and Stephanie back in April? I may not be good at self-love, care and liberation, but all it took are a few little gestures in that direction: signing up for a community of practice (deciding that yes, it is for me and it is worth time and money), gradually opening up to discuss things like sex, pleasure, religious trauma, anger, my relationship with my body, slowly building habits of self-care and self-love, dancing. There is so much happening and I know that the feeling of drowning is going to come back, but maybe I start feeling the current.

I was thinking over my experience on the bus back home and realized that what felt so serendipitous about it was that Maya’s invitation fell square to the time and place when I was free and in the city – I didn’t have to move things around or agonize about the response and making things work – I just had to accept. Which made me think about the way things usually happen:

usually, whenever I receive an ask or an invitation, I FEEL OBLIGED to accept it, even if it doesn’t work with my schedule or doesn’t feel right for me. Every time, I feel like I am rearranging my life to meet the expectation of whoever wants anything from me. And as I do it, I feel stretched between desire to please, resentment, guilt for feeling resentful and mental overwhelm from having to arrange the logistics of my life around the priorities of people who have no idea that I feel this way. The powerful thing that happened during the therapy session today was when Maya asked me to say no, loudly, with a gesture, like I really mean it. The she asked me how it felt. It took me a while of scanning, searching, listening to realize that it felt spacious, as if I reclaimed a little more space. We spoke about boundaries and how saying no helps us to claim our agency. This! The more I think about it, the more I understand how often I refuse to claim my agency: to say no, or to say yes, to ask for what I want, to ask for help. Instead, I choose to do everything myself, to take on me more than I can carry, to never ask for what I need or want and I systematically end up feeling defensive, guilty, unappreciated and overwhelmed.

So, here is my first healing homework (that I give to myself): to reclaim my agency, or, if I can’t do it, gesture towards it. Start in the easiest way: by saying no when it feels right and liberating and when it is possible to do it with love. Eventually, it will lead me to saying yes (although even now I cannot imagine myself telling someone loud and clear what I want).