self-healing

Honing Our Witness Practice

/ Lauri Ann Lumby / 1 Comment

Being an objective witness to the natural unfolding of the universe without interjecting our own need to control, our unhealed wounds, or our desperate desire to feel safe, is a really difficult task. If we have the ability to read people, events and choices for the likely outcome they will produce, it makes being witness even more challenging.

As one who has almost always been right (I admit a shred of pride in sharing this, but mostly it is a statement of historical fact), it physically hurts me to watch people I care about stepping in a direction that I know will likely cause them harm. Further, it enrages me when I watch liars and charlatans taking advantage of the weak and vulnerable and gaining wealth and notoriety while doing so. As a first-born who developed the defense mechanisms of fixer and protector, I want with my whole soul to intervene. Intervention, I have learned, rarely helps and most often harms. (The exception being life-choices that may be life-threatening.)

Being an objective witness requires that we lay our need to control aside, allowing individuals to make their own choices – no matter how poor those choices might be. The savior in me cringes in even writing this, but it is true. What I am continually reminded of is that each of us is on our own individual journey and who we choose to be and how we choose to follow our path is really nobody else’s business but our own. We are here to learn our own lessons – or not learn them as the case may be.

Instead of reaching out in warning, putting forth a challenge, or getting emotionally worked up over human beings’ choices, we are invited to stand back. Watch. Observe. For me, this includes the additional practice of silencing my inner critic who stands in judgment with arms crossed in self-righteousness.  Further, I find I am invited to acknowledge the strong outward pull of my unhealed wounds of fixer and protector, and draw that pull inward, reminding myself that it is not my job to fix or protect others from their potentially harmful decisions. Sometimes I have to sit on my hands, bite my tongue, and close my eyes, my whole body shaking in effort as I wrestle that former impulse to intervene into stillness.

Being objective witness is not easy, but as my Zen friends would say, “We are all here in our own sit.” It is not my job to interfere with the life-journey of another. The best I can do is use what I see as seeds for my own healing and growth, while giving others the freedom to experience the consequences of their choices and the opportunities for learning that come in those choices. Further, I can share the lessons I’ve learned and the tools I’ve gathered in the event that some might find them helpful.

How are you honing your witness practice?

Being objective witness begins with our own journey of self-awareness and healing. The Authentic Freedom protocol developed by Lauri Ann Lumby is a great place to get started with that healing.

Learn more about Authentic Freedom here and how you can begin that journey.

Unraveling the Wound of ME

/ Lauri Ann Lumby / Leave a comment

I don’t know about you, but this past week has been quite a doozy!  I wouldn’t even bother to write about it except that nearly everyone I know has shared the common experience of a “what the heck was that?” kind of week.

Some of the things I’ve heard, witnessed, and been a party to:

  • DEEP Depression the likes of which we haven’t seen in months/years.
  • Strangely triggering experiences with disproportionate reactions.
  • Not just rugs, entire carpets being pulled out from beneath us.
  • A feeling (literal and figurative) of losing the ground beneath our feet.
  • Old, ancient wounds – ones we thought we were done with – paying us a visit.
  • Sudden losses including the ending of relationships.
  • Final straws on camel’s backs calling for immediate response.
  • Complete immobility, lack of motivation and/or interest…in anything.
  • Unexplained sorrow and intermittent tears.

I can’t even begin to offer an explanation of why any of this is happening, or the causes behind it.  I just know it is and has been. For me it’s been a week of writhing and groaning with a whole lot of nothing.  Nothing to do.  Nothing to be. Just nothing. And the realization that there are just not enough shows on Netflix to soothe a week such as the one we just had.

Yes, the world itself is insane. But, for me anyway, the past week felt much more personal – but even that said, I can’t put a finger on what the personal is. My normal inquiry, “What is the wound that is asking to be healed?” just isn’t working here. Either I’m fresh out of wounds, or I, myself, am the wound.

Now there’s a thought!  What if the wound is ME?

I don’t mean this in any sense of self-loathing or self-rejection (or do I?). But…. accompanying the writhing this past week was a whole lot of life-reviews. Visions and memories of really old stuff – experiences that caused me shame or regret, decisions I made that went wrongly, past relationships, old jobs that didn’t fit, every single experience/relationship that felt abusive in some way.

I’m not one to spend time entertaining regret. Shame, however, is another story. Shame, that in hindsight, I had no reason to feel. You see, it wasn’t my shame. It was someone else’s rejection, critique, or condemnation of me for any number of reasons. I wasn’t thin enough. I ate too much. I was too smart. I saw through their lies and bullshit. I couldn’t perform a certain task (through no fault of my own). My lifestyle choices and desire for ease didn’t fit theirs. I exercised the wrong way. I could see the truth they didn’t want me to see. My goals, desires, wants, weren’t the same as theirs. I didn’t obey the rules they wanted to impose upon me. I questioned authority. I challenged hypocrisy.   

There was no reason for me to feel shame for any of this – but, as it turns out, I did/do. Why? Because the rejection, condemnation, etc. was PERSONAL. It wasn’t the actions or behaviors they were rejecting.  It was ME they were rejecting. It was ME because the things these individuals and institutions chose to reject were all based on WHO I TRULY AM. All those years in the past I spent trying to just be myself and being told WHO I AM is not ok.

  • My body is what it is and can’t be forced into a certain shape or size (no matter how hard I tried).
  • My metabolism is what it is and before menopause I had to eat large portions just to survive.
  • I’m smart. I can’t help it. I just am.  I know things. I remember things. I like to learn.
  • I prefer ease to chaos, gentle to harsh, peace to conflict.
  • I’m an introvert. I like people, but I thrive in solitude.
  • I’m outgoing but shy.
  • I don’t like to toot my own horn, or wave a banner to my success.
  • I’m humble.
  • I can read people and I know immediately when someone is lying, a liar, or taking advantage of my generosity and I have a visceral response to these awarenesses. I can’t help it.  I just know and the knowing is somatic.
  • I live by my own truth barometer and profess no outside perceived authority except MYSELF.

All of these things are true about me and part of who I am. I can’t help it. It’s just ME.

All this to come to the realization that indeed, the wound that is asking to be healed in me and which arose through all the weirdness this past week (for me anyway) is the wound of ME. Every single thing, experience, interaction, etc. that causes me to feel as if there is something wrong with ME. That something about ME is wrong. That I have to apologize for who I am or beg for what I need to be ME.

The wound that is asking to be healed is ME.

 Image credit: Facebook AI portrait generator. Turns out this one actually looks like me!  😊