I'm so glad you wrote this! So beautiful! It's so necessary to name the inversion wound and to make the reclaiming of connection as the next steps. I'm also glad you said that it's not about flipping to the other side. To me, making the inversion wound "wrong" is just another way to perpetuate hierarchy. I think the invitation of the more relational way/integral consciousness is to include the inversion within the wholeness. Thank you for being such a wise leader in these times! So inspired by you! 💖💖💖
Thanks Jenna! YES, it's the circle not the line. It's inclusive not divisive. I'm excited to explore this relational field some more. I'm feeling curious, interested, letting myself be there at the edge. It's uncomfortable and intriguing. New territory, what wants to be revealed. I sense that it's more re-membering than learning, more embodied than mental. Glad to be with you along this journey dear friend! 💜
Julie, This is one of your most powerful and necessary essays. Yes, to keep writing. I resonate with every word. "Healing begins by naming what has been lost and suppressed by telling the truth about the patriarchal and hierarchical narratives that have shaped us." Keep writing. I'm always at your back, walking with you, together, sister. xoxo my friend, thank you!
Thanks so much Prajna! I am currently opening up to something new in my life as I retire. I feel this incredible space birthing... and it's about community. Which is what this post arose from. I'm still very much in the process of this. (Funny instead of "much" I originally wrote "mush.") WOW that is exactly like how I feel, mush, a dissolving and becoming the mulch for what is asking to be expressed right now.
I so appreciate you Prajna, thanks for your kind and supportive words. I feel the same for you too dear sister. 💜
Absolutely essential message for these times. Thank you. Connection and being in service are a mean of advocacy, for our humanity and for our sanity. I'm printing out your piece, clipping around the edges and making a couple of pages in my journal that contain your wisdom -- because none of us can afford to "forget" right now. Sending you love and appreciation, Julie.
Wow Stephanie, I'm deeply touched that this is being added to your journal. Thank you for reading and assimilating! And I completely agree with you, none of us can afford to "forget" right now! This is the motivation that's moving me to write about the importance of restoration, re-MEMBER-ing, community, and our profound interconnection with each other and all of life! Sending love to you too! 💜
Daaaamn… Julie, this is such an incredibly important piece. It’s so interesting, I’ve been contemplating writing something about the integration of opposites on the path to wholeness, but I feel like you have covered that in such depth and clarity here already. I absolutely loved it.
Thanks Linnea, I deeply appreciate and am touched by what you have shared here. And I would go ahead and write it anyway, I know you will share somethings I didn't and in the beautiful way that Linnea brings insights to life. Glad to be on this journey with you! 💜
Inside these body temples for sure! It's all right here. No searching just remembering what we already are together. Glad to be traveling this path with you too Lila! 💜
Thank you for this wonderful post Julie. So much wisdom here! I love the way you're talking about community. I remember the first time you spoke to me about your family leaving together in the same house as a community. I immediately felt the awakening of a profound longing in myself. I felt what I missed without knowing it. As an highly sensitive woman, I need a lot to rest and reset in solitude. I have always felt community is not for me. Anyway, shortly after our conversation about your family/community, I received a dream: I was with people in a restaurant and I felt I didn't belong to this group. I decided to walk outside, made this strange step in another time space and started to run on a road in the forest. Then I took a path, and another one, getting further into the wild woods, until I found this community living by a river. They were completely cut from the rest of the world, cut from modernity. Children didn't go to school and they were playing joyfully in the water. Adults were making bread, spining wool, taking time... They all lived a very simple life, and they looked so happy. They looked so real ! I wanted to stay with them. When I woke up and realized it was a dream I could'nt stop crying. And I still feel this huge longing for this community. Thank you for reminding me that it is possible to live in happy communities 🙏❤
WOW Sandrine, what a powerful dream! I'm left with my heart crying too! This longing is real and hard to reconcile when we live in a world that fragments, separates by polarizing. It's violent. If you’re not joining the show, then no wonder the rest of us wants to be hermits. And I feel this is the greatest "rebellion" we can do right now. Create community. Ones of restoration, care, support... that rely on the feminine principles of love. I’m taking a deep dive into this right now. It’s far from perfect, but it’s real. Love to you - see you soon! 💜
Love this Kelly - I laughed at Graceful Fighting. YES we need to be able to say no, to dissent, to disagree. But not with polarization, but with these other qualities that guide our way. Listening too! 💜
This is such a beautiful and powerful post my dear friend. So many sections were yes yes yes!!! ...We all crave to belong...deeply deeply belong...to belong somewhere that we can feel deeply safe and held, respected and loved. And some do, and some feel lost, adrift, different...
Your post invites me to hope that there is a place for the Lone Wolf to come back to the pack, a place for the "back sheep of the family" to be welcomed for who they are, a place for the misfit to belong...we all hold parts of those inside of us, and to welcome them in by ourselves to ourselves I feel is a beginning of belonging...maybe as you said...it is "naming it." Thank you xxx
Thanks Sam and I love what you wrote here about the Lone Wolf. And why I'm so enamored with creating community right now. In a world that segments and isolates, we need a place for those that have been marginalized, like the black sheep or misfit. These people have so much to say and offer. Their voice needs to be heard, so that can ripple out into the world. And it creates belonging. We need to feel connected, so imperative right now especially. Thanks for being here dear friend. I so appreciate who you are and what you bring. Much love to you! 💜
I love that these conversations are happening, that you are having them. I see this as a natural response to what is unfolding in our world. And I completely agree with you... "We must find a way to rejoin the continuum that has been fractured." I see intentional community as this. 💜
A deep and thought provoking post Julie. I wonder, while living in the ashram and doing everything together in community, did you have time for solitude? I value a sense of community and togetherness, and like you, I too believe that much more is achieved in collaboration with others. Still, I need my solitude. And value that equally. What was that experience like for you, from that perspective?
Thanks for this question Alegria! There was a lot of togetherness. I even shared a room (it had two bunk beds) with someone, and during busy times, three someone’s. One way I created space for myself in that environment, since I had a bottom bunk, I used a drape that I dropped down which gave me some privacy. I also meditated a lot. I went walking or running by myself. I also spent time at the nearby marina/park, especially when I needed to be alone. But during that period of living there, I really loved being with these people. We felt like what a true family should feel like. We cared and supported each other. 💜
Julia, I enjoyed this very much as my introduction to your writing and philosophy. Your friend Linnea Butler shared this piece in our Leading Edge Community (built by Tom Morgan who is also here on Substack). I found myself mostly nodding in agreement (especially in your comments around the essential community aspect of immediate family) but also frowning at a few points in the piece and asking why particular perspectives didn’t resonate with me. Much of what you identify as separation can be traced back to what emerged as the doctrine of Cartesian Dualism in the early period of the Enlightenment where the things of the physical body where seen as something entirely separate from the things of the spirit - all of modern healthcare is built on that fallacy. The same thinking that created that hideous and unnecessary dichotomy has pervaded every aspect of modern society leading to the immiseration of mind, body and spirit that you eloquently describe. Thank you for your writing and looking forward to working my way through your archive.
Thank you for taking the time to read so closely and reflect so thoughtfully. I really appreciate you naming both where this piece resonated and where it didn’t fully land. This place of friction is where restorative community does its best healing.
I agree with you that Cartesian Dualism and the Enlightenment frameworks that followed, deeply shaped modern systems, particularly medicine, and reinforced the harmful split between mind, body and spirit. That lineage matters, and I see it as a powerful amplifier of the separation we’re living with today.
In my work, I’m also pointing to something much older. A relational rupture that lives not only in philosophy, but in our nervous systems, our bodies through gender roles, ritual loss, land appropriations and power structures. For me, Cartesian Dualism is one expression of a much larger inversion rather than its origin. In other words, it codified and legitimized something already in motion. What this means is we are already connected, it’s not about learning or changing our thinking (even though these are so very important) it’s more about remembering what we already know and are beyond cultural and familial conditioning.
I’m grateful you shared where your experience nodded and where it frowned. Those edges are often where the most meaningful conversations begin. Im glad our paths crossed here.
I love that Lila, "I am pregnant with LIVING questions." I literally feel that right now, in so many ways. It's where this post came from. It's where I'm drawn to be and what is calling me deeper.
I love what you shared here, I'm hearing Mary Magdalene... for she was and is a living gospel. Love to you sweet sister! 💜
I love this post Julie, and I love the communities we have here on Substack.
I also love the idea of communities IRL, and yet at the same time, I’m increasingly aware that in-person communities need a shared language for navigating the inevitable relational friction. For me, that’s where the rubber really meets the road.
YES! I'm reading a book right now that is addressing this. Peter Block, The Community the Structure of Belonging. We do need a shared language. And to also remember and come home to the way of knowing and communicating that once came natural to us, but has been forgotten in this world of extraction, production and consuming. Looking forward to exploring this more in community and in writing. YES - it's where the rubber meets the road, for sure! 💜
Yes—exactly. A shared language and the capacity to stay present when friction arises. Without that, community collapses back into performance or avoidance.
I love what you name about remembering ways of knowing and communicating that once came naturally—before extraction, productivity, and consumption shaped how we relate. That remembering feels like the real work right now.
I’m really glad to be exploring this edge with you, both in writing and the edge we can experience in lived community♥️🙏🕊️
Likewise! I'm glad to be exploring this edge with you too, Camilla. So important right now! It's one thing to name what is going on in this world. And it's another to sense into how to heal this chasm. It's definitely an edge! And how do be and do this without collapsing back into performance or avoidance? An important question, as you brought forward. I'm looking forward to exploring this more in the future, it feels important right now. And as I sense into this depth of calling, my yes is resounding.
Okay, I'm having a flash... (it's not menopausal, tee hee)... how about doing some sort of collaboration together? Again this is just a flash. If you open to this send me a DM and lets talk more! Either way I'm so glad we share this space together, I love what you bring forward! 💜
Julie, I really appreciate the way you’re holding this question — especially the distinction between naming what’s broken and actually learning how to stay present where repair would need to happen. That feels like the edge, exactly.
I’ll share for context that I’ve also been in some exploratory conversation with Linnea Butler, who mentioned she’s collaborating with you and is in the early stages of forming a community where this kind of inquiry might live. I’m listening carefully right now and letting things take shape slowly, rather than stepping into anything formal.
I’m genuinely glad we’re sensing into the same terrain, though, and I value the way you’re bringing it forward. It does feel important. And I’m grateful we share this space too💜
So many profound ponderables here, Julie!! I will confess that this was my first time hearing the language of "inversion wound," but my body and soul instantly recognize it and the constellation of "symptoms" it wreaks.
I'll be chewing on this for a while. But some immediate thoughts arose around how early separation with self is so often the price of belonging in a dysfunctional family unit. The child self is presented with an impossible choice: abandon your connection with your authentic, core self, or be abandoned by others who can't make space for it because they abandoned themselves long ago. I'm guessing that most, if not all, children make the choice to self-abandon. And sometimes (always?) then to enmesh with the dysfunctional family unit.
And that leads me to note that enmeshment is a very confusing form of separation! Enmeshment isn't relationality in the sense you've described. And as I said above, it results from an abandonment of self. So it would seem that it's a delicate dance of maintaining a sturdy connection with self (and spirit) so that one can be truly relational with others. Complicated!
Thanks so much, as always, for sharing your wisdom so generously. I'm eager to read your future posts!! ☯️💜💖☯️
Thanks Keith - and in all honesty I'm eager to read my future posts too. I'm in an unfolding, a birthing. To be revealed...
What you said here Keith, brought something up in me around loneliness and isolation. That these experiences don't necessarily mean not being around people. That sometimes the most problematic loneliness is feeling alone amongst people. Because outwardly it might look relational which could then negate feelings of loneliness. Then add self-abandonment to the mix - OMGoddess. So when you say "enmeshment as a form of separation" this brings it all back to how to be relational?
I have no solid answers here. I believe we are all trying to discover this together. But the first thing that comes to mind is safety. Nothing can shift if it isn't a safe space. To be in that "delicate dance" means feeling safe in order to be available. Yes it is complicated. To be present with our entanglement (which is a beautiful thing) while untangling this inversion wound together. 💜
I look forward to what's revealed in your process, Julie. I feel sure you are birthing something extraordinary.
Thanks for all these thoughts on my thoughts...I agree that if there isn't a "good enough" level of safety, we can't reasonably expect to be relational in any sort of healthy or restorative way. If we're either up above or down below our nervous system's window of tolerance, all bets are off.
I know that for me, the worst, most crushing and deep form of loneliness and abject misery has come when I've been surrounded by people but have nearly entirely abandoned myself in the process of gaining "belonging" The kind of love and relationality that requires one to self-abandon is more like possession...the way a spider "loves" a fly.
Yes abandoning ourselves in order to belong... that's the real painful one. Your analogy is so right on, the way a spider "loves" a fly. Giving away the ownership of ourselves, like surrendering the pink slip of our being to others just for a sense of belonging that isn’t real. How can true caring and love exist when falsities are the mode of operandi. Yet when safety is of high concern, we turn that care and love on to ourselves as that self-sacrifice. It’s a hard one. Like today and WWII where people had to play the game to not be killed. It’s tough times, and why healthy community building feels so imperative to me right now. Love to you dear one! 💜
Yes, the raw reality of these very tough times we're living through really pushes us to the edge of our integrity and sometimes forces us to make decisions we wouldn't otherwise make. I agree wholeheartedly that healthy community is a critical piece of staying as aligned as we possibly can. And healthy community includes all the unseen supports that are always available (*bows deeply to dark goddesses and other forces of love*) 💖🕊️🤝
I'm so glad you wrote this! So beautiful! It's so necessary to name the inversion wound and to make the reclaiming of connection as the next steps. I'm also glad you said that it's not about flipping to the other side. To me, making the inversion wound "wrong" is just another way to perpetuate hierarchy. I think the invitation of the more relational way/integral consciousness is to include the inversion within the wholeness. Thank you for being such a wise leader in these times! So inspired by you! 💖💖💖
Thanks Jenna! YES, it's the circle not the line. It's inclusive not divisive. I'm excited to explore this relational field some more. I'm feeling curious, interested, letting myself be there at the edge. It's uncomfortable and intriguing. New territory, what wants to be revealed. I sense that it's more re-membering than learning, more embodied than mental. Glad to be with you along this journey dear friend! 💜
Julie, This is one of your most powerful and necessary essays. Yes, to keep writing. I resonate with every word. "Healing begins by naming what has been lost and suppressed by telling the truth about the patriarchal and hierarchical narratives that have shaped us." Keep writing. I'm always at your back, walking with you, together, sister. xoxo my friend, thank you!
Thanks so much Prajna! I am currently opening up to something new in my life as I retire. I feel this incredible space birthing... and it's about community. Which is what this post arose from. I'm still very much in the process of this. (Funny instead of "much" I originally wrote "mush.") WOW that is exactly like how I feel, mush, a dissolving and becoming the mulch for what is asking to be expressed right now.
I so appreciate you Prajna, thanks for your kind and supportive words. I feel the same for you too dear sister. 💜
Beautiful mush, ha ha ha ha ha. I love this thank you.
Absolutely essential message for these times. Thank you. Connection and being in service are a mean of advocacy, for our humanity and for our sanity. I'm printing out your piece, clipping around the edges and making a couple of pages in my journal that contain your wisdom -- because none of us can afford to "forget" right now. Sending you love and appreciation, Julie.
Wow Stephanie, I'm deeply touched that this is being added to your journal. Thank you for reading and assimilating! And I completely agree with you, none of us can afford to "forget" right now! This is the motivation that's moving me to write about the importance of restoration, re-MEMBER-ing, community, and our profound interconnection with each other and all of life! Sending love to you too! 💜
Daaaamn… Julie, this is such an incredibly important piece. It’s so interesting, I’ve been contemplating writing something about the integration of opposites on the path to wholeness, but I feel like you have covered that in such depth and clarity here already. I absolutely loved it.
Thanks Linnea, I deeply appreciate and am touched by what you have shared here. And I would go ahead and write it anyway, I know you will share somethings I didn't and in the beautiful way that Linnea brings insights to life. Glad to be on this journey with you! 💜
And I with you 💜🙏💜
“Integrating opposites”. YES!
It begins with God chose flesh…became flesh.
For so long we’ve been looking for god, but god isn’t lost…right here…inside of these body temples…already wired for connection….
This is the schism out of which all evils are birthed.
Thank you Linnea. Thank you Julie.
I travel this path with you. 🔥🩵🔥
Inside these body temples for sure! It's all right here. No searching just remembering what we already are together. Glad to be traveling this path with you too Lila! 💜
I’m honored to walk with you also, Julie.
Thank you for traveling the path. It is soooo needed at this time in history. 💜🙏💜
Thank you for this wonderful post Julie. So much wisdom here! I love the way you're talking about community. I remember the first time you spoke to me about your family leaving together in the same house as a community. I immediately felt the awakening of a profound longing in myself. I felt what I missed without knowing it. As an highly sensitive woman, I need a lot to rest and reset in solitude. I have always felt community is not for me. Anyway, shortly after our conversation about your family/community, I received a dream: I was with people in a restaurant and I felt I didn't belong to this group. I decided to walk outside, made this strange step in another time space and started to run on a road in the forest. Then I took a path, and another one, getting further into the wild woods, until I found this community living by a river. They were completely cut from the rest of the world, cut from modernity. Children didn't go to school and they were playing joyfully in the water. Adults were making bread, spining wool, taking time... They all lived a very simple life, and they looked so happy. They looked so real ! I wanted to stay with them. When I woke up and realized it was a dream I could'nt stop crying. And I still feel this huge longing for this community. Thank you for reminding me that it is possible to live in happy communities 🙏❤
WOW Sandrine, what a powerful dream! I'm left with my heart crying too! This longing is real and hard to reconcile when we live in a world that fragments, separates by polarizing. It's violent. If you’re not joining the show, then no wonder the rest of us wants to be hermits. And I feel this is the greatest "rebellion" we can do right now. Create community. Ones of restoration, care, support... that rely on the feminine principles of love. I’m taking a deep dive into this right now. It’s far from perfect, but it’s real. Love to you - see you soon! 💜
Love your writings, your voice, your themes!
Thanks so much Melinda! 💜
I love this - as to ideal community what has stayed with me is M.Scott Peck’s definition of true community. True Community:
Inclusivity
Commitment
Consensus
Realism
Contemplation
Safety/Vulnerability
Graceful Fighting
Shared Leadership
And his stages of development : Pseudocommunity
Chaos
Emptiness
True Community
Love this Kelly - I laughed at Graceful Fighting. YES we need to be able to say no, to dissent, to disagree. But not with polarization, but with these other qualities that guide our way. Listening too! 💜
This is such a beautiful and powerful post my dear friend. So many sections were yes yes yes!!! ...We all crave to belong...deeply deeply belong...to belong somewhere that we can feel deeply safe and held, respected and loved. And some do, and some feel lost, adrift, different...
Your post invites me to hope that there is a place for the Lone Wolf to come back to the pack, a place for the "back sheep of the family" to be welcomed for who they are, a place for the misfit to belong...we all hold parts of those inside of us, and to welcome them in by ourselves to ourselves I feel is a beginning of belonging...maybe as you said...it is "naming it." Thank you xxx
Thanks Sam and I love what you wrote here about the Lone Wolf. And why I'm so enamored with creating community right now. In a world that segments and isolates, we need a place for those that have been marginalized, like the black sheep or misfit. These people have so much to say and offer. Their voice needs to be heard, so that can ripple out into the world. And it creates belonging. We need to feel connected, so imperative right now especially. Thanks for being here dear friend. I so appreciate who you are and what you bring. Much love to you! 💜
Thank you for exploring this topic here, Julie! I was on a walk with two of my recovery sisters today, and some of these topics were discussed.
I will share this essay with them!
We must find a way to rejoin the continuum that has been fractured.
I love that these conversations are happening, that you are having them. I see this as a natural response to what is unfolding in our world. And I completely agree with you... "We must find a way to rejoin the continuum that has been fractured." I see intentional community as this. 💜
A deep and thought provoking post Julie. I wonder, while living in the ashram and doing everything together in community, did you have time for solitude? I value a sense of community and togetherness, and like you, I too believe that much more is achieved in collaboration with others. Still, I need my solitude. And value that equally. What was that experience like for you, from that perspective?
Thanks for this question Alegria! There was a lot of togetherness. I even shared a room (it had two bunk beds) with someone, and during busy times, three someone’s. One way I created space for myself in that environment, since I had a bottom bunk, I used a drape that I dropped down which gave me some privacy. I also meditated a lot. I went walking or running by myself. I also spent time at the nearby marina/park, especially when I needed to be alone. But during that period of living there, I really loved being with these people. We felt like what a true family should feel like. We cared and supported each other. 💜
Thank you for replying Julie. I’m so glad to know it was a wonderful experience for you.
Julia, I enjoyed this very much as my introduction to your writing and philosophy. Your friend Linnea Butler shared this piece in our Leading Edge Community (built by Tom Morgan who is also here on Substack). I found myself mostly nodding in agreement (especially in your comments around the essential community aspect of immediate family) but also frowning at a few points in the piece and asking why particular perspectives didn’t resonate with me. Much of what you identify as separation can be traced back to what emerged as the doctrine of Cartesian Dualism in the early period of the Enlightenment where the things of the physical body where seen as something entirely separate from the things of the spirit - all of modern healthcare is built on that fallacy. The same thinking that created that hideous and unnecessary dichotomy has pervaded every aspect of modern society leading to the immiseration of mind, body and spirit that you eloquently describe. Thank you for your writing and looking forward to working my way through your archive.
Thank you for taking the time to read so closely and reflect so thoughtfully. I really appreciate you naming both where this piece resonated and where it didn’t fully land. This place of friction is where restorative community does its best healing.
I agree with you that Cartesian Dualism and the Enlightenment frameworks that followed, deeply shaped modern systems, particularly medicine, and reinforced the harmful split between mind, body and spirit. That lineage matters, and I see it as a powerful amplifier of the separation we’re living with today.
In my work, I’m also pointing to something much older. A relational rupture that lives not only in philosophy, but in our nervous systems, our bodies through gender roles, ritual loss, land appropriations and power structures. For me, Cartesian Dualism is one expression of a much larger inversion rather than its origin. In other words, it codified and legitimized something already in motion. What this means is we are already connected, it’s not about learning or changing our thinking (even though these are so very important) it’s more about remembering what we already know and are beyond cultural and familial conditioning.
I’m grateful you shared where your experience nodded and where it frowned. Those edges are often where the most meaningful conversations begin. Im glad our paths crossed here.
Beautiful Julie! Right there with you. I have no answers, but I am pregnant with LIVING questions…it’s a good space to listen from. 🩵
Incarnation, Relationality,
Loving My neighbor - as myself
Flesh of my flesh - bone of my bone…
This is the gospel that we are now trying to Live! The one that actually works…
May God return to flesh…where she has been exiled from for so long.
I love that Lila, "I am pregnant with LIVING questions." I literally feel that right now, in so many ways. It's where this post came from. It's where I'm drawn to be and what is calling me deeper.
I love what you shared here, I'm hearing Mary Magdalene... for she was and is a living gospel. Love to you sweet sister! 💜
I love this post Julie, and I love the communities we have here on Substack.
I also love the idea of communities IRL, and yet at the same time, I’m increasingly aware that in-person communities need a shared language for navigating the inevitable relational friction. For me, that’s where the rubber really meets the road.
YES! I'm reading a book right now that is addressing this. Peter Block, The Community the Structure of Belonging. We do need a shared language. And to also remember and come home to the way of knowing and communicating that once came natural to us, but has been forgotten in this world of extraction, production and consuming. Looking forward to exploring this more in community and in writing. YES - it's where the rubber meets the road, for sure! 💜
Yes—exactly. A shared language and the capacity to stay present when friction arises. Without that, community collapses back into performance or avoidance.
I love what you name about remembering ways of knowing and communicating that once came naturally—before extraction, productivity, and consumption shaped how we relate. That remembering feels like the real work right now.
I’m really glad to be exploring this edge with you, both in writing and the edge we can experience in lived community♥️🙏🕊️
Likewise! I'm glad to be exploring this edge with you too, Camilla. So important right now! It's one thing to name what is going on in this world. And it's another to sense into how to heal this chasm. It's definitely an edge! And how do be and do this without collapsing back into performance or avoidance? An important question, as you brought forward. I'm looking forward to exploring this more in the future, it feels important right now. And as I sense into this depth of calling, my yes is resounding.
Okay, I'm having a flash... (it's not menopausal, tee hee)... how about doing some sort of collaboration together? Again this is just a flash. If you open to this send me a DM and lets talk more! Either way I'm so glad we share this space together, I love what you bring forward! 💜
Julie, I really appreciate the way you’re holding this question — especially the distinction between naming what’s broken and actually learning how to stay present where repair would need to happen. That feels like the edge, exactly.
I’ll share for context that I’ve also been in some exploratory conversation with Linnea Butler, who mentioned she’s collaborating with you and is in the early stages of forming a community where this kind of inquiry might live. I’m listening carefully right now and letting things take shape slowly, rather than stepping into anything formal.
I’m genuinely glad we’re sensing into the same terrain, though, and I value the way you’re bringing it forward. It does feel important. And I’m grateful we share this space too💜
P.S. Your “flash” made me grin, and I can relate😁
Love this exploration, Julie.
Thanks Allysha - feeling passionately called to this right now. 💜
Yes. Beautiful.
Thanks Carla! Appreciate you being here and reading! 💜
So many profound ponderables here, Julie!! I will confess that this was my first time hearing the language of "inversion wound," but my body and soul instantly recognize it and the constellation of "symptoms" it wreaks.
I'll be chewing on this for a while. But some immediate thoughts arose around how early separation with self is so often the price of belonging in a dysfunctional family unit. The child self is presented with an impossible choice: abandon your connection with your authentic, core self, or be abandoned by others who can't make space for it because they abandoned themselves long ago. I'm guessing that most, if not all, children make the choice to self-abandon. And sometimes (always?) then to enmesh with the dysfunctional family unit.
And that leads me to note that enmeshment is a very confusing form of separation! Enmeshment isn't relationality in the sense you've described. And as I said above, it results from an abandonment of self. So it would seem that it's a delicate dance of maintaining a sturdy connection with self (and spirit) so that one can be truly relational with others. Complicated!
Thanks so much, as always, for sharing your wisdom so generously. I'm eager to read your future posts!! ☯️💜💖☯️
Thanks Keith - and in all honesty I'm eager to read my future posts too. I'm in an unfolding, a birthing. To be revealed...
What you said here Keith, brought something up in me around loneliness and isolation. That these experiences don't necessarily mean not being around people. That sometimes the most problematic loneliness is feeling alone amongst people. Because outwardly it might look relational which could then negate feelings of loneliness. Then add self-abandonment to the mix - OMGoddess. So when you say "enmeshment as a form of separation" this brings it all back to how to be relational?
I have no solid answers here. I believe we are all trying to discover this together. But the first thing that comes to mind is safety. Nothing can shift if it isn't a safe space. To be in that "delicate dance" means feeling safe in order to be available. Yes it is complicated. To be present with our entanglement (which is a beautiful thing) while untangling this inversion wound together. 💜
I look forward to what's revealed in your process, Julie. I feel sure you are birthing something extraordinary.
Thanks for all these thoughts on my thoughts...I agree that if there isn't a "good enough" level of safety, we can't reasonably expect to be relational in any sort of healthy or restorative way. If we're either up above or down below our nervous system's window of tolerance, all bets are off.
I know that for me, the worst, most crushing and deep form of loneliness and abject misery has come when I've been surrounded by people but have nearly entirely abandoned myself in the process of gaining "belonging" The kind of love and relationality that requires one to self-abandon is more like possession...the way a spider "loves" a fly.
Here's to discovering answers together! 🤝💞🙏🕊️
Yes abandoning ourselves in order to belong... that's the real painful one. Your analogy is so right on, the way a spider "loves" a fly. Giving away the ownership of ourselves, like surrendering the pink slip of our being to others just for a sense of belonging that isn’t real. How can true caring and love exist when falsities are the mode of operandi. Yet when safety is of high concern, we turn that care and love on to ourselves as that self-sacrifice. It’s a hard one. Like today and WWII where people had to play the game to not be killed. It’s tough times, and why healthy community building feels so imperative to me right now. Love to you dear one! 💜
Yes, the raw reality of these very tough times we're living through really pushes us to the edge of our integrity and sometimes forces us to make decisions we wouldn't otherwise make. I agree wholeheartedly that healthy community is a critical piece of staying as aligned as we possibly can. And healthy community includes all the unseen supports that are always available (*bows deeply to dark goddesses and other forces of love*) 💖🕊️🤝