So.. I’m a Scorpio, all deep & twisted, dark and light & shit. I’m a mother to a fiercely badass young woman about to graduate college. I’m a kickass massage & bodywork therapist. Working w/the biomechanics of movement to address pain, dysfunction and misalignment. Helping bodies live better, one soul at a time. I’m also a childhood trauma survivor and have spent a lifetime finding ways, good and bad, to process my cutting & CPTSD. At my core though, the very heart of me, I’m a writer.
Pain most often turns into art for me, in one way or another. The whole raw, unfiltered, naked and brutally honest truth of it. And so, to give all of that emotional fuel and passion an outlet, I write. About anything and everything. It’s how I process my visceral experience of this life. Candles lit, music, whiskey and words flowing, most often into the sweet and tender parts of the morning, where everything is so damn quiet and still, you can actually think, feel and process through all of the shit we download on a daily basis. Nights like these help keep me sane, keep at least most of my demons in check haha. Many people though don’t really swim all too well in the deep end, more comfortable boxing themselves up in the safe, shallow confines of small talk & superficial connections. So little oxygen, so little room to breathe in the shallows. It’s exhausting, makes me hyperventilate and triggers my anxiety. I on the other hand much prefer and feel at home diving headfirst straight into the heart of conversation. No filters, no walls, with those precious souls willing to dive in deep with me. Endeavoring to create real & meaningful connections wherever I go. To question the what’s, who’s and why’s of why we’re here. Such uniquely rich and layered stories we all have to tell, if only more of us had the strength to lay down our fears/blocks and guards just long enough to be able to speak with naked, unadulterated abandon about the truth of what we need, who we are and the yearnings that make up our souls along this wild journey. A world in which if only we all had the courage to allow ourselves to fully see and be seen in return. Am going to share some of my whiskey laden late-night musings/madness with you. You’ve gotten this far, so I sense in you a fellow traveler, a caring & deep soul maybe going through some heavy shit, & that ya might be able to hang and feel me for a while.
Finding myself thinking recently about a kaleidoscope of things, about endings and beginnings, about the glowing pride & joy and yet sharp aching tug on my heart as I watch my daughter enter so powerfully and steadfastly into her own adulthood & journey forward. About all the things I want to create for myself and grow into next with this burgeoning new threshold I find myself standing before. And of all the fears and self-doubt that’s held me back in a myriad of different ways. Am I ready for this world on my own – without the mantle of motherhood as my shield or primary defining characteristic, am I good enough/strong enough, talented enough, brazen, ballsy & confident enough.. The sweet, sleepy comfort of the known vs the abrasive discomfort of the unknown, of growth and expansion, of putting myself out there.
Change is a painful but beautiful constant. Souls have the potential to shine so damn brightly because we can choose to sit so intimately with our dark. The more intimately we come to know our shadow selves the more light we have the power to create. Giving us the ability to transform all of that energy, of recalibrating/recreating our balance and equilibrium in healthy ways. One thing cannot exist without the other, two parts of the same whole. Yin and yang. Feminine and masculine. Dominant and submissive. Good and bad. Emotions are simply energies in different forms. Grief, rage, love, lust, passion, joy.. Vibrating at different levels. Change the vibration, the thought pattern, and change the energy. Transmuting the direction and experience of it into something more profoundly, more achingly precious. Pain and discomfort becoming the catalyst for the creation of beauty and growth. The ending of something is just as much the beginning of something else. Questions I ask myself, What comes next? What do I make room for? How has this grown & changed me? What’s it made me want, now more than ever? What lessons has it taught me and how has it made us all oh so ready for this next part of our story. Where am I still holding back? When dealing with adversity & heartache I dive into it headfirst. Swim as deeply into myself as I can go, like a fucking mermaid, peering into the darkest corners of the abyss of it all. Because as I make my way back up to the surface with the wounds and scars of all this hard earned self-knowledge, I‘m reminded of how much more love and light exist everywhere I look – because I God Damned put it there. And I breathe more deeply & fully because of it.
I’ve been at this self-imposed starting gate for too long. Holding back. Chewing, gnawing, choking on this fucking harness. Biting at the bit. Foaming at the mouth. An animal, a beast, a wild thing longing & fighting to run free again. Waiting for some self-perceived, last magic thing I needed to get, or do, or be, in order to move onto the next stage, to get in the race, to get started moving forward fully. Well I’m fucking ready. With or without any of that shit my mind created for me that kept me from moving forward. I don’t need it, any of it, anymore. I’ve been ready. I have everything I need. I always have. I’m taking back what’s always been mine. My wild, my fierce, my everything.
In the dark we‘re our own brightest light. Death and rebirth & all that shit. Life’s stretch marks pressed deep against our hearts, making it bigger/wider and more open to giving and receiving love. Love and aching, joy and grief. Carving into us like rivers into the earth, like veins mapped across the human body. Life is too damn short not to risk everything. Fire, Ashes, Phoenix. Destruction and renewal. An awesomely unique work of fucking art in progress, each one of us is. Shedding our skins as we go along. Hearts broken and put back together stronger. Over and over again. Life, a constant cycle of mini deaths, evolutions/incarnations until our very last breath on this earth. The most important thing to remember is to love and nurture ourselves and each other all along the way. In as many ways as we possibly can, as we get better, wiser, faster and just more fucking powerfully badass each and every time we come out through the other side.
So the question then becomes not, am I ready for this world, but – Is this world ready for me?
Because here I fucking come.
~with love, Ceci
~ Raw & Real with Ceci ~ 