Presence
Image by Luciana Aranha
The core wound of abandonment is a silent, but deafening beast.
My root chakra got a zap of this core wound the moment I entered this life; abandoned in unique ways by both my mother and my father. This left me on shaky ground with a foundation lacking a feeling of overall safety and trust, a skewed understanding of what love is, conditioning that would create a life-long people pleaser and achingly devoted perfectionist, and an empty well of deserving and self-confidence/self-love. This faulty start came with a thick, heavy amour and a masculine leading energy: both of which I would carry as an albatross for most of my life.
The heartbreaking truth of living with an abandonment wound is the manifesting of people aligned with the shaky foundation you have in your inner world.; funny how the outside reflects the inside so perfectly.
I’ve been on a long journey of healing this wound; this journey has included deep inner work and years of celibacy and aloneness.
At 45 I sat in retreat in Tulum Mexico with a dear sister healer and contemplated the men I had been manifesting in my life and I felt such shame for the reflection they showed back: each a perfect example of absence in some way.
In a perfect mirror they reflected back to me the self abandonment journey I embarked on with each one of them, in some cases I lost myself so much that I could barely recognize myself in the end.
I’ve learned in this life that the deepest loneliness I have ever felt has been in relationships with non-present partners.
The paradox is that instead of choosing solid ground, we choose (from within) the shaky ground that feels familiar; as a result we find ourselves in the exact abandonment that we are very familiar with.
In my experience we do this for several reasons: because we cannot help it (we are manifesting from the place we are, the result of a shaky foundation), because it feels familiar and we know the outcome ultimately, and/or because we have a desire to return to the root (literally) and potentially heal the wound with the new person (often times acting similar to the original abandonment).
The only real or true antidote to abandonment is presence.
Presence is manifested from an inner presence. And those of us healing our abandonment wounds who manifest presence are still triggered by it.
Full presence feels like a trigger because it is the exact opposite of what we are conditioned to accept. Full presence feels like a trigger because it requires our courage to take an unfamiliar path: often resulting in having to trust the present one - and this is terrifying.
It’s terrifying until it is magnificent.
Full presence is also an affirming mirror of the inner work and healing we’ve done to arrive where we are.
This full presence in front of me at the moment brings me to my knees in devotion to it; this and only this after seeing with clarity that it is the less trodden path for me, and one I deserve to be on in this moment. I feel the edges of comfort for sure but it feels so healthy and so good when I really check in to my true nervous system and not the conditioned one, that I am finding courage to stay the course.