Touching the God-sized (W)hole

An antidote to avoidance based addiction

Sometimes we get to look back in the rear view mirror and see how far we've come.

This happened to me recently in an unexpected way: through enjoying alcohol!

I've had a stick up my a$$ 😉 around alcohol for awhile. I almost enforced a dry wedding (no judgement against anyone who has done this if it is true for you!).

Alcohol addiction is strong in my lineage and it has caused a lot of drama in my immediate family. It's a point of pain within me.

I've been in utter avoidance of the substance, or you could call it medicine, because I was afraid of my own addict.

I was afraid of her (my addict) taking the wheel like she used to, and me (or my higher consciousness) feeling totally out of control and abused.

When I was 14 and had been dealing with depression, anxiety and insomnia for years (without knowing to call it any of that), I discovered the magical pill that my family had been medicating with for generations - booze.

Suddenly my pain became so easy to manage. You just drink this horrible tasting stuff and you don't feel a thing! This is GREAT (my teenage brain).

And drinking one's face off was highly normalized in the midwestern culture I was raised in, so I didn't see any issue. I continued burying the "God-sized hole" of pain under layers upon layers of avoidance and spent my teenage years leaving my body as much as I could get away with.

Once I was out of the mid-western college culture and getting onboard with holistic health in Seattle, I watched my addict lead me down painful corridors of disordered eating and drinking again and again and again.

My addict would take the wheel and my observer-self would get thrown into the the back-seat. I began to realize that this isn't about what I'm consuming, it's the way I have learned to mask my pain.

While I was putting my human body through that hell, my soul was trying to bring me toward the God-sized hole so that I could actually heal.

Our soul often tries to bring us toward the healing through our relationships. Our wounding happens relationally and so our healing needs to happen that way too.

This is why so many people find themselves in loops with partners - you are attracting the reflection of your own shadow so that you can heal a core wound within you (typically related to our parents).

For me, it looked like being repulsed by partners that would actually be there for me, and attracted to the ones who were emotionally unavailable.

In essence, I was attracting opportunities to feel the pain I had never processed in relationship to my father.

Did I know that at the time? Hell no!! I thought I was dating people who were nothing like my father. By trying to avoid that connection/relationship at all costs, I was unconsciously pulling it towards me (what we resist persists).

As my somatic awareness and ability to be in touch with my needs and vocalize them strengthened, I started seeing this pattern play out with my eyes a little more open to it.

👆 This here is the key. Somatics is not the healing. It's not the magical pill that will fix things for you. But it does open your awareness to how you are participating in every moment, which starts to restore your sense of agency. You are no longer playing the victim of your circumstances; you are an active player in them. And this is confronting.

Autumn Skye Art

While I was in somatic expressive arts therapy school in California, my boyfriend-at-the-time suggested we just don't stay in touch while we are apart... it took me awhile to recognize even the smallest need for connection (like checking in on the phone) was not something he was willing to give.

We finally broke it off (it was never a good fit!) and I began to feel the God-sized hole in my heart. It ached an almighty ache that I learned how to hold it without numbing it. Somatic therapy was helping me get real about my needs and expand my capacity to feel, so I stayed with the pain.

Later that year, I was having my "teenage do-over."

When we are healing a certain chapter in our life, we thaw out the protection that was holding our social/emotional development in place - literally in the fascia - because we didn't feel safe or resourced enough to go through it.

So part of the healing journey is to live through the development that never got to express itself (this is why you see grown adults acting like toddlers or being run by their inner teenager!).

Photo by Aliko Weste

So my inner teen was expressing herself because she finally felt safe to. I dyed my hair hot pink and started exploring my sexuality more openly than ever before.

During my exploration of polyamory, I pushed the boundaries and an older man I was seeing cut me off from contact completely. His response was a sharp cut, bringing me right into the depths of the God-sized hole within me.

I remember wailing from the depths of this hole alone in the bath, and afterwards thinking holy shit - one day I will need to thank this man.

I knew that feeling this level of grief wasn't about him - I was feeling the release of uncried tears of feeling abandoned / rejected by my father as a child.

From here I was ready to move on from my second teenage chapter. I began a long journey of closing the leaks on my sexual energy, cutting ties with all of the relations I had picked up that I knew weren't "it" but they distracted me from the GSH (God-sized hole).

I moved to an island where I lived inside of an herbal apothecary / yurt in the woods. The nights were deeply quiet, dark, no distractions, no friends... and I got to really be alone.

I started to actually be with the loneliness that I had been running from because it was linked with my story that I'm not worthy of love.

Somatic expressive arts gave me pathways to be with the parts of myself who had not known love - to move them, draw them, write their voice and speak their truth.

The GSH slowly began to transform from a place of fear to a holy place. A place that I gave ceremony to - just me, nature and God - because the grief would bring me to my knees and I would find myself praying.

God / Goddess / Spirit / Universe / Creator and prayer found me on my healing journey. It wasn't a logical or learned choice. It came through my body and soul yearning for connection with the greater power / unseen world.

In this chapter, the addictions started to easefully fall away. I no longer needed to numb myself out because I knew I could face what I was running from... my fear of abandonment and rejection (which is linked to a fear of death).

With more clarity and trust built between my mental, emotional, physical and spiritual bodies, I was able to touch the truth of what my SOUL wanted: a committed partnership that was full of passion, play and devotion. Though I had never known or been open to receiving a love like this before, within months I met "the one."

Our relationships are a mirror to our inner world, and I wasn't internally ready for him until that moment... the same moment I had out-grown my self-abandoning mechanisms and was truly learning to love myself (in all the hard places).

Five years later, I notice that I am still carrying shame around these old addictive patterns. I aired it out last week with a dear friend, sharing with her that I always crave wine in my luteal phase (like I'm some kind of "bad person" because of this).

Bless my wise friend who said: "well, maybe there's something to that?" Suggesting that perhaps there was a wisdom to my body craving the wine.

So I told her I would buy myself a bottle that night and enjoy a glass. It was like a dirty secret being shared. I was afriad I wouldn't be able to stop. That the addict would take-over, and indulge in the chance to disassociate without anyone watching.

But I enjoyed that glass of wine and stopped when I wanted to. I remained in the driver's seat with my addict somewhere in the back and my lineage's alcoholism somewhere in the baggage (but much lighter now). It was one of those almost imperceptible "aha" moments that reveals where we've been and where we're going.

I no longer need to shame myself for indulging in a little alcohol because I don't need to fear my addict taking over. I've moved the density that led me to give my addict the wheel in the past. I can hold myself on a longer leash. I can trust myself.

The expression of our coping mechanisms are never the full story... they are the mask.

Our patterns in relationships are never what they appear on the surface... they point to a deeper thing inside of ourselves.

We can reach back to the deeper thing and unwind the snags, triggers and patterns that are holding a part of our life-force hostage.

We can decide to no longer be the victim of our circumstances, but the free agent in our story.

The body is the wisdom keeper, the heart is the key, the mind is a map.

If you have patterns in your life that you are ready to change...

If you are tired of being victimized by the patterns that you feel stuck in...

It's time to devote yourself to getting to the root...

Life is pulling the opportunities for wholeness toward you... are you willing to meet them with your eyes wide open?

This path requires radical honesty and courage to feel what's never been fully felt before.

If you're ready, I have two somatic coaching spots opening next month.

This is for you who is...

⚔️ ready to sharpen your sword and receive precise somatic inquiries

⚔️ willing to get messy in the process of unlearning and thawing

⚔️ ready for radical honesty and courage so that your soul can fully reintegrate into your body

There are only two open at this time.

YES, I WANT TO APPLY FOR A SOMATIC COACHING SPOT HERE.