The weight of words

This week two significant things happened, firstly I have been plagued by dreams that I am either drowning or that my mouth is held closed in a tight and painful spasm, one that restricts my voice and my breath. Secondly I took a chance and shared some words with a lovely group I am part of, the words spilled out quite unexpectedly and quite ferociously, they had been there a while! I realised that as they left me, so too did their power and their weight, I felt lighter, more spacious.

In my work I focus on the effect of experience in the body, focusing on the unwinding and reforming of the imprints left by trauma, sadness and shock. This is hugely important work however on a personal level I forgot about words, about the importance for me to tell my story, to be heard, to share the weight of the words.

It felt as if words were blocking the path forward for me, so much so that I was being silenced and suffocated in my dreams to force my hand! The eventual sharing of my experiences through the words created a space for a new story to begin to be built, for a new pathway to appear, the telling of the tale allowed it to change it’s form.

It can be incredibly hard to share your story as it ceases to belong solely to you and you lose control over it but for me I realised it was in fact the story that was controlling me, not the other way around! I remembered that when my words have formed its time to offer them out, not always to a person or group, maybe to paper or maybe even screamed into thin air but they need to go! This week my words needed to be heard and they were, with compassion and love and I send out great thanks for that.

As we move forward to a new normal and re establish our ways of being beyond the pandemic my hope is that all those voices that have been silenced find their words and their sound and that sound creates ripples of change and possibility that reach out far and wide into our communities and our society. Times are changing and it’s the voices that will herald the change that is so needed.