And Ode to Love and True Safety

My love for myself does not depend on what I do, say, or feel in any given moment

My love for myself does not depend on how much I help you or offer you security

My love for myself does not depend how safe you feel in your body when you greet my energy, for I am not responsible for your healing

My love for myself just is, because love is the only thing we can depend on

A previous teacher of mine once said “I am not here to make you feel safe” to a group of her students and it triggered me—aren’t we supposed to be creating safe spaces for deep healing? Isn’t that the whole point of this work we are showing up and paying thousands and thousands of dollars to learn? I felt judgement towards her because it was obvious so many of her students felt unsafe in her containers. So much so that she was eventually publicly ridiculed and “canceled” (which I don’t agree with, but it is interesting to witness the energetics of it all).

But it took her statement to notice how unsafe I felt, too. When I departed as her student I vowed to be safer for my clients and future students. I never wanted anyone to feel that way in my presence. I was going to be trauma informed and focus on nervous system regulation through my modalities. In a way I learned what kind of teacher and space holder I wanted to be, and for that I am so deeply grateful, but in the last year especially, I have really reflected on how much responsibility should we carry as healing practitioners when ultimately we cannot control people’s responses to life and what kind of trauma they have lived before our meeting. Perhaps it was her intention all along to reflect to us how we weren’t prioritizing our own safety and regulation first to do this otherworldly and deeply intense healing work we signed up for.

Though I do think we must create safe spaces for unraveling and becoming as healers and sacred space holders, carrying a responsibility to anchor in love (deeply for Self and for others) as we space-hold and show up in service to our light work, we just can’t create safe humans…meaning, we cant fix the trauma response someone has (without the person’s devotion to healing this response, in which case we can potentially create the space for them to unravel and create new responses to life, but they have to do the work, all we can do is hold the space) and ultimately we accidentally trigger people everyday. Because everyone has different trigger points, some more sensitive than others. And most people are extremely disregulated after our last few years of collective unraveling and awakening. We can only hope our space holding helps facilitates safety for those who share space with us, if they choose it and allow it for themselves. But they have to choose it for themselves first.

I hadn’t realized how much responsibility I was carrying to heal others and make them feel safe and secure in my presence, and projecting that same responsibility onto my teachers, when this trigger point hit me when my teacher spoke.

And it wasn’t until I began to question this fixed belief that I discovered how trapped and frozen I felt by the pressure to provide safety for everyone else I greet, both within and outside of my work with clients. How this was a trauma response to my own trauma, always showing up as the peace-keeper, safety provider, and steady anchor to prevent chaos, never actually allowing myself to be relaxed or fully expressed until others were stable first.

But in this deep unraveling I’ve begun to reclaim my security for me to keep, and honor that my only responsibility is to show up safe, clear, whole, and aligned in myself, role modeling the way to true safety as a result.

This has been a big lesson of my reclamation journey for the past year—learning to let go of the responsibility I carry to make everyone around me secure, especially if it means draining my own resources, energy, health, money, magic, and silencing my voice as a result. Because the truth is that that responsibility to provide security for everyone else robs me of my authentic expression. It holds back so much of me out of a fear of triggering others and making them feel unsafe in their disregulated response to life. Because my energy, my searing clarity, my heart’s expression, and voice can often be very triggering to people, because it cuts through mystery. Because it pulls you out of the illusion of safety and guides you to true freedom, which is actually where your true security can be harvested.

It is no surprise that this has been my deepest unexpressed fear in my work and life—my fear of triggering others into disregulation. But I have been learning more than ever in this last year that a fear of triggering people silences and hurts myself, and takes me out of my power. So my intention lately has been to feel safe to show up fully in myself, in my fullest, boldest expression, in deservingness of love and receiving just because I am love (not if you get me, not if you like what I have to say, and not if i make you feel safe).

And I have been inquiring deeper, what would be on the other side of this fear and hesitation if I allowed myself to release the responsibility of other people’s triggers and reactions?

We can be safe and secure in ourselves to hold sacred space, but that does not always mean we will create safety and security together with another. All beings are responsible for their own reactions and responses. I am responsible for any lack of security that gets triggered in me when I greet another, a memory, or a fear. As are you. We are all just mirrors reflecting our wounds to one another. But these fears and insecurities are not absolute truth. Only love is. These triggers are energetic information that can bring us back to love if we let them. They can teach us what we are needing to face, sit with, let go of, liberate, bring a voice to, and free.

It is never actually about the other person, it is always about ourself and the work we choose to do to heal and evolve. As my dear wise sister Olivia said to me recently “Your only role is to facilitate your own experience and trust and allow that the other will facilitate their own experience…” which is just it. Let us not forget we in a simulation of our own creation. We are creating in every moment, we must learn to focus on our own experience and know that this is our greatest responsibility and purpose in life. To show up as the lead of our own story…safe, secure, whole, in truth… and love ourselves all the way there. And from this whole place, we will naturally create more safety and security on this planet.

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