Last night I had a nightmare. I don’t have them often, but when I do, they’re always variations on a theme. I’m in serious danger, or someone I love is in danger, and I’m trying to yell for help, but no sound comes out. I open my mouth, but where I want the scream to happen, there’s only a whisper and I realize I won’t make it. No one will come. Eventually, I wake up with the effort of trying to scream.
When I was twenty-six I had surgery to remove what turned out to be a benign tumor. I was under general anesthesia and at some point during the surgery, I woke up on the table, which is apparently, not uncommon. My arms and legs were strapped down and it was freezing in the room. It’s the coldest I’ve ever felt. I could hear music playing, and my doctor in conversation with someone assisting her. I could feel incredible pressure in my chest, and a pulling sensation that was horrible. I was terrified. I tried to say, “I’m awake, I can feel what’s happening,” but I couldn’t find the words, I couldn’t locate the language. Eventually I was able to groan and they gave me more anesthesia, and I went under again.
Having nightmares once in awhile is not a terrible thing, but I share this story with you because some people live this way. They have some deep truth that’s screaming to get out, but they can’t find the words to express it; they can’t locate the language. Too many people live in silent agony, thinking their feelings don’t really matter, or their family and friends wouldn’t understand, or whatever their truth is, it’s impractical, and something to hide. You get one life in the body you’re in, that much we know. You get one life with the parents you have, with the siblings you do or don’t have, with the children you have or you don’t. One life with these particular experiences and memories and thoughts and feelings. If you have a truth burning to get out, you push it down at your own peril, and you deny those in your one, beautiful life, the opportunity to know you and see you and celebrate you.
If you learned along the way that your feelings are not important, that you don’t matter or are invisible, you really need to unlearn that. You’re here to love and to shine and to be you. No one else can do that. You might need some help if you have a history of pushing things down, or if your pattern is to explode from time to time; if the truth comes out, but it comes out bent and ragged from the pressure of having been denied, if it comes out loud, hard and cold, and not at all as you’d meant it to. The thing is, you know the language of what’s true for you, it’s inside you. You just might not have accessed it yet. It’s your intuition, and it has a quiet, beautiful voice. There are so many healing modalities that are designed to help us tune into it. Yoga worked for me, which is why I teach. Figuring out what works for you is the most important work you’ll do, because if you can’t access the language to express your deepest truths, you’ll never be happy, and the world will be robbed of a song only you can sing.
Sending you love, and wishing you the strength to find the words if you haven’t.
Ally Hamilton
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