We learn from the part of the story we focus on

I think I want to end this year of storytelling with a few thoughts on writing, on healing. A few thoughts on what I have learned. I originally had at least one more story to tell about emotional work written in “yarn language," how we, in my opinion, earn our balls (of yarn) in life. The brain seems to be as soft as rice porridge we eat in Finland at Christmas time, so I let it be. 

When healing our wounds, trauma, we write a story about it when we have come so far in the process. Due to amnesia, I’ve needed to reconstruct quite a lot of my story, sentences about childhood which did not go together in a meaningful way for such a long time. Instead of an essay, we also need to write a novel, to relive the past emotionally and not only intellectually. The artistic expression of this kind is not about making something well (and I don’t have the ability for that either, at least not in English). The whole process is about celebrating our emotions, celebrating our lives as art therapist Lucia Capacchione has said. And emotions are energy in motion. They activate the body and help to maintain body functions. Feelings, on the other hand, we can more easily name and recognize and those are on top of the emotions. 

I’ve used many metaphors in these healing writings, symbols of the soul according to Lucia Capacchione. Metaphors also help to describe something abstract like emotions through something more concrete. I talked about a swampland – a metaphor which initially comes from Carl Gustav Jung who saw shame as the swampland of the soul. I’ve used the familiar metaphorical concept of the inner child, and the belly of the whale is a common symbol of death and transformation. Coral reef in that story is our brain. Other metaphors have their background in the real world as well but if someone reads these texts, I let the interpretation for everyone to do themselves. The metaphors we use are partly common for us all, and some of them are culture-specific. If I remember correct due to our long history together with Sweden 2/3 of the metaphors are the same in both languages, Finnish and Swedish, just one example. And when we start looking metaphors in the daily news, how for example politics is often described through the metaphor of game or warfare, international organizations as families which are not always in amicable terms, we once again get one new angle to look at the world around us. I wonder if there could be another way to describe those fields and if it would change something.   

Because of reliving the past emotionally this year, the repertoire of my theatre group has mostly been consisting of the stories Groundhog Day, The Caribbean Mystery and Shawshank Redemption. Perhaps I refer to masculine stories since some masculine energy has been good and needed in the process, the right kind of anger. I’ve needed Miss Marple kind of attitude as well. A pair of knitting needles in my hands, I’ve solved entangled yarns and knitted and crocheted patterns out of them in my mind to get the painful stories of my life right so that they can be released and there is space for something new. Luckily, all these fictional stories have happy ends, and to that I trust. Hopefully, it will soon be time to change the whole repertoire into something else altogether. I wouldn’t mind for playing out a comedy where I play the leading lady or why not a light Hallmark movie kind of story. I better start looking for new plays and storylines. And these three plays, they have been costly for the theatre company as well, have I unfortunately noticed. I have to look for cheaper plays with cheaper settings now.   

Many times, I’ve noticed how complex our stories can be, how many stories can be intertwined or play out at the same time in our lives – different versions of a story by different people, our beliefs, our wounds, our interpretations, etc. I've noticed how sometimes small moments can be decisive for our lives, both toward something good or then not. I’ve noticed how sometimes a wound can be so deep that we don’t have access to it, in these Miss Marple kind of mysteries. Whenever trying to organize that kind of an old story inside, it simply becomes too stressful for the brain to handle. In my case, the stress got so high that I got heart issues about a year ago when I had to meddle with an old story in my life for safety reasons. The stress can also be of the kind that when an old cemented emotion suddenly starts coming out, you hardly manage the stress and the pressure it takes you to. This happened to me once last Spring after a visit to a chiropractor. Maybe there was also something negative that had just happened as well, nothing severe though at the level of the mind, so I don't know if it played any part in that experience, if it also functioned as a trigger. I identified what it was about and then I don’t remember much about the following week, only that I had to sleep a lot and that has been the case for most of the year anyway. I went for a  cello class the following day feeling very vulnerable and then about a week later, one morning, intuition, inner wisdom woke me up saying that now I only have good days left. Otherwise, the old emotions have been coming out of the body mostly through coughing and as a feeling of disgust when I am in that space of healing, down in the depths healing the wounded girl inside. I've also partly intuitively recreated the circumstances in my childhood, through cooking dishes from that period etc. Earlier this Autumn I baked Karelian pies, something I grew up with and then I just kept on throwing up air from the bottom of the belly. I kept on identifying what was coming out. The beautiful thing is that when an old emotion comes out, the wound behind gets fully healed. I am more home in my body than ever before, it tells me now if I am not being honest with myself emotionally. I think the healing process goes towards the word flexibility as well when old beliefs in the process become irrelevant and there is space for new beliefs to take form. Because of all this, the word mindlessness, seeing myself and others in a flexible light, has become something that suddenly has started to make sense for a person who doesn't easily believe anything. Here is, by the way, one article which tells about the experience of releasing suppressed emotions well.

These stories which happen to some of us may make us almost lose our marbles. The human cruelty can sometimes be simply unbearable, toward children as well. Some of us are also naturally more sensitive, yet that is where creativity stems as well. If we start going toward a society where all is based on our own response in human interaction, not what happens or how other's behave, some of us have no possibility to survive. We do the healing work as well we can, yet we all have unhealed wounds inside we hope others won't be poking around all the time. Anyway, from those depths in April and May this year, the story about the whale came from, together with the story about open and closed doors. I talked about light and darkness in the latter story because I had to sleep lights on for a year, even during the bright Finnish summer. Luckily here I still am in one piece, as my therapist said, and now this is all past. Light has won, and I have been able to bear darkness again for a couple of months. Where this led was of course to a life which is lived one day at a time without big expectations or plans for tomorrow. It is no wonder that what comes out of any one of us in these kinds of situations, when our lives are threatened, may not be our normal adult behavior. Because mental abuse at a very early stage in my life was also often directed towards my mental health, I've only now been able to go through the gutter of Shawshank. Unfortunately, I had hidden inside me the mystery from adulthood as well where my view on reality was played with on top of the wounds of the little girl inside. It was the kind of story I still have difficulties with and it stresses my brain to think about it. For these reasons, I am only able to look at my story through the emotions and through other stories, through metaphors.

So, I've learned that for some of us telling our stories can be difficult when and if we may not even know where to begin, and when there are so many difficult sentences in our stories. I've learned that there are people who somehow manage to reflect back all our deepest wounds. We can call them blessings or masterpieces who cause us pain elsewhere in the body than only in our beautiful asses. I've learned that there can be many broken parts inside us, yet when there are parts which are whole, we always have something to lean on. I've learned that when we accept those broken parts they start healing. We have a place, a home, and we can start the rebuilding process inside from there. And I've always known that emotional intelligence, respect towards everyone's emotional home, is important. And I learned early on that we can't tiptoe around someone's wounds for years either but we can try to put some love in there, step back and hope that it will start doing its magic.  

As Brené Brown has said, we all have a story which will bring others to their knees if we have the privilege to hear that. Through stories, we learn how it is to be a human. I hope we keep on telling them, listening to them and reading them especially. I hope we sometimes dare to tell them and may there be wisdom to see when it is good to stay quiet. Here is, by the way, one good TEDtalk about the power of stories by Chimamanda Adichie. 

In these situations, when we almost lose our life force, creativity, the playful child inside can help us heal in different ways. Often have I noticed that making things instead of thinking has helped me most. I think that the repetitive movement of a pair of knitting needles balances out energies inside my body, the emotional home inside I have no access to in words. Through crochet, I especially seem to get in contact with my heart and soul, and there is both love and pain there (I don't know if being left-handed has anything to do with it, this is just my bodily experience and I wonder how others feel?). Therefore too, mindlessness, doing instead of being and cultivating and nourishing something meaningful in the existing world has somehow felt like a good approach to life so I began defining it for my own purposes. And I think we all makers know that if we suffer from stress or anxiety, making something with our hands helps, we get the direct contact with our hearts and bodies following Brené Brown's quote above. So, I've learned to use my hands in many different ways to cultivate my well-being, baking is one of the ways of course and playing an instrument doesn't even need to be explained. I've learned to use my middle fingers and I let them fly toward all the directions if necessary, just like flying kisses, to protect what is worthwhile protecting - heart, soul, mind, boundaries. Anger is just self-love, worth celebrating as well but there is good to have some wisdom how to use it productively :-). In general, isn't it so that we just take everything we know to get ourselves back up on our feet when we have fallen down and have ended up in a wrong place. Then we start going or first crawling, just as we do at the beginning of our lives before we learn to walk again. And round by round, row by row, going through a healing circle I've talked about before, I got myself back up on my feet, succeeding and failing on the go. I've done that a few times in my life and the experience during the last year has been the worst. It has been of the kind that it made me think that I may not be able to anymore. Yet, after giving a whole year for myself, I am quite well, even though I may still be limbing - and I think I am at home as I wrote before. Healing takes its time, and there is a natural rhythm if we manage to follow that, have I noticed. Some experts seem to think the same. I have a feeling that soon I am out of that gutter of Shawshank, The Caribbean Mystery is solved, and Bill Murray gets to move on to the following day.

One wisdom I've learned in the process is that I went on a hunt for well-being around the world, only to find the answers near home, in my yarn basket and cupboard, in the word "childlike". And the story about the closed doors and open doors once again got a new point of view. 

I started the writing process in January from home. Home is after all where everything begins, and that is the place where we begin when healing from trauma as well. First, we establish a safe place (physical and/or emotional depending on the adversity) just as in the old Finnish children song Makeasti oravainen, a squirrel sleeps in its moss bed and no threat or harm can touch it. There is one good song to sing to a smaller child or a bigger one when something happens which shakes our feeling of security in this world. After the story about the home, I told a story about the entangled yarns we all have inside to some extent, and when healing we start solving those piles and earn our balls in the process when facing the painful emotions, difficult truths about ourselves as well instead of numbing or escaping. Then we get to replace the old pattern with a new better one, a new belief. We create a rug with diamonds or whatever pattern pleases us most. After emotional work I wrote about love, I wrote about life lessons, how life often teaches us its lessons through the plot of the film Groundhog Day, and how we tend to seek answers around the world only to find them near home (Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist). I wrote about PTSD – the whale and the whole long healing journey of mine where the metaphor of the child has been in the center – her wounds, her creativity. I told how I also tried to go forward intellectually, through positive thinking even though the solution was always in healing and releasing the old suppressed emotions out of the body. And we don't hold whales in captive but let them go where they belong. I've also been thinking and reflecting on how the healing journey naturally takes towards acceptance and forgiveness. Yet, I still notice that there is a tone of bitterness in my voice, there is anger inside, and it is not of the good kind. There is always something to work with of course and unfortunately, I at least manage to cook up new stuff to release all the time as well :-).

I made a second round with the texts now when the year is nearing its end. Ever since watching Hannah Gadsby’s show Nanette on Netflix in August I’ve had her line: We learn from the part of the story we focus on, in my mind. I've intuitively placed the stories in a different order. I was looking for something, so I decided to publish the texts here on the blog. Instead of home I started the storytelling from the texts which told about love. I added a few songs to accompany each story giving them a new context (music is healing as well). After telling the story about the closed doors and open doors, I began to add words to the door of the home or castle of mine up in the air, words like "peace, love and crochet,""respect,""integrity,""creativity,""mindlessness." So, a new storyline started to develop. When starting from self-love we, of course, end up creating boundaries. I wrote the words on the door even though in reality they perhaps have been tiles of the walls of my home, the new beliefs. Anyway, this was a joyful, creative discovery, where curiosity and intuition led me – that magical power of creativity which will always escape our words. Through each story – or call it a circle of healing – I found a word worth protecting and living by, and the rest, the old story and emotions related to it got released. Isn't it also good to write down our own user manuals, the magic words, “Open Sesame” through our individual doors? Then we can be hospitable when people come for a visit, and they know to treat our self-made, self-taught inner worlds the right way? And we let in those who treat us with respect, and we treat them back with similar respect.

When looking through the lens of trauma, all the mind-training and positive thinking going on in media and self-help literature only make me feel worse and puzzles as well. I am fond of using the expression “positive outlook on life” instead of "positive thinking" anyway since that road led me nowhere. I ended up denying my truth. And I think there is a difference between these two expressions, outlook including feelings as well and that we will be okay no matter what happens. Or then I am just too precise when it comes to definitions as a linguist. Flexibility and resilience are also necessary words in our vocabularies when facing adversities. We take charge of our own destinies with these two. I think making rugs has also taught me the same qualities throughout all these years, both as a meditative practice and developing my mental abilities through concrete making. And creating beauty around always restores the soul, balances out the ugliness in the world. When and if new adversities are to come, I can meet them for example with a crochet hook in another hand a pen in the other. That is also relieving to know, gives a feeling of safety inside when I know that no matter what, creativity never fails, never betrays and always saves. When it comes to the positivity talk, if it is used to hide our struggle, we do no service for anyone. Often I've at least needed to fake it just to make or keep other's happy but no more. I am on a different kind of road now, perhaps that road is called authenticity, maybe the road is also called courage, maybe the road is just called love. Then we also share our love with other's from the right place, of course.   

   

I find it to be so that there are no simple truths, simple cures or the right way to find a way to balance, to a life that is meaningful or to find the right way to heal. We all have our own journeys and need to build our own tool boxes, but I think that whenever struggling with any of the big questions in life, one answer is in examining the word "childlike" and what it means for each and one of us. There is joy and wonder in that word so it cannot be wrong, cultivating and nourishing our life force, our individual creativity. I also like the English word healing so much since it also means becoming more whole, not just healing from a disease. And I think that the word I try to travel towards is becoming (haven’t yet read Michelle Obama’s new book, hope to do that during the holiday season). Instead of becoming some of us would maybe rather use the concept "personal development" or perhaps "spiritual awakening" or "wholehearted living." Whatever the word or the words we use and how we see our journey, somewhere there we are, on our way, or what. And as Bo Kaspers Orkester sings in their song Världens ände (End of the World) that if we don't find our way home, we just turn around.

Whenever we go through a transformation process of some kind, others often get to see a bit more behind the walls of our homes, other's may get to see bare naked ladies. I’ve had very high boundaries yet this year, when throwing out whales and elves and such out, and rebuilding the home of mine, I’ve shown more than I would like to, but that too has been part of the healing process. Working away shame and fear has been most important, and for once I've been very selfish. And now, I wonder where I add a window, or shall I have a theater in my home for storytelling in the future – or a music room. Without metaphors, I actually feel tempted to be outside social media the whole next year and who knows what after that. Vulnerability hangover is quite heavy at the moment so I have to find a cure for that. I’ve had a window to the atelier open for so long through this blog that I feel tempted to close it altogether. I already once ended this blog earlier this year, and other social media channels are dormant. It feels good and free. And if I sometimes feel like sharing something may it be writing, crochet or thoughts on playing music I’ll then figure out a channel or return here. I'll probably do it in Finnish to get the language part etc. right. There are by the way a few old/new crochet patterns on the pattern page, those are all available on Ravelry as well.  

I may now also know the word for the year 2019. I've found this to be an excellent way to lead myself, to see my life from a certain perspective for a year. At the end of the year, I gather together what the lessons have been in a way or another. The coming year the expression at this stage is: “follow the body” when looking at what is popping out from my journals. And then I develop a few mantras to follow in style: “less screen and more green” etc. just for fun. Here below is a quote which in one way sums up what the year 2018 was about, the word "enough". I think many of the troubles stemmed from not following the word, so it had nothing to do with the adversities. I think I got a lot closer the destiny. This is what was mostly inside the whale in that story as well, maybe something common for many of us at least here in our culture.

Ps. Maybe some of us also naturally swim in the deeper seas, and as in the song Shape Of My Heart, we look for the meaning, the pattern, the map behind everything. I don’t know. As a young girl, I often played cards together with older male relatives on Sunday evenings. Those silent farmers and an electrician, and my father. I learned at that card table to conceal my hand, perhaps to protect it too much too. I luckily also learned that I was equal since that is how they treated me. And it is in those kinds of short moments repeating when the path for a child is built forward the right way into adulthood so that there is always something inside to lean on. It is in taking the face of a child between a pair of loving hands even as adults so that they are seen with love. There are luckily godmothers who perhaps are godsent depending on what we believe in. So, I luckily got many good cards to play with, in the game of life. I wonder if this is one of the issues we should look into in Finland nowadays, that every child has a village around them to secure that when one adult fails in their task there are always others who see a child. We also see so differently, what is good and worthy in others. The society is so different as well than, for example, in my childhood in the countryside. Sounds like a Christmas wish.