Carry Me, Road Home
- Brainz Magazine
- Jun 19, 2023
- 4 min read
Updated: Jun 21, 2023
Written by: Jenny-Rebecca Lewis, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
The road-less-taken, outside-the-box, underground railroads – ways, roads, often not taken – are often revered, way off in the distance, one day. Ways outside of the common consciousness. Seen in hindsight with a kind of reverence. Yet in the moment – they may perhaps be unseeable – confused with something that seems rebellious, but is really not at all or if truly against the grain perceived with terror because of the reality of its potential unsafety.
I had the experience a couple of days ago of understanding this more deeply. As many of you may know, for the last several years, I’ve been in a deep exploration of myself. Moving through so many old emotions, in particular grief this last year. Releasing a lot, while simultaneously learning how to nourish my body – to eat well, rest well. I am beginning to want to move again – enjoying it – running, strengthening. Beginning to want to join the world again. All of this a slow, incremental coming back to myself as trauma patterns of the past diffuse and rewire. And so – a couple of days ago, I had an interesting experience. I’ve been wanting to re-watch Harriet, the moving about Harriet Tubman. So many of these women heroines have come into my life as guides as I’ve substitute taught this last year including Rosa Parks too. And I felt called to revisit. At the beginning of the film, there are flashbacks to slavery, brutal scenes which would usually light up my nervous system as though I were in immediate danger even though I am sitting quietly, alone on the sofa watching YouTube. Watching the movie, these scenes, this time did not have that effect. It was surprising and true – there was no spark. There was empathy for the past, but not a personal “charge” - lighting up something – perhaps a genetic code, an old lifetime, or a memory of my own lifetime. And that to me was huge. And had me understand the impact of the codes the nervous system carries. How they can be reignited simply by the memory of a matching an old reality, and the impact of loop of fear locking me in place and safety choices associated – until…after years of grief and fears are faced to unwind and allow me to on a body level understand the present actuality. Without stories spinning. I am free… Called back to this move perhaps to realize this freedom. Not what I expected and certainly more. One more realized freedom at the guidance of Harriet.
There are no enemies here at home
These distinctions between external triggers and what is true for the self are important unwindings. What is actually happening? I think the current culture of witch hunt is an example of this too. How deeply we want certain people punished, jailed or dead is a direct result of our relationship to our own past-running traumas. Enemies created by news reals rarely have a direct impact on our day-to-day lives (an there may be some that do – that is a different article), and consider– is it impossible to see our true safety in the trigger of a replay calling for an old justice – an old revenge – an old safety? to feel truth when your whole body is quivering in imprints of pain of abandonment, abuse, terrors of old, just as alive today as the horrible moments when. There is the sadness. For the times past. The love needed there. The care. There is also the alchemy of the past needed to lay down the true rightness required to adjust real wrong in the present to uprightness again. That is the place where I extend you love today. All of you. Allow yourself so much love and care and nourishment today. Gaining the strength to one day grieve and let go, no longer requiring the repeated hollow victories of projections to pay.
John Blassingame, a visiting teacher of mine in college, taught about how vengeance and justice in the United States were intertwined. Built into the fabric of America as a result of us coming from lines of our religious-conquesting roots and hierarchical culture. Yet there will always another witch or demon arising – are we giving room to heal the ones inside so that we may have peace there in the present reality and meet them with the grace that we will have learned to have within ourselves?
In humility, there is grace, the grace that comes at the end of where the force can be forced no more and then surrender. A fall into the abyss of all that I am well below the layers of ego and things. These are the lessons of Alabama. There is a great humility here. I am learning every day. A true kindness in the steady drumbeat of life accented by pickup trucks, loving kindness and the beauty of lush green landscapes. There is love here – and it has been a long time tested and it resides in the hearts of the divinity of common sense truth tellers and the deep loving wisdom of everyday living. This is now the road to be taken. That is unwinding with grace the layers of old fear no longer fogs the present, so that there is a stretch beyond the safety bounds of imprints past. Therein lies the real time possibility of the new road, the new way, carry me home.
Jenny-Rebecca Lewis, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Jenny carries the vibration of the life force which travels deep within our bones ‒ the deeper knowing that when supported and nourished connects us all to a power greater than ourselves and brings us back to wholeness. She has learned and evolved from her study of Eros, embodiment and African studies. She understands that the seeds of blocks, once cleared, allows again and again further growth and access to voice, relationship with sex, full expression in relationship with family and community. Her coaching is the light out for all those willing souls to come back to who they truly are.
