swords and galoshes

Up early again this morning without just cause. I answered an email from laughingleo about self-care and nurture as it applies to letting go and trusting and here is what I said to her: "okay, let's see....self nurture to me means that i take care of my inner parts-listening, being in tune with nature and my body, noticing, crediting my intuition, AND allowing myself to fearlesslyl melt down when the time comes cannot be overlooked, because it is a vital part of how i work through things in their final stages. i think i'm better at nurturing myself when i am not trying to control things. which connects to the letting go and trusting (my usual word for this is surrender) part. since i tend to gravitate toward controlling outcomes and feelings and things like that (not limited to environment, etc), i will generally get to a point that feels like i'm giving up, but really i'm indulging in self care which is surrendering the whole situation to whoever's business it really is. but it always seems to work in a circle for me-i have to at least try to control it first, THEN i remember to surrender it. its just my wacked out process i guess. you know, crazy ole me..." What I realized once I pressed send was that we, collectively as women, often do not honor the "meltdown", a sacred part of our healing process. I used to cheat myself out of that part of my own cycle because it doesn't really look that pretty and people stare at me fearfully or think me insane. Granted, I'm not really melting down in public or anything, but even in the presence of my husband the dreaded dragon SHAME pokes its head up and says "You've blown it now!". My meltdowns are usually characterized by a fair bit of cursing and fear naming, and some arm waving. But once I round the bend back to surrender, I am rid of the fear, the cursing subsides and something usually makes me laugh really, really hard. If I stand back and take a look at this, I don't feel shame, I feel relief. My loving partner is Brave and holds space for me to do this with him, as do a few friends. I am so grateful to be able to walk into the murky water with those few special people so I can come out laughing. To punctuate what I feel about self-nurturing, I believe that shame undermines our most vital processes. How can we fully experience trust if we cannot complete the cycle? I am not implying that in order to be complete, we all have to have meltdowns. But I am saying that whatever complete looks like to us, we are fully entitled to go there and to ask someone we feel safe with to hold our hand. I'm becoming okay with my new life as a gypsy with a newborn baby in another month. Dragons be damned, I will no doubt have to wade knee deep into those feelings a few more times in order to get complete on this one.