“After the Clawing, the Light.”

#TransparentTuesdays

Hi friend, 

Today I have a bit of a treat for you, because I get to share a gorgeous bit of writing from a client!

The writer’s name is Page Kannor, and she works as a professional “mental health copywriter” for therapists and coaches. That said, the powerful exploration of the human struggle to heal and thrive I’m about to share with you actually came from her own personal journal!

Page sent me screenshots from her journal on Voxer so I could witness the raw material of her processing of heartbreak, understand how it feels to push against fear into the unknown, and sit with her as she reaches for self-compassion amidst the chaos of growth and healing.

As a coach, I have to focus on the personal content of what a client sends me. But as a writer and a human, reading Page’s stunning prose-like writing gave me full-body goosebumps, and I was struck by how universally applicable her words were right now, despite coming from such a specific and personal context. 

After all, most of us have experienced heartbreak, and most of us have felt overwhelmed by the staggering task of healing from it at one point or another. 

I knew immediately that people need to read this, so with Page’s permission I’m sharing a lightly edited (for clarity) version of my sensitive and brilliant client’s investigation into the human spirit below. 

Please enjoy it, and feel free to hit reply to let me know if it lands for you the way it did for me. 

And if you feel so inclined, you can also reach out to Page for copywriting services here!

Big hug,

Jessi

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After the Clawing; The Light

The world feels so large and hard and impossible, and I don't know how to hold it all. 

I keep cowering, then standing, then cowering, then standing. I don’t know how to face the world by myself. I don’t know how to face myself by myself. I don’t know how to find what I crave most, and frankly I don’t even know if what I crave most—comfort, community, love, support—even exists. 

I know there are bigger things for me; I can feel them lurking out there, somewhere. But I cannot see them.

I am afraid, and tired, and for the first time in my life I can see that there is nowhere to hide. I can see that I must learn to belong to myself, that the work is to relentlessly have my own back no matter what… and that scares me even more, makes me even wearier. 

I am scrabbling and clawing at the floor, grasping for purchase. The clawing is the resistance, the heartbreak, the last gasps of a deeply old and ingrained cycle. 

The clawing is not a choice. It is an emotional response (a human response) to the unraveling of my life as I know it. It’s primal animal fear; it’s my lizard brain trying like hell to survive.

I’ve felt it before. It sounds silly but somehow my gut, my spirit, whatever the wise thing in me is… that part of me knows that it’s true. Knows that clawing is just part of this whole thing. 

Clawing is not a relaxed behavior, is it? Scrabbling at the floor with one’s fingernails is not something one does, except out of desperation. So why should I expect this to feel ok while it’s happening in real time? 

I feel desperate; I feel like peeling off my skin and sprinting in any direction, just to avoid or outrun the Too-Muchness of it. Is this not an entirely appropriate response? 

It is, it is, it is. 

One cannot simply claw lightly, or politely. One claws for their life, afraid, afraid. 

But after a while, when I see what I’m doing, when it becomes obvious how and why I am playing out this involuntary, painful, necessary action… eventually, something else will happen. 

I will grieve, I will sit and sob, I will hold and rock myself back and forth. 

I know this because it has already happened. 

I know this because I already did it. 

I know this because I have seen it. 

After the clawing, and the holding, and the sobbing, and the rocking… something else. 

A crab walk across the room again. A remembrance of community. Another gathering of strength. More crawling, but with more muscle. 

Eventually, I will get to the patch of light, all of a sudden, without planning, and/or knowing ahead of time that it was coming. 

Eventually, that light will be exactly what I need, and I will look back and think “the only reason I am here is because I trusted myself with the pain.”

Eventually, when I am in the light again, I will know that the only reason I am here is because I crawled, and because I clawed.

I do not need to trust myself all at once. That is not the point (and it never was). My job right now is to simply let unfold that which needs to unfold. 

The trust will build as I move through the wreckage. 

It is not the moving through, but rather the softening in, the softening around, the letting go that I must hold without denying. That is my focus; my work. 

What I mean to say is this: I am not clawing right now because something is wrong, or because I am broken. 

I am clawing right now because this is what happens when things fall apart. 

And if I can keep coming back to that, keep holding space for both the desperation and the wisdom of the clawing, then I will be able, eventually, to stop. 

To move through. 

To move on. 

—Page Kannor