Naming Spiritual Safety Needs
In the healing process, it’s difficult to recover from what didn’t happen that should have. For example, growing up without my father around I had the unique experience of not knowing what fathering felt like. How then, does one grieve what they can’t imagine?
Spiritual recovery can feel even more ambiguous. I’ve been sharing my spiritual recovery journey in this space because I know I’m not alone. And I know how difficult it can be to talk about.
This is the area of life I enjoy exploring as a writer, naming the ambiguous haunted sensations that live in our bodies like unanswered ghosts.
If you have also experienced spiritual abuse, allow me the opportunity to name a few things you may have lost. Read these spiritual safety needs with your child-mind. With vulnerable eyes. I hope you find something you can begin to give yourself.
Spiritual Safety Needs
You needed someone who made it safe to have questions. Someone who welcomed your wondering instead of tightening at it. You needed space to explore ideas, feelings, and possibilities without fear that curiosity itself was a problem.
You needed someone to show you that your body is amazing, trustworthy, and powerful. You needed to learn that your sensations and instincts are intelligent signals, not inconveniences to override or sources of shame.
You needed encouragement for your curiosity. You needed the part of you that wanted to explore, notice, and think differently to be met with interest and support, not correction.
You needed to know that no one knows everything. You needed demonstration that uncertainty, learning, changing your mind, and staying open is healthy and necessary You needed to know that information not something that should be controlled by a few people at the “top”.
You needed to know it was your job to create the life you want to live — and that you had permission to do so. You needed someone to reflect back that your desires, direction, and imagination were valid starting points, not threats to a prewritten script.
Grieving + Self Love
Grief and I have been getting very acquainted lately. I don’t know how I feel about her yet, but what I can say is I am learning to allow her to move through me. The only thing I ask is that she leaves something beautiful behind when she goes.
I refuse…REFUSE to allow things that have happened to me to steal more life from me today. I have been stolen from enough.
So I grieve by writing, sharing my stories + sharing with others the art of taking back your narrative through writing.
I’d like to invite you to my Private Writing Club a creative writing space where I teach my group how to make beauty of grief. I’d love to see you there.
Find out more about writing club here: 👉 Join Writing Club
-🤘🏽 Britnei Nicole