From freeze and fear to finding a home

I haven’t sent off any articles for a very long time now. I was in such a deep functional freeze that writing just didn’t flow. But I am now sharing my personal story in the hope it offers strength to those who walk this path. Because in the end, I did make it to the other side— a happy ending of sorts, a new beginning. This spiritual journey after great loss brings my indigenous friend Hazel back into the picture toward the end of this article. 

I had sold my piece of paradise about four years after my husband's death, trusting that the universe would show me the next step in my grieving and letting go journey. But the next step was sixteen months away, and I often wondered if I would ever find my way back home again.

Every day for these long months, I would wake up with fear by my side. A sense that I was trapped with no way forward, sideways, or backwards. Doomed. The doom was dunked in a dense, suffocating weight of shame.

After waking, I would spend the rest of my day trying to get rid of the doom. Religiously riding to the beach could not be skipped. Movement was my biggest weapon while being in a freeze for such a long time, while feeling the terror so close to my skin.

I still managed to make new friends and go freediving, and I had days of laughter and carefree fun while visiting Germany—but for over a year, the headline was one of fear, freeze, and feeling “homeless”.

I have so much compassion for people who are actually homeless. I had a roof over my head and still found the simplest of things difficult. Taking a shower was sometimes an effort, and cooking meals without having my own kitchen was the biggest stressor. I would go to the farmer’s market and buy fresh produce only for it to sit in my fridge. Feeding myself was packed with stress; it felt like trudging up a steep hill carrying a boulder. Some days I would cook myself a meal with ease; that’s when I knew I was having a good day, and the freeze was lifted for a little while. But it never fully left; it stayed put for all these months where hope seemed gone. Only glimpses on the far horizon. 

Friends said, that they envied me for my freedom. I could live anywhere on the planet! But I was completely overwhelmed and felt I did not belong anywhere. I missed the wild bush. “I hate…” was in my head as I dodged cars, noise, traffic lights, and exhaust on my push bike. I had moved to Fremantle with the romanticised idea of what it was twenty-five years ago, but the reality was a felt density that hit me hard: Big blocks had vanished, replaced by three or four houses without yards. Trees and beaches were gone. My nervous system was in constant overload, and I didn’t get to do any of the fun things cities offer. Not once did I jump on a train and go to an art gallery. 

I did look at houses on the market while the prices went up and up and up, finding a home was more and more out of reach. I looked in Shoalwater, back in Denmark, Bali, Broom, Exmouth, over east—I considered putting everything into storage and living in a van or travelling the world. I had to follow my instincts, and not knowing where to go was part of my journey. I trusted this inner knowing of my body and knew this was not a decision my mind could make. This is what I teach my clients. But when I started this journey, I never knew it would last for so long. 

I aimed to escape every morning and just rode to the beach. Every day, sometimes twice. I am such a homebody, but I never pottered at home; I stopped singing and did a hell of a lot of scrolling on my phone to numb myself, and only occasionally did I do qigong and yoga. The beach called me every morning. I loved the wide horizons, but the sand and water underlined the lack of trees. I longed for wild nature, for green. The disconnect made me feel so utterly, utterly lonely.

And city people are busy; you can’t just pop in for a visit. Their nervous systems are overloaded too, but they don’t notice it anymore. 

How desperately I tried to reach out to friends on Digby’s birthday. A day when no human should be alone unless they choose it. One ‘friend ’ said they could ring me in six hours, but when that call finally came, I was shamed and told I should do more therapy. I just needed an actual human being on my side. In the evening, I finally shared my leftover birthday cake with friends, and I knew I was okay. Humans are herd animals. Grieving needs to be witnessed by others, and some days it just needs company, laughter, lightness, and a cup of tea. 

I had days where the constant mantra in my head was “I don’t want to live. I don’t want to live any more”. It went round and round like a ferris wheel, turning without care. It’s the biggest turn-off for any friendship, so some days I would say nothing. I’d go for a walk with a friend, pushing their pram, grateful to not be alone while the wheel in my head kept turning.

Gratefulness. Another chapter I could write about for ages. When a person is in a deep freeze, gratefulness is out of reach. It’s not accessible. Spiritual bypassers would urge me to enjoy the small things, to lift my frequency. But on the doom-laden days, this was just not possible. I felt broken, damaged, lost, and covered in shame.

I still worked and saw clients. I was able to hold people as I had learnt to hold my own doom. I was capable and, surprisingly, really good at my job, connected to a higher source when working. Maybe I was whole and okay, and just walking through a really long and dark night of the soul? A spiritual journey of deep inner suffering that maybe one day would end? Maybe.

In the two weeks leading up to finding my new home, I was in the deepest of freezes.  The fear and terror were bigger than ever before after the New Year. I did not know what to do anymore, so I just imagined being greeted out of my mother’s womb by my beloved aunty. I visualised that she became my mother as soon as I was born. In my mind’s eye, I saw her holding me tight and just gazing at me with utter delight. She really saw me, and I could just relax and be. I did that over and over again and rested a lot while visiting Margaret River. That was where I finally found my new home. Visualisation is a potent, powerful medicine when it hits the sweet spot and nourishes the nervous system in just the right way.

And this story is really a continuation of my spiritual journey with Aboriginal Elder Hazel from Ningaloo. Some might remember that a huge manta ray at my local beach near Denmark, WA, had sent me travelling to Exmouth a year after my husband’s passing. My new spiritual totem animal led me in mysterious ways to Hazel’s doorstep near Coral Bay, a farm directly on the manta ray dreaming beach. Hazel gave me a manta ray brooch she had bought prior to my unplanned turning up. “I had wondered why I bought this brooch. I am a turtle woman. But now I know that I bought this for you two weeks ago”.

We connected over the years, and I loved her stories of spirit; they always made me feel at home. My husband saw spirits, and I missed having a person like that in my life. After Hazel’s husband passed, I camped at her house as the only white person attending an Aboriginal festival. Hazel had asked me to organise a road trip to Margaret River and Denmark in the New Year. As campervans were all booked out, I rang around until a practitioner friend offered me her home while she was away. When it was time to head off, I rang Hazel, only to find out that she never left Ningaloo and was still up north, not feeling too well herself. It was a big blow, but in the end, I just jumped into my car and drove down alone to this empty house in Margaret River. This turned out to be a blessing. I was feeling unsociable, I slept and rested a lot, read a book, watered the gardens. I felt at home for the first time in a very long time. This feeling of being at home followed me to the beach, where I remembered that a dear friend had sent me a house for sale a few months earlier. I didn’t have the energy to check it out back then, but when I received her email, I said out loud, “If this house is meant to be for me, it will wait.”

And there I was in Margaret River. The house had, of course, sold in these crazy market times, but the three-month settlement had fallen through at the last minute. The house had waited for me. I no longer own any land, but I have a home again. 

I am singing again, I am playing my drum and making up songs. I am able to write again in my home, and I have made this place the most beautiful home ever. I hope to build a new community of friends around me. It is my new place for now.

with love

Barbara 

If you want to find out more about your nervous system and the incredible healing from trauma I am inviting you to read the short article on www.counsellingsomatic.com.au in my blog section  - you can subscribe to my newsletters via my website and receive all future blogs conveniently via email. If you no longer wish to receive emails from me, please unsubscribe.

Feel free to forward my article to others, but please add my name to it for copyright reasons.     

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Barbara Schmidt

Counselling Somatic

Trauma & Nervous System Recovery Specialist

Mental Health Social Worker

Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, EMDR

m: 0458 234 410

e: barbara@counsellingsomatic.com.au

w: www.counsellingsomatic.com.au

The Power and magic of anniversaries

Anniversaries are incredibly powerful and if utilized in the right way can catapult you forwards like nothing else. There are so many anniversaries in our lives: our own birth, our children’s birth, a wedding, a traumatic or even a joyous experience, an adoption loss, a serious diagnosis and of course death and funerals - this list can go on endlessly. What was too overwhelming and hence dissociated at the time of an experience will come up again a year later for you to process and digest. A year of new learning and the healing of time itself hopefully means that you are a bit more resourced.

It really helps to be aware of the power of anniversaries so you can be prepared for the big feelings that will arise out of nowhere. If you see them in the right context, you will be able to navigate and ride the waves much easier. And you can then call in the help you need to go through it with a bit more ease and gentleness. If you let yourself be guided in this process, magical things can happen to you and the spiritual gifts you will receive can be huge. Personal growth, more embodiment and resiliency, better boundaries and increased inner strength, clearer intuition and psychic abilities can all be the positive side effects of anniversaries.

I hope this article will encourage you to give the power of anniversaries more room in your life so their healing will fully embrace you. This big process will be easier to manage with preparation and support. I am sharing my experience to inspire you for your next journey inwards.

The second year of my husband’s passing anniversary was a big one and I learnt so much in a very condensed time frame. I made another quantum leap forward. The anniversary labour was intensified by arriving back home in the freezing cold with a completely empty fridge and still sick with Covid after travelling. It was the perfect storm.

I had first travelled into the warmth to give myself space from the everyday responsibilities of living on a big block of land and to help my nervous system replenish. It was the best possible preparation for this year’s anniversary. Forced to make decisions around life and death while caring for Digby and witnessing him in constant pain had left me with PTSD like symptoms I had to recover from first. My travel diary reads:
“It has been nice to be reminded how much fun reading a book, just sitting for ages on the beach, skinny dipping in the morning, snorkelling every day in the coral reef, paddle boarding and even cooking is. When I am snorkelling I can take in the beauty around me when at the beginning I was just stressing ridiculously easily. I am surprised by the kindness of people around me and it is so nice noticing how my nervous system has switched from constant cortisol stress reactions to more ease.”

My travels up north were pretty special with magical experiences and soul touching events along the way. Travelling had its own new theme, it helped me to love myself, to begin to trust life and to come back into my own flow again. I again met up with indigenous Ningaloo elder and soul sister Hazel Walga who understands the spirit world and shared very private and profound spirit messages with me. I did a sound healing offering in Exmouth, swam, hiked and snorkeled while roughing it and living out of my tiny car for a month.
Even though I had planned to go travelling for a three months I all of a sudden knew it was time to go back again after only four weeks. My land was calling me and I followed its call even though I was scared of facing the anniversary at home instead of being on the road like the year before.

The intense loneliness that first hit me after travelling up north and returning to my remote house was excruciatingly painful, I did not know how to get through it and everything on my land overwhelmed me. In a clumsy way I reached out via text to a few people, that’s all I could do. Some ignored me, some responded. What I really should have written is: “Please bring me some cooked food, I am at that grieving stage where I can’t cook for myself. I need real human contact, not text messages, give me a hug, let’s eat together, go for a walk, listen to me and just know that I am going through the anniversary time”.

It is so interesting how the grief is tied in with food and the lack of family and community around me. It is not ideal that I live on my own too far out of town. Grief needs a village, it needs being held by a bigger container. We cannot do grief alone as biologically we are herd animals and it is wired into us to need one another.

After one visit from a friend who could hang out with me half the day and truly meet me in my grief in a relaxed way, I was able to be alone again without feeling so intensely lonely. I could fully embrace and even love this deep and sacred space.
I needed a lot of silence. I went for walks around my block and cut down weed trees. I watched the flow of what wanted doing, instead of pushing myself to get things done. I signed up for qigong online classes that resonated and made me smile, they help me to reconnect with myself again, to the spirit world, to energy, to life.

I started inviting people to my place who have also lost someone unexpectedly. They had the deepest heart connection with that person and are facing the most unbearable loss.
I didn’t really understand grief fully even though I deeply grieved the death of my godmother who was the most important person in my life from a very young age. Without her in my life I wouldn’t have made it. But I am realizing that I was prepared for her death, the moment she told me that she had cancer I knew she would die and two years later I spent the week before she died with her without having to be her carer. It was the best week of my life, we talked and even laughed a lot about death, we both accepted it was coming and we were deeply connected. And as I didn’t live with her, my everyday life didn’t change after her death.

It is so important to be understood in one’s grief and I am only beginning to understand my own deep grief now.

It’s been a joy hanging out with people who also grieve like me, chatting for hours, exchanging stories, crying, laughing and swearing together, seeing the differences and at the same time being in awe of the sameness.
There is so much no one talks about, so much no one teaches, so many taboos that are silenced. I might just have to write this book.

I used to love talking about the spirit world with my husband. Like my indigenous friend Hazel he could see spirits and communicate with them, he knew things he couldn’t have possibly known if not connected to this reality. It has been so nice talking to with my new grieving friends about the spiritual gifts we have been receiving through this painful yet transformational process.

I will find a solution for this rural and isolated block of land with an off the grid tiny home. But right now I am grateful that I have this safe place that can hold me and my grief. Just as it was after Digby’s death I could not leave the block of land in the anniversary week.

I am so glad that I followed my intuition to come back early from travelling. Up north I would not have had the block of land holding me and I wouldn’t have been met by this cold and very painful loneliness.

There was no way I could have gone through this the last anniversary year. I am so much stronger this year round and it was time to face this harrowing loneliness I arrived with at birth. Anniversaries allow us to unpack what had to be dissociated, but a year later we get a chance to heal another layer with more resilience and support available to us.

Something magical made sure that I could not find the keys to my house and counselling office after my travels and so I had to cancel all my face to face clients – I was clearly not allowed to leave the block of land. For over two weeks I looked everywhere for these keys, suspecting that they would turn up when the time was right. And I did indeed find them without looking once the anniversary time was completed: They were in a dresser with my husband’s ashes on top, hidden behind a framed card my now dead godmother had painted for our wedding. Goosebumps!

The friends I lost in the time of grief, I can now let them go freely because I can embrace the huge loneliness as a big teacher. These gone friends played their role in my learning – and I do get that it is uncomfortable and not easy witnessing someone else in pain.
My deep thanks to the friends that stood by my side no matter what.
And now it is time to make new friends, to build a strong network around me so I can do the work I will be called to do.
My attention at present is on letting go of the things that don’t flow and being gentle with myself – it’s like falling in love with my own self. 

May we all be supported in our deep journeys on this planet with the stars surrounding and the oceans connecting us.

With love

Barbara

Barbara Schmidt

Counselling Somatic

Trauma and nervous system recovery 

If you want to find out more about your nervous system and the incredible healing from trauma I am inviting you to read the short articles on www.counsellingsomatic.com.au in my blog section  - you can subscribe to my newsletters via my website and receive all future blogs conveniently via email.
Feel free to forward my article to others, but please add my name to it for copyright reasons.     You can also find me on my Facebook page “Counselling Somatic Barbara Schmidt"

Grieving to healing travel and sailing adventure

Having a routine, a job that can distract and guide you, are great elements in moving forward after a big loss. But not if your job is working as a grief and trauma counsellor. In this chaptered article I write about my sailing and travelling adventure, being taken in by a spiritual Indigenous elder and the experienced deep transformation gifted via Digby’s death anniversary while on a sailing boat. 

As time went by and less people regularly thought of me, it got harder and harder to hold the grief on my own and I knew that I had to stop offering my counselling work May of this year. I decided to head up north for the winter and follow an unexpected calling to go sailing. The sailing world was completely new to me. I had no idea how to make this happen, all I knew was that I had to leave indefinitely.

The process of deciding to give up my last anchor, my work, was unravelling me before heading off. My closest friends know what a seriously bad place I was in for a while. My mind was fighting me relentlessly. My fears often had me locked in a complete freeze where I could see no way forward or out and I was terrified to go travelling on my own. But I knew that I had to leave as I was dying inside. I had to learn to trust life again and travelling was the only way forward for me.

I simply had a small pop up tent and a tiny car – quite a challenge for someone who isn’t into camping. I lived on the smallest budget possible like a backpacker and often volunteered and improvised in exchange for camping or couch surfing spots. Without Digby's death I wouldn't have found out how much I love driving and cooking on a milk crate out of the back of my car. I learnt that I am much more capable than I ever thought possible. It was often very uncomfortable and more exhausting than working, but I knew I wasn’t done travelling and rediscovering myself yet. I was slowly beginning to listen to my intuition again, even if my mind thought that it made no sense. It was like a wild spiritual initiation ride.

For me it is not true that time heals grief or that it becomes less over time. In my experience it stays the same. But the containment around it changes. There are these heightened moments of joy and new experiences that made my container expand like never before in my life.

When travelling I had amazing experiences. Via unbelievable coincidences I became friends with an Indigenous Ningaloo Elder, who showed me powerful Indigenous Australian dreaming sites on the coast. I had magical encounters with animals, and I lived on a moored fishing charter on my own for a few days after delivering a ute for a company, I went swimming right next to a giant whale shark, I felt in heaven and overjoyed when I collected beautiful pebbles, I snorkeled and dived with turtles and swam above a barreling manta ray. I travelled 6000km alone when before Digby’s death I couldn’t even do the 350km trip up to Perth. In these new moments I didn’t feel my sadness, only utter joy and wonder. The grief was still the same, but the container then was so massive that it seemed non-existent.

But when things went wrong, the container would shrink to a small slither, then the grief would become overwhelming and huge again and being alive would feel unbearable. I have no idea where this journey is taking me, all the norms are thrown out of the window. Sometimes I give myself a hard time for not “having it together” yet and I feel ashamed. Then I remind myself that it is my job to be gentle and patient with myself, not just with my clients, and that telling the world about this shame is a way forward for all of us.

I had no idea how much Digby was holding me when he was still alive as we both lived such independent and strong lives together. He was an unusual and incredible soul. I know there have been many unfortunate circumstances that do make my loss more difficult, but that doesn’t explain my intense grief. Digby was my scaffolding, he was so stabilizing and healing for my childhood trauma. Now it is my job to learn somatically to build a new scaffolding inside myself and travelling started this process for me. My life can become bigger because of this loss. What a crazy contradiction. What a massive and sometimes cruel challenge. And I might not be able to “move on” as quickly as others may expect me to, including myself.

Initiation into a completely new world

My journey up north was a great grieving ritual. I revisited many of the places I had been to with Digby 22 years ago, while pregnant with our daughter. I was nervous heading out to places where Digby and I have had such an amazing time a lifetime ago. But I made new memories and they were adventurous and good. I visited Shelly beach in Shark Bay and sobbed, told it my story and went for a dip. In Monkey Mia where a dolphin sensing my pregnancy back then had rubbed its nose on my leg, I had the most amazing dolphin encounters; one when I had already packed up to leave and was spending some last ocean moments resting. Not one single dolphin nearby. Suddenly I heard a flying drone and just because its noise was annoying me, I sat up. In exactly that moment two dolphins swam directly in front of me, only one meter away. A mother and daughter. These are the moments when I felt that Digby was with me and sending me a sign for my daughter and I.

It's like travelling the land was healing me, even though at times it was a painful process. Sometimes I just knew what was going to happen ahead of time and I was slowly getting back into a flow. I finally started dreaming of and feeling Digby with me more. I had moments of sheer happiness for no reason at all. My heart was slowly healing.

When driving up the coast, the energy of the landscape in the beginning changed so much that it once scared me. I listened to Digby's funeral music by Gurrumul and cried like I hadn't for a while. I asked the ancestors to accept me into their land and relaxed once I received their silent permission. 

I was in awe of the gorges near Exmouth. I went hiking through dry river beds full of big round stones, along the ridges of gaping canyons and was mesmerized by the power of these red rocks. Having canyons right next to the ocean with the expanse of the stars above was incredible. I felt so grateful for nature holding me so tightly but gently, being surrounded and infused by so much beauty, kind people and warm sunny weather. When I was driving I could cry and scream as loud as I needed to, but at the same time I strongly felt spirits holding me which was a beautiful grieving.

My mind stopped thinking and planning and I was beginning to trust the flow of life a little bit more. I went for many walks along the beach, sometimes remembering Digby's last few weeks alive and digesting the intense suffering I witnessed. I was once sobbing along the beach with my grief tumbling me upside down while collecting tiny round sand dollars, the cousins to sea urchins. I ended up with a small collection of  these "stars" and felt so grateful for being able to do my grieving journey on a beautiful beach while collecting shells as Digby and I often used to do together.

I treated myself to swimming with whale sharks. It was one of the best days ever and the holiday I needed after travelling, living out of my car and feeling quite exhausted by it. Swimming right along a whale shark and snorkeling amongst the most beautiful corals recharged my batteries. I felt exhilarated and so alive swimming next to this gigantic spotty fish. It was so nice reconnecting with my joyous and loud enthusiasm for life. I was reminded how much I love being on a boat and that the time was coming up for me to leave the land and go sailing soon.

Sailing and anniversary

And I did make it onto a sailing boat. With really good people who didn't mind that I'm pretty clueless when it comes to sailing. I loved watching the ocean move like sand dunes with little waves in the big ocean swells. I enjoyed it when I could see no land, only the fastness of the horizon with occasional whales popping up. The insignificance and smallness of me in this big body of water was a great holding comfort. Probably the only remedy available against my relentless grief and bloody stubborn resisting mind. The first 15 hours sailing I was struggling with my own mind and grief, still unable to accept that Digby is dead. In the evening I came to more acceptance. 

I may never become a sailor, but my love for the ocean grew with every hour I stared into this great expanse. I could be in company while on my lonely and at times seemingly endless grieving journey. I was humming to myself to keep seasickness and cold at bay. It was too rugged to get to the front of the boat to get warmer clothing and I later learnt that the other sailors took seasickness meds to help them get through it. We sailed for another 37 rough hours through the next day and night with the wind and swell against us. It was definitely not a luxury cruise. But it was the absolute perfect sail honoring Digby's departure. I was reliving so many of our last moments together as I stared out into the ocean, the roughness of the ocean fitted with Digby's inner battle and his resisting to go into hospice. 

I noticed I no longer feared the depth of the ocean; death has so much greater depth. When swimming with whale sharks with Digby 22 years ago not being able to see the ocean floor had terrified me, while this time I only took in the magnificence of the big quiet fish and was I part of it all. We were often over 100 meters above the seabed when sailing. On the ocean I had moments where I arrived at loving Digby unconditionally without the need for him to ever hold me again, to listen or talk to me, without him helping me to make decisions or to share responsibilities. But I had to question how long that would last before I returned to not being able to accept him leaving this earth.

I spent Digby’s death anniversary moored on the boat and had asked my friends to tune in to help me step through this gateway with their love holding me. This support makes such a damn big difference. Anniversary retracing’s can be powerful. It is nature’s way helping us unpack from another vantage point with less dissociation: A year on and we have the chance to feel more of what was previously too overwhelming. 

Digby’s death anniversary was horrid, but with a happy ending. I was physically a mess after zero sleep and I had a migraine. I felt stuck on the boat moored too far away from land. For the first time since travelling I wanted to be back home. I didn't know how to get through this day and I needed help. In the evening a dear friend and somatic experiencing colleague gave me a session on the phone. I was able to cry deeply and could finally touch into a crucial incomplete moment around Digby's death that had spiritually disconnected me for the whole year and made me unable to comprehend that Digby was really dead. 

I was so busy fighting for Digby in the hospital and hospice as for both of us the souls journey is important. Worst of all I had to fight off Digby's family for months who worked against his wishes and blamed me. I never had my moment where I could attune to death itself in peace. The "death doula" in me missed out on walking Digby to the threshold of life. I got to grieve about this immense loss in my session and then renegotiated and re-lived everything in a new way. It's something I can't put into words, but I got to feel it on the anniversary day and it was a deeply sacred moment. I finally could breathe in this indescribable energy coming from above and witnessed the silver lining, Digby's soul departing gently.

While others only saw a skeleton of a man in front of them, I could see the spiritual warrior he truly was, right until the end. In my renegotiation session I got to stand as a proud warrior woman on a beach, seeing visualized the departure of my beloved man. I saw my inner circle of friends standing upright next to me with torches in our hands, painted in proud ochre colors. We were giving Digby the Viking burial he truly deserved; on a high wooden raft lay his body, my bare feet strong on the earth, the fire burning the float sent out to sea, with the stars all above. I felt so strongly connected with the earth while sending Digby off. This solid anchoring would have made such a difference for my grieving later on. 

Funerals don’t include using the earth elements to help reconnect us with the planet, hence I had to do a lot of that on my own while grieving throughout the year. My swimming, smearing clay on my body and singing/toning were attempts to repair that lost moment. On Digby's death anniversary I got to complete what needed doing back then. Time had just become a concept. I am grateful that I got to do this sacred and important repair work on the anniversary day and that being on a sailing boat truly served its purpose.

Spirit sign and taken in by aboriginal elder

A month before leaving to go travelling I was given a spirit sign when I was still full of doubts and fears about setting off into the unknown: walking to my local beach with a friend I saw this giant manta ray a meter from the shore. It stayed there the whole time I was swimming. My friend said she had never seen a manta ray in the 25 years she had lived in this area. I understood the sea creature as a sign from Digby and looked up its meaning. It was all about letting go without acting out of old emotional pain, about being emotionally free without bonds or ties; it basically meant a kind of rebirthing.

I had posted on a public Facebook page that I needed a lift from Carnarvon to Exmouth after sailing and strangely enough I mentioned in that post that I was looking forward to collecting stones on the beaches up there. An Indigenous lady called Antionette read my post and contacted me personally. She texted and warned me to be very careful, that some stones were forbidden to be taken, or it could make me very sick. She suggested to contacting Hazel. And via multiple crazy coincidences I came to Hazel's house near Coral Bay and confided about my manta ray sign. She told me that the beach right in front of her house is the only manta ray dreaming place according to her old ancestral people. Can you believe it?! This whole exhausting and exciting initiation journey brought me to her place. My travelling story came full circle and I felt like I had come home.

When I met up with Hazel a second time I showed her the stones I had already collected. As I mentioned my three separate stone collections to her, I already knew which collection had to go back. Hazel pointed at two and said: "These two are good, you can make a mandala for your husband with them." To the third one she said: "These want to go back to their place!" Luckily, I had no actual forbidden stones in my collection. I drove back into the National Park to the exact place where I had collected the stones. The whole trip I felt an incredible happiness (was it the stones joy of returning home?) and when snorkeling afterwards I almost bumped into a turtle. It felt like a thank you present and I swam for a very long time with that wise old animal. 

I always dreamed of being accepted by wise Indigenous elders. Hazel and I just deeply connected and felt like each other's sisters; we talked a lot about spirits, death and healing (she has lost her son and older siblings). I enjoyed talking about experiencing spirits so; Digby had the gift of seeing spirits and I so missed talking with someone about that. 

I was the only person camping next to Hazel's house. She is a very important elder in Ningaloo on a huge station. And in Coral Bay you can swim with manta rays! Hazel gave me a manta ray brooch she had bought a month ago. She said she had no idea why she was made to buy it at the time, but understands now it was for me as I was meant to come to her place. It gave us both goose bumps.  

Hazel and her husband showed me the coastal dreaming places. We visited turtle, squid, octopus and nursery dreaming in an old rusty ute doing the most adventurous 4WD. I could strongly feel the energy of some places. Hazel then told me that what I was feeling aligned with Indigenous understanding of the land. I even did some of my somatic work with Hazel sitting on the beach. And when that session finished I sang with my singing bowl and a whole family of manta rays came to the shore and we watched them for ages in the thumping sea. I still don't quite know why I had to meet Hazel, but everything along the way felt like it had prepared me for this. Including living with my working class man for 22 years. 

When finishing my travels, I wrote “I am scared of going back home again where everything will remind me that Digby is dead while up here everything around me reminds me that he is very much alive. I am scared of returning home where some of my old grief will remind me of my huge loss, while up north everything reminds me of my huge gain. I'm scared of people down south meeting me and not remembering that I am still grieving and that I still need their support, their visits, their calls, their food, their love.” 

And coming home was indeed hard. I was greeted by plumbing and mold issues in my home and had to camp outside in the freezing cold for almost two weeks, which made me question where I live completely. I felt frozen and completely lost, once again I didn’t want to be on this planet, stopped trusting life, and instead started overeating and numbing myself by watching endless YouTube videos. I felt a lot of shame over it all, but it settled after another anniversary had passed: mine and Digby’s birthdays, only two days apart. And I continue to have really scary dark and lonely days, but I know that my whole nervous system is unravelling and building a new structure from the inside out which will require a lot of time - more than on some days I want to give myself.

My work is changing and I feel and see a lot more energetically, some of the counselling sessions simply blow me away. I love my work in a totally new way. But I don’t book many clients as my inner processing still needs a lot of space.  The secret will be to give myself space without needing to know what to do next. Instead of “supposed to do” I will hopefully just notice myself without any pressure.  I am learning to trust that I will be able to sustain myself as I work less, trust that life will guide me as I was guided all along these last three months travelling up north, not knowing where I will end up or what my future will hold.

 

Barbara Schmidt

Counselling Somatic

Trauma and nervous system recovery

 

If you want to find out more about your nervous system and the incredible healing from trauma I am inviting you to read the short articles on www.counsellingsomatic.com.au in my blog section  - you can subscribe to my newsletters via my website and receive all future blogs conveniently via email/

Feel free to forward my article to others, but please add my name to it for copyright reasons.

You can also find me on my Facebook page “Counselling Somatic Barbara Schmidt"

Grieving needs a village - a personal grief journey

Grief is transformative and can be a heart opening rollercoaster passage. Today I am sharing my deeply personal and raw journey here. It’s nice to finish this long awaited newsletter after a very touching deep session with a client on the phone followed by the most nurturing evening stroll. I am so grateful for the beauty around me and am in awe of the moments where I am enjoying life with all my senses in a completely fresh and new way.

I hope that one day soon we all can do death and grief better. We need to, if we want to do life better as a society.

I took time out to grieve after my husband’s death this year and stumbled into the biggest free fall of my life. For four months I did not know if I would find my way back, I seemed caught in a nightmare and there was nothing I could do to change that.

My husband Digby was sick for 16 months and when he died he left an excruciating huge hole. A part of me died with him and I had to fight hard to find myself again. He was a very special person, deeply embodied, with inspiring working class ethics, very creative and smart, unbeknownst to many also deeply spiritual. We had this incredible deep connection and it felt like we were one on a soul level. He held me so beautifully for 22 years, he was my rock, he had my back like no one ever did before in my life and his unconditional love was an incredible gift. We were great teachers to each other right till the end and I feel humbled by it.

The grief that hit me after his death hit me hard. So hard that I was on my knees, screaming. Primal, incredibly loud sounds were coming out of my mouth. I heard these new sounds with surprise, watched them with curiosity as they expressed themselves like nothing I had ever heard before. It felt unbearable and cruel at times and yet I just had to let it rip through me. To let grief go through us is something I have been teaching my clients in the last 30 years of my counselling work. But this time it was bigger than anything I had ever experienced before and I wondered how on earth people grieve who don’t have these skills or the support to get through it. I would allow the huge waves to take me– this was the part I could do, sometimes with the support of colleagues and friends, but it wasn’t the hard part of my grieving journey.

What I had not anticipated was the spiritual disconnection that happened with my man’s death. I was stripped completely bare, so vulnerable that I could barely leave my block of land as a never before known strange rawness and anxiety would make my whole being feel completely exposed and defenseless. I was without a skin and had to ask for food deliveries and cooked meals. I would force food into myself but it felt like eating cardboard. Only when someone was there to share a meal with me, could I eat huge plates full and my taste buds would rejoice in the gifted dinner.

In lots of ways I was unprepared for my husband’s death despite his sickness. Digby needed every ounce of his strength to stay alive and wouldn’t talk about death with me, so I had to grieve 16 months on my own. It was a very lonely grieving whilst still holding hope like a fragile bird. And in the last month I actually thought that Digby would live. He kept saying with conviction that he was sure he was not dying. I asked him often if he was delusional and begged him to talk about death or to teach me things around the block of land in case he would die. But he insisted that he knew with every fiber of this being that he was going to live. He was such a grounded person, that I felt I had to trust his judgment. But he was wrong. He died in my arms.

The second I realized that he had passed away peacefully I strangely only felt joy. I was proud that he was able to let go so easily instead of holding on to life when it was his time to go. I felt his joy as he left his body and could sense and see his essence in the room as a big round blue ball. I held him all night after his passing, sang to him the song "Over the rainbow", talked to him, sand some more and cried. I was awake with him all night. And all the next morning when his body went cold I no longer wanted to be close to his physique. his body was all of a sudden an empty shell. It didn't carry his energy, I no longer wanted to bring his body home as previously planned. I felt Digby's spirit everywhere and again his joy helped me accept his death. On the way home I thought to myself, that I would be able to ride the waved of grief with "ease" as my man was still so strongly with me in spirit.

The following days I organized his funeral and on three days we had an empty coffin at our home. Friends and neighbours would pop in to paint symbols onto the coffin in honor of my husband (our daughter painted the whole lid) while I mostly lay on a mattress in the living room surrounded by people and food. This creative painting felt like such an important ritual and brought everyone together. Grief would rip through me and shock me to the core in its intensity, I could hardly walk as all my muscles were tired from shaking so much, but I still felt held and carried hope.

This changed on the fourth day after his passing when a huge double rainbow was right over our block of land. The biggest rainbow I had ever seen, with colors of an intensity coming towards me, which I found almost scary. My daughter and a close friend where there at the time and we all felt it was a sign from Digby. What I didn’t know at the time was that this was his parting gift. His spirit left this dimension with the fading of the rainbow.                                                                                                                        And with it my whole world collapsed. My believe system tumbled and I no longer had a scaffolding to hold me on this earth.

In the beginning this new grief was still doable as I felt propelled to sort things out and to clean like never before in my life. I had so much energy in my system despite a huge lack of sleep. My body had naturally switched to movement, the best antidote to depression and collapse. And the cleaning up helped me to process all that I had witnessed during Digby’s sickness. I howled when the grief would take me, but if I was only weeping I would take myself for a walk and would then naturally end up working physically hard on the block: chain sawing, stacking hundreds of pavers, clearing out sheds and the garage, cleaning and scrubbing the whole house, sorting out clothes and paper work. I honestly worked in these first three weeks more than I ever did in 3 years put together and it had a natural easy flow to it. Physical work and movement helped me step forward and start creating a new space for the life on my own. For the first week I slept at a neighbor’s place as being at home had too many painful reminders of dreams not met, I would only come home during the day to clean the space and make things mine. This was such an important process and going away a lot helped me titrate the grief experience and give me breaks from it. But as I worked my tired body so hard and couldn’t digest enough food, my weight was dropping off me too quickly. And people all of a sudden stopped popping in regularly and food deliveries became scarce.

There came a time when I no longer was in this natural flow to work around block and house and I knew I needed a break. I went up to Fremantle to friends and learnt to eat again, I rested, I rode the bike along the beach and practiced going into shops. I felt a big shift after my return home, but I was not pulled to work on the block any more and when this regular movement stopped a great depression fell over me. I no longer could feel my husband around me and this loss stripped me bare of everything. All of a sudden huge parts of my life where all gone at once: the incredible special rock and soul of my life had left, and I was no longer able to do my counselling work which had been such a big part and passion in my life, but worst of all: my spiritual believe system had completely crashed.

My longing to leave this planet and to follow my soul mate was huge. Suicide was not an option. On many levels I knew that I still had a good life ahead of me once the worst of the grieving journey was over. I somehow had to find a way to reconnect to this planet again.

I used to love looking at the stars, it would always give me the greatest comfort. But all of a sudden I found it confusing and vacant looking into the infinite cosmos. I was no longer at home on this planet and the endlessness of the stars had become meaningless and empty to me. I experienced this as a huge loss. Nothing was holding me any longer.

Again I wondered how people do grieve. There is nothing in our culture that supports a grieving person, no rituals, no cultural guidance and people around you often don’t know how to support you. In the olden days a grieving person would wear black for a year to remind everyone in their circle that they were grieving and still needing support. In our culture we have a funeral and this is pretty much the end of it. But grief needs a village, it cannot be done well on your own and for me the practical help, visits, sleep overs away from home, phone calls and shared meals meant the world to me. How do people grief who can’t allow their sadness to surface, who can’t ask for support, say no to the wrong support and make sure they ask the right people? Grieving requires so many skills like the ability to set boundaries, knowing your needs from the inside out, saying no, reaching out and asking for help, the ability to be vulnerable and to make new friends. I guess it is a crash course for most people, an initiation to a new life. But I do think as a culture we need to learn to do death and grieving better and I hope that one day I can write a book about all I have learnt. I would love to hear from other cultures who have a much clearer understanding of doing death and grief. I thought I could do death, I accompanied so many grieving people in my work, I never had a problem talking about death and I have lost someone who meant the world to me before, but Digby’s passing is something that makes me question death and its finality in a very new way.

I guess my situation was also a bit extreme as I found myself without the stability and structure of a job for months, I was without my family of origin who lives on another continent, no possibility to fly home for a while because of Covid and then some other negative unsupportive outside issues I don’t want to mention here. Death really does bring out the best and the worst in people. On top of this I have a huge block of land that had been too much for my husband and myself at times. I had to learn how to start petrol water pumps and manage our off grid set up and l was often left with a constant feeling of overwhelm mixed with the most immense grief.

People suggested I should go back to work, but I felt it was unethical to use my clients to give me stability when I was lacking it from the inside out. I had to find that place in myself first and at times it felt like I was locked in a nightmare with no way out. In retrospective I feel humbled by these difficult circumstances. This intense grieving and the difficult conditions surrounding it gave me a lot of insight into what grieving people can experience. I lean best if I experience things myself and well, I sure did experience a bit.

I went on my own search and listened to an Indian mystic who spoke of wind, fire, water and earth cleansing rituals to help after the passing of a loved one. In my desperation I remembered Tim Win, the iceman who had developed a special breathing technique and who would swim in ice water after his wife’s suicide. So I started swimming in our dam in the middle of winter. It was freezing, but every time I swam I could feel myself a bit better. I would try to swim in the dam or ocean and shower and have a bath 5 times or more a day. To reconnect myself to this planet I used the help of the earth elements. I would rub clay from the dam all over my body and soak up the sun before jumping into the cold water. It felt odd, strange and unfamiliar doing this, but I was desperate enough and I felt called to do it and it helped. Hot baths were like a womb holding me and in between I’d run up to the dam and swim. I collected and chain sawed wood around the block and lit fires and would let the smoke go through me. I found that singing and toning helped tremendously when anxiety and grief where drowning me. Overtone and throat singing to the humming of my shower fan supported me when I didn’t know what else to do.

With every swim and mud ritual I felt a teeny bit better. It was a very gradual process. On bad days I would swim a lot, on very bad days that brought me to my knees I had to force myself to go for a walk at least in the afternoon and would always end up going for a swim as well then.

In Somatic Experiencing I learnt the importance of going back to incomplete places of trauma with support and with the exact right resources. One day on the phone to one of my many supportive SE colleagues and friends I had an image of my husband’s death pop up. I went back to this memory to renegotiate a small thing that was missing for me, this then took me to the image of the rainbow over our block and I realized that this was the stumbling block that had tied me firmly into nowhere land. When people would tell me, that of course I was grieving and sometimes feeling depressed as it only had been 2 months since Digby died, I still knew that something wasn’t quite right within me. There was more than “just” this huge grief. Something was keeping me locked up and trapped, something was not letting me move forward and kept me stuck and tied to the past.

If a memory has not been healed, it is like strings holding us prisoner to this past unfinished moment. These seemingly unbreakable ties can be healed with the right support and uniquely created resources. For me it was imagining a group of women huddled all around me, holding me very tight and speaking clearly to me, that this was the moment my husband’s spirit would leave this dimension and that afterwards I would not be able to feel him as I had previously known. In my imagination I was kicking and screaming in pain, throwing myself on the floor whilst these archetypal women would hold me with allowing gentleness. A huge tantrum and grief were ripping through me both at the same time. It was so important that someone explained to me what was going to happen and that I could respond to it with all my body while being held. Feeling this holding and support while also experiencing this big discharge, released my trapped spirit.

The next day I felt a door had opened and that I had turned a corner. I would be able to return to work again when ready. My counselling practice and some form of normality was no longer completely out of my reach. There was no rush to return to work and I still had some bad days and will have this unbearable grief for a very long time, but work was now within my scope. A week after this counselling session I felt called to contact my clients. I have been experiencing so much new joy counselling them again and am doing so with ease.

My deepest thank you and gratitude goes out to the people who supported me in this special and sacred grieving time and for the friends who are still there with me today. Thank you for your believing in me when I doubted myself and for listening to my experiences when I couldn’t listen to anyone else. I will need your ongoing support, you popping in for a chat, a walk and shared food.

Grieving needs a village and I am grateful I had at least glimpses of it.

Barbara Schmidt

Counselling Somatic

Trauma and nervous system recovery

If you want to find out more about your nervous system and the incredible healing from trauma I am inviting you to read the short articles on www.counsellingsomatic.com.au in my blog section  - you can subscribe to my newsletters via my website and receive all future blogs conveniently via email/

Feel free to forward my article to others, but please add my name to it for copyright reasons.

You can also find me on my Facebook page “Counselling Somatic Barbara Schmidt"