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.

We can’t push the river - when we are pushing we are not creating

We are 80 percent water and so the saying “you can’t push a river” refers directly to us: we are the embodied river! Life means going down this river with its rapids and slow flowing sections. We follow the river all the way to the ocean where we can rest, become vapour and be pulled up by the sun towards the cosmos. And one day we might end up as raindrops falling down onto earth again.

Moving along this river we will come to parts where there is little flow and sometimes it can become so stagnant that we might even stop moving altogether. We can then go into a nervous system freeze state (see blog article “Trauma education I: Freeze state”) and being there isn’t exactly fun. It is so very tempting to start pushing so that we can get out of this uncomfortable place. We strangely seem to learn from an early age to push harder when something is tight; but you cannot undo a knot by pulling it, you need to ease the knot open with patience and a gentle hand.

Stress, trauma, life interruptions or any other overwhelming events can cause our nervous system to tighten. Each time we say “I should …” we are most likely pushing, and then our nervous system automatically contracts. A tight nervous system loses its flexibility and cannot bounce back so easily from life’s ups and downs. Life will always come with its bumpy sections, but with a relaxed nervous system we will be able to ride the waves with more eloquence and ease. When we start pushing while in a freeze state we will most likely push ourselves over the edge.

In the Greek mythology Zeus punished Sisyphus by forcing him to roll an immense boulder up a hill.  Every time it neared the top it would roll back down, repeating this action for eternity. Once we start pushing we are on the endless journey of rolling a big rock up a massively steep hill. We won’t succeed. Should we make it to the top of that hill, we will be paying a price. A price so high, that we wish we’d never started this climb. The cost for our summit success can be adrenal fatigue, brain fog, insomnia, exhaustion and massive burn out symptoms.

Now time won’t equal time any more: if we keep talking to someone once we have had enough might mean we are exhausted for the rest of the whole day. A week of pushing doesn’t equal a week of resting – it may take us weeks if not months to recover from it. If we don’t give up on the things that don’t flow, we will inevitably give up on life itself: Once there is stagnation it will be hard to trust the flow of life or even life itself. We can start feeling suicidal and in a deep freeze state.

Instead of beating ourselves up for being lazy, procrastinating, depressed, overwhelmed or suicidal we need to be really kind to ourselves. We can recognize that the river of life simply got jammed up, so anything coming after it started accumulating and blocking its flow. If we truly give ourselves permission to rest and let go our whole system can relax and we are on the right path.

Time to call in helpers and friends as some of the blocking items are “heavy” and cannot be removed on our own. Via the world of sensations and somatic therapy we can dive deep into the wisdom of our reptilian brain to recognize what is actually blocking the flow. We are herd animals and in times like these we do need a village around us. We can acknowledge where we are with curiosity and surprise: “Oh, looks like something got blocked up! No wonder I’ve been feeling so crap.”

When you’re having a day where there is no flow, get up and go for a gentle walk. If possible try to be mindful of your movements and nature around you. And if you feel like crying, do so, but put your attention on your movements, not on the tears that flow naturally. Allow sound to come with your tears. Make sure you open up all your joints and your spine so flow becomes possible: Yoga and Qigong can be great for this. And swimming is one of the best flow openers while you’ll be cleansed by the ocean plasma at the same time. Don’t forget to drink plenty of water on days where you feel stagnant.

Pushing can take so many hidden forms and I myself at times still overlook serious pushing moments. My grieving journey has gifted me with many deep freeze experiences and at times it felt like I would never recover nor get anything ever done again. But I can only say from experience, no matter how tempting, pushing never works. Instead of going forward you’ll be taking a very long detour instead.

Sometimes we simply need to be patient and trust until life takes us where we are meant to go next. Once your body has regained a better flow you will soon find yourself miraculously doing the things that before you had to force yourself to even get started.

Instead of trying to tick off things on your to do list, you will go into a natural and deeply connected flow. The things around you all of a sudden will let you know what wants to be done versus what seemingly needs to be done.

On some days it may be doing the dishes, finishing your tax, mowing the lawn, chain sawing fire wood, weeding, exercising, reading a book, making art or visiting a friend. On other days it will be having a nap and resting deeply.

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.
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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"

The real danger is division

 

The real danger is not Covid, the unvaccinated nor the vaccine. It is the division created and fed between people, the absurd, outrageous, extreme and often ridiculous theories on both (!) sides with little or no common sense. It is creating a division I have never seen before in my life. Friends all of a sudden are no longer friends. I am stunned, puzzled and saddened by it. This is a time where we need to be reminded of the herd instinct biologically wired into all of us, to huddle together and support one another. The virus could unite people on this planet and allow everyone to be the unique beautiful human being we were meant to be.

To move forward building our capacity for ambiguity is at the core. Tolerance for ambiguity can be defined as “the degree to which an individual is comfortable with uncertainty, unpredictability, conflicting directions, and multiple demands”– a sum up of our times and a challenge humanity now has to master.

We live in an uncertain environment and to live in it we have to develop a better tolerance for ambiguity. Only then can we effectively work together to solve the huge issues humanity is facing at the moment, including saving our environmentally threatened planet. This is not a time to stress ourselves and compromise our immune systems by breaking each other’s hearts. Our nervous systems need down-regulation and hope, not fear and doom.

Some of my dearest friends are vaccinated, others chose not to be vaccinated. My love for my friends has not changed one little bit with the decisions they have been making. It’s a tough one to make given the severity of the virus we are dealing with.  

When living on the east coast I regularly went camping with friends in the bush on a secret divine spot where the river meets the ocean and we had so many unforgettable barbeques together. This will stay in my heart forever and makes me smile, even though they stopped talking to me while I was grieving due to my different views. I trust that a bridge can be built again one day. 

I teach clients in my counselling sessions that they are the only experts when it comes to their bodies and hence the only ones who have access to a deeper knowing. No “expert” can make this decision for you. 

I am not giving any medical or legal advice here, this article simply lists my personal views and resources I found helpful; check government websites or talk to your GP for more official information. Before getting vaccinated you have the option of preparing your immune system with a specific protocol according to a health practitioner I am in regular contact with. A close family member of mine wouldn’t recover easily from Covid and hence will be choosing to get vaccinated once she has strengthened and built up her immune system. There are practitioners with experience in helping you do this safely. Protocols with supplements before the vaccination need to be individually tailored and take existing medical conditions into consideration. You can also contact practitioners if you are experiencing side effects after receiving the vaccine. 

In one way we are alone in making these big decisions, but we can receive help by staying connected to our own bodies, to feel into them with curiosity and openness. Any form of movement or exercise, dancing, swimming, hiking in nature, running, yoga, chi gung and gardening are great tools. We can meditate and pray, connect to something that is bigger than us to help us in these “bigger than us” times. Larry Dossey calls it the “one mind”. I find reading his book with the same title very comforting, it helps me to stay calm and hopeful and I now rarely get pulled into the vortex of fear or division. 

I had a chat to my vaccinated best friend in Germany who frequents many hospitals due to her work. She told me that there are indeed a lot of young people in the hospitals who are very sick with Covid. In the document of ministry of health in NZ one can read that “most people experience mild illness and recover completely”. The virus is not something that can be taken lightly however, every one of us needs to make a decision that takes into consideration their constitution, nervous system, medical history, physical and emotional health. If you are not vaccinated, take extra precautions to not spread the virus, obey sanitization rules and reduce the viral load with nasal swabs and gargling. If you are vaccinated, do the same as you still can carry and spread the virus. 

My parents and one sister in Germany have already had their third shot, one sister in Germany is not vaccinated. She and her family have all just recently recovered from the corona virus without any complications. When she was first diagnosed with the virus I was surprised how meagre the list of prescribed medication was (similar to meds for a simple cold in fact) and so I forwarded her a much more comprehensive list of supplements from a Chinese herbalist here in Australia. I am beginning to wonder if it is possible that some people don’t recover well and fill hospitals because effective early treatment is not made available. 

I have referred clients who had side effects from the vaccination to experienced practitioners who are currently receiving a huge number of vaccine injury patients. The clients I sent to them recovered successfully. However, I personally know of a friend’s son who is now in hospital due to the side effects from the vaccine and was told by their doctor they are likely to die. Please take yourself seriously and don’t just “soldier on” if you feel something isn’t feeling quite right after your injection. Again, trust your own body, even if your symptoms are not on the list of proven side effects. If your GP doesn’t take you seriously, please go and seek a second opinion and/or see a different health practitioner for alternative information.

I am so pleased to see that immunity building is finally receiving the mention it deserves. The organization “Wanaka” in New Zealand has created a guide to support the community and reduce the pressure on the medical system by using early action through nutrition, lifestyle factors and supplements. We all need to build up our immune systems, vaccinated or not.

I was lucky to have had a very healthy upbringing in the country side in Germany with organic food, yoga, composting, a biologically healthily built house, homeopathy and supplements - an unusual pioneer childhood growing up in the 70s. Not everyone has had that luxury. I am deeply grateful to my parents for this. On the other side, I have had my own share of deep childhood trauma and hence have an oversensitive nervous system that doesn’t deal well with vaccines and some medications. I even had a bad reaction to the simple tetanus shot a few years ago, and when going to the dentist I can’t even handle any form of anaesthetic. I have to get the drilling done without it.
But I have a very strong body and I know I can handle a lot and can be with whatever arises inside my body: joy, grief, health, sickness and the most intense pain (even grateful now for the years of nervous system related migraines that trained me well to cope with pain). I know that not everyone can be embodied in that way, simply due to their past experiences.

I am planning on recording YouTube videos in which I can help you to nurture your own embodiment, down regulate your nervous system and to build your capacity and containment. I am slowly dreaming up a workshop that will take this to another level. I am happy to come and teach groups in the future.

I am deeply thankful to my mother who taught me to question authority and who role-modelled being different. I leant early to withstand any peer pressure and to build my capacity for handling bullying. And my dad taught me how to improvise and to be creative. Everything in my life at this very moment seems to line up and make sense, including grieving the death of my husband.

We are all so wonderfully unique and different due to our circumstances, past, genetics, constitution and mind set. It’s not something we can choose. So please, let’s give each other slack and let everyone make their own wise decisions. None of us is making them lightly and it really isn’t easy making a decision with so much conflicting information bombarding us. 

I have so much hope for our planet and its plants, animals, microorganisms and people on it. The veil is thin at the moment and we have such a chance for growth and connection right now. May we use this precious special time wisely,

With love,

                 Barbara

Barbara Schmidt

Counselling Somatic

Trauma and nervous system recovery

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Hope this article will be shared my many and help us work together.

Sign up for my blog newsletters on www.counsellingsomatic.com.au, recent articles you can find under my blog section. The last two articles are on my honest and raw personal grieving journey after the loss of my husband. My oldest articles share a lot of information about the nervous system.

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

 

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