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.     

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

 

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"