Expansion Never Ends

There is a false belief that people who teach mindfulness, emotional intelligence, embodiment, shadow work, or self-awareness have somehow “figured themselves out.”

We haven’t.

There is no end to expansion. No final level of healing where you become permanently conscious, perfectly regulated, and untouched by your own humanity.

Even someone who can teach you awareness is still going through their own processes, shedding layers, meeting deeper parts of themselves, and expanding until the end of their days.

And I want to share something that happened to me recently.

It felt like a shedding process that landed directly in the energy of Lionsgate, the New Moon in Leo, and the solar eclipse.

My conscious recollection of my childhood is very limited. I don’t have many memories stored as clear stories in my mind.

But that doesn’t mean my body doesn’t remember.

My memory lives in my body.

In sensations.

In tension.

In numbness.

In the places where I suddenly feel unsafe.

In the intensity of my reactions to situations that, logically, shouldn’t affect me as deeply as they do.

For years, I’ve known that one of my deepest childhood wounds was around unsafety — and around the limited capacity within my family to be present with vulnerability, pain, and the acknowledgment of another person’s experience.

I have known this for a long time.

And yet, we often think that when we process something deeply, it should be the “last time.”

But healing doesn’t work that way.

Healing happens in circles.

You return to the same wound from a different level of consciousness.

You discover another layer.

Then another.

And another.

I don’t believe there is necessarily an “end” to this process.

Because trauma doesn’t only contain pain.

It also contains gifts.

And the deeper you come to know the wound, the deeper you come to know the wisdom, capacity, and medicine that can emerge from it.

Recently, my sister called me and told me that someone in our family had behaved abusively toward her.

She stood up for herself.

And instead of being supported, she experienced the rest of the family turning against her.

Because standing up for her would potentially threaten the marriage of another family member.

And threatening that marriage would mean threatening someone’s sense of safety, stability, and comfort.

And this brought something profound into my awareness:

When people are operating from survival, they don’t always choose what is right. They choose what feels safest.

If you’ve known nothing but survival, vulnerability can feel dangerous.

Other people’s pain can become secondary to preserving the structure that gives you a sense of security.

So the person who threatens that structure can become the problem — even when that person is the one who has been hurt.

And this is where my sister’s story became my story.

Because her experience activated something in my own body that I hadn’t realized was still there.

When I was around 19 or 20, I was in a relationship with a psychologically abusive man.

Eventually, that relationship became physically abusive.

And again, nobody stood up for me.

There was shame.

There was blame.

And somehow, it became my fault.

Speaking with my sister activated that memory — not as a clear visual memory, but as a body memory.

The hurt.

The fear.

The loneliness.

The guilt.

The feeling that somehow I had done something to deserve what was happening to me.

For a couple of days, I felt an enormous amount of tension in my body.

It felt like my stomach was trying to push through my ribcage.

I couldn’t connect to my womb.

I didn’t feel grounded.

It felt as though all of my energy had moved upward, while the lower part of my body felt disconnected.

And as I stayed with the sensations instead of trying to get rid of them, I realized something even deeper.

My sister’s experience had activated an old defense mechanism in me:

If I make myself small enough, blame myself enough, and don’t make anyone uncomfortable, maybe I won’t be rejected.

But then I noticed something else.

Almost immediately, instead of staying with my own body and my own pain, I started trying to find solutions for my sister.

She was considering moving into another apartment because the apartment she currently lives in belongs to my other sister.

And there I was again.

Trying to figure everything out.

Trying to make everyone okay.

Trying to solve the situation.

Trying to regulate everybody’s emotions.

Trying to create safety for everyone.

And I realized:

I had immediately left myself to go save somebody else.

That is the pattern.

Some part of me still believes that if I can regulate everyone, help everyone, make everyone happy, anticipate everyone’s needs, and solve everyone’s problems, then I can finally create safety for myself.

If everyone else is okay, then maybe I’m okay.

If everyone else is happy with me, then maybe I am worthy of love.

And suddenly, I could see how deeply this pattern has shaped my life.

I have lived with the belief that everybody else’s emotions and truth are more important than mine.

That I have to put myself last.

That my role is to support, understand, rescue, advise, regulate, and hold everyone else.

And this is where the grief came in.

Because underneath the anger and sadness, there was a tremendous amount of grief.

Grief for all the times I chose other people over myself.

All the times I abandoned my own truth to preserve a connection.

All the times I put my own life, my goals, my happiness, my energy, and my needs on hold because someone else needed saving.

And I realized that I have to stop pouring my energy into people who have never truly stood beside me.

People who are adults, but who are still operating from their own unhealed, childlike patterns.

People whose lives I cannot fix.

People who don’t actually want the depth of conversation, emotional intimacy, or self-reflection that I have spent years longing to have with them.

And that realization is painful.

Because these are people I love.

These are people who are supposed to be the closest to me.

My blood family.

And I’ve carried this hope that one day we will finally be able to sit down and have those deep, intimate conversations I’ve always wanted.

That one day they will meet me there.

That one day they will see me.

That one day they will understand me.

But perhaps part of healing is accepting that I cannot make someone want a depth of connection they have never wanted to explore.

And I don’t have to keep abandoning myself trying.

I don’t have to spend my life trying to micromanage my family from thousands of miles away.

I don’t have to rescue people who don’t ask to be rescued.

I don’t have to keep giving advice where my sincerity isn’t received.

I don’t have to keep pouring into relationships that continually make me question whether there is something wrong with me for wanting more intimacy, more honesty, more emotional presence.

And this is where a simple mantra that Robert shared with me came back:

“Fuck it.”

At first, it sounded almost funny.

But it became profound.

I don’t need to sacrifice my life to save someone else’s.

Fuck it.

I don’t need to keep trying to create intimacy with people who don’t have the capacity or desire to meet me there.

Fuck it.

I’m going to save myself.

And maybe this is my lesson for this solar eclipse and New Moon in Leo:

To choose myself. No matter what.

To put my energy into my own life.

My own goals.

My own happiness.

My own expansion.

And into the people who actually see me, appreciate me, recognize me, and meet me in the depth that I naturally desire.

Because someone who doesn’t respect my boundaries is not someone I can feel safe with.

Someone who rejects me for making a mistake is not someone I need to prove my worth to.

Someone who doesn’t appreciate me, doesn’t honor my vulnerability, and doesn’t make space for my humanity does not get unlimited access to me.

And this isn’t about punishment.

It’s not about anger.

It’s about discernment.

It’s about understanding that love does not require self-abandonment.

I can love someone and still walk away.

I can understand someone’s wounds and still say no.

I can have compassion for someone’s limitations without making their limitations my home.

I can allow people to be imperfect without making their behavior acceptable.

And I can stop trying to save people who are not choosing to save themselves.

Because perhaps this is one of the deepest forms of healing:

Learning that I can love you without abandoning myself.

I can have boundaries without becoming cruel.

I can be angry without becoming abusive.

I can make a mistake without becoming a bad person.

I can choose myself without betraying my family.

And I can finally stop confusing loyalty with self-abandonment.

So maybe this is what I’m closing.

Not necessarily a relationship.

But a door inside myself.

The door where I keep walking away from myself to go take care of everyone else.

The door where I keep hoping that if I give enough, explain enough, love enough, support enough, and rescue enough, someone will finally give me the connection I have been longing for.

I’m closing that door.

And I’m turning toward myself.

This is the integration.

I choose myself.

email: yanashealingsanctuary@gmail.com

© 2024. All rights reserved.

whatsapp: +1 571 325 97 25

YANACACAO.com