The pain of embodiment

It was impossible for me to see just how much I was running until I finally landed “here” fully. With nowhere left to go, and no possibility of turning away from it. In truth, after a lifetime of running and seeking, it is an immeasurably painful experience.

It has happened in stages. When I first found myself alone on my land at Hollow Bone Ranch, it was life sitting me down and forcing me to sit still. There was an immense emotional and energetic backlog — from a lifetime of repression and a nervous system that was completely frozen — and I was forced to finally feel it. I couldn’t run away from it. All the ways I had become  accustomed to distracting myself became totally unsatisfying, and so I put them all down. I did more silent sitting during that year alone than I thought I was capable of. I did more crying. I did more processing. For a period of time, it was very difficult to function and take care of myself. Jennifer was dying. I’ve written extensively about that time in my journey.

I’m not sure that the discomfort ever actually went away…but my system became accustomed to holding more and more. I came to implicitly trust the body to process anything and everything that arose. So when discomfort came, I leaned in. I felt it. I didn’t run.

That’s when I started to realize what freedom really is. 

So much emptying occurred that peace became my abiding state. I came to know without a doubt that I am the empty silence that underpins all of life. But now it was time for life to shake it and test it.

It was time for me to go out into the world and have the realization tested in real time. I entered “the marketplace”, as Bernadette Roberts coined it.

I got thrust out into the world…totally cracked open and unprotected. And had to learn how to live from this new place. How to relate from this new place. How to live as a person.

In October of 2024, I reconnected with a man I had been friends with in high school. We had been out of contact for 18 years, and life unexpectedly brought our paths back together. 6 months later, he moved onto Hollow Bone Ranch. And this is where the next stage of this began. For as long as I can remember, I’ve fantasized about the ideal relationship. I used to disappear into romantic fantasies, because my nervous system learned from a young age that my own fantasies were the only place I felt any semblance of safety. I felt desperate for someone to really be present with me. For someone to reach out beyond their own ego and see the truth of me. From a young age, my ideal vision of love became the God I prayed to.

Even though I had experienced an extraordinary amount of emptying during the time I was here alone, I knew that part wasn’t going to go down without a fight. I was right. As soon as I got into a relationship, the seeking energy ramped back up. The running started again. The awareness never left, but all the old nervous system patterns came back like a tidal wave. And I found myself performing all the same old relational patterns and behaviors like a computer program. The same process that happened when I was alone began again…this time with someone standing as witness. And this time, my heart was cracked wide open. I couldn’t hide. The oldest and deepest identity layers were surfacing. My fullest and ugliest humanity was on display, and it wanted so badly to run away.

But I had enough experience at this point to know that freedom would be found only by going straight into it. Into the depths of these unconscious patterns — bringing the light of truth to all of my deepest relational wounds. To all of the tenderest places.

This process felt the way I would imagine an acorn feels when it’s buried in the ground and something within it begins to stir. Its potential energy is finally activated, and the sun begins calling it outward and upward. An invisible transformation begins to happen inside it, and the seedling struggles to grow within the confines of the shell’s walls. It’s the kind of feeling that makes you want to crawl out of your skin, but there’s no way to get away from it, escape it, or avoid it.

That’s how it felt within me…I could feel the truth wrestling to find its way through the hard shell of identity. But I’ve never stopped trusting that it would.

I’ve had to dive down into the surface layers of overgiving and overfunctioning, through the program of self-abandonment and self-erasure, bump up against the human needs that had long been shoved into a dark corner, discover the places where the voice was still suppressed and silenced, and begin to set boundaries to establish an inner felt sense of safety. I was slowly being challenged to live my awakening in real-time, in the relationships that trigger the deepest and most unconscious programming.

It feels strange to be able to describe in a single paragraph something that took a year to occur. The words just can’t do it justice. It was the same process that happened back when I was alone here, but this time, etching itself deeper and consuming layers that were more fundamental. Only this time, that peace I had found when I was here alone never wavered.

What this has taught me is that the expression of truth isn’t some soft thing. It’s not going to make me likeable. It’s not going to help me gain friends. The way it expresses through these human bodies is like a force of nature. Sometimes it is gentle and meandering, and other times it spews molten lava that has just forced its way through a dormant mountaintop. Neither expression carries more truth than the other. And as a small-framed woman who was taught to be gentle and palatable and soft-spoken and put the needs of others before my own, learning to hold both expressions has been the challenge of a lifetime. It’s still sorting itself out.

Even though I still appear to be standing here, there is nothing solid left that I can point to and call Jennifer. And every time some other secret identity surfaces, life does its work and shatters that too. I’m asked to surrender, again and again and again. I become willing to let go of this too.

Over the last few years, I’ve been asked to let go of everything. And, when I say everything, I mean everything. Career, housing, relationships, finances, stability, family, motherhood, partnership. Hopes, dreams, fantasies, ideals. All orientation dropped away, little by little. My reality popped like soap bubbles.

And what has been revealed is so fucking ordinary that it is shocking. If I had known that this is where this road was headed, I probably would never have started. It’s not sparkly. It’s not elevated. There’s no dream-life on the other side. Just ordinary, simple life. Still in a human body. Still living in the world. Everything has changed, and nothing has changed. 

Chop wood, carry water.