Field Notes - #9 - When the Light Comes on, You Have to Have Something to Say

I'll never forget a quote from a profile of Rachel Maddow that I read in The New Yorker a while ago: "When the light comes on, you have to have something to say." I am starting to understand how vulnerable it is to get on here and to post something almost every day.

These Field Notes do not have a specific form or structure, maybe they "should," but right now, they don't. Yesterday I wrote a poem and today I'm just putting words on a page and trying to find my way. I have one thousand stories in my head about what a Core Energetics practitioner in training and aspiring professional tennis player should be writing and should be posting: and a poem bout coffee at sunrise and desire is definitely not inside of one of those stories.

Naming my own uncertainty, vulnerability, shame, fear of being open and honest --- in my mind, that is not what a confident and competent professional would do. So for so long I would hold back, temper myself, not show my cards, my own process or my own self while I am still becoming and still finding my voice and my place in the world.

It's safer this way, isn't it? Better to be sure before beginning; better to know all of the steps before trying the dance, right? Better to know what the score of the match will be before I step onto the court; and better to know ahead of time whether a client will feel supported during a session --- otherwise it's okay to just not begin working together. You get the point.

I want safety and for so much of my life I have sought safety through predictability: knowing all potential outcomes first, and then --- and only then --- moving forward. In theory it makes complete sense. In practice not so much. Not being forthright and open, keeping myself small and trying to fit myself into a box --- it has not worked out for me, not really.

There is a pain that comes with hiding and not speaking one's truth that is far greater than the pain of being seen, "exposed," or "found out." It hurts more because it's self-inflicted -- because one can know: I don't have to live this way, I don't have to hide, but still can't break free from their own fears.

And it's a journey and it takes a long time to make sense of it and to make peace with the past and to integrate all of the pain and sadness with the beauty and potential of the future, but it can be done. And putting the past in the past, and stepping forward into the unknown, that's where the gold is, the magic and the power and the deeply grounded sense of self-trust, they all live there.

And that's where I'm trying to go. And as practitioner in training, that is the space that I am committed to holding for my clients. It is a road filled with twists and turns and peaks and valleys and darkness and light, and so much more. And although it is possible to walk the road alone, my god, it is so much easier to navigate together.