I’m in a hotel room in Chicago, to be specific I am in a hotel room at The Staybridge Suites by the airport. I am at an airport hotel. I have been at this airport hotel for nearly five days now. I have a view of a Five Guys, a freeway, and a gas station. I am on my lunch break, and this newsletter seems like an absolutely insane idea. I had to say this because it’s true, WTF am I doing? and also, I’m still going to do it, because I wanna see what happens next. I want to see what grows out of the experiment, so I am sticking with the controlled variables! I cannot control your responses to it, your thoughts about me, what it brings up for you, but I can continue to try to share from a place of truth, heart, fear, and excitement. I will continue to do that.

Lately I’ve been thinking so much about slow. Oh man, have I HATED SLOW. I mean HATED! I hated my slow, your slow, anything slow made me what to do a Shakespearean OOOOOOHHHHHH of rage and frustration. I don’t think I was alone or sat down from 15-35, and let me just put this bluntly, It’s because I was running from myself. My go, go, go was filled with avoid, prove, and be better. That is not to say that it didn’t also have a expanisve beautiful life and vitality mixed in there- nothing is really either or.

The Autonomic Nervous System speaks six times more slowly than the thinking mind. Read it again. I am not referring to action; I am referring to the unbinding of our stories and experiences. We listen to our thinking minds, despite them having proven themselves to be little con artists, we listen very carefully. But that means that while we are busy thinking, worrying, figuring out, planning, GOING, we are also abandoning our nervous systems. We are abandoning ourselves, leaving ourselves in the dust; we are separating ourselves from ourselves.

I have spent much of my life treating my body like an unexpected shark in open seas. I have been thinking about sharks a lot lately. I will talk to my therapist about this. If you encounter a shark you are supposed to stop swimming, turn around and face the shark. Okay, absolutely not, but okay, go on. When we try to escape, we engage the shark’s implicit predator response; and the shark will chase us. The shark has a job. This feels like the relationship I’ve had with myself for so much of my life; inside my system lived both the predator and the prey; the pain and also the solution.

This brings us back to the airport hotel. I am here because on Tuesday I will complete my THREE YEAR Somatic Experiencing program. I am here because three years ago I made a decision to commit to this ride. I was driving on the 110 downtown when I got the email that I was accepted. I started crying and could not stop crying. I called Ryan and said, I don’t know why I am crying, but I did know. I knew that after three decades of you name it therapy and healing modalities, sobriety, going to graduate school, and being a therapist there was a frontier that I had only just touched into - my nervous system. I was making a commitment to turn around and face the shark.

Maybe this is why I’m so fascinated with sharks lately. I grew up in close proximity to dolphins (another time!) and LOVED them! In fifth grade I had to do a book report on an ocean mammal, so obviously DOLPHINS! But all the dolphin books were already checked out of The Rhinebeck Library, and all they had left was shark books. I can’t remember doing a report, but I remember how scared I was of that book. But what all my fear blocked was how beautiful sharks also are, what incredible, graceful, powerful creatures they are. Also dolphins are cute, but they love to make big trouble, so. (This is now a newsletter in partnership with The National Marine Mammal Foundation! JK JK)

I guess my trauma is the shark, I guess that’s where we are heading here. I turned around and called my nervous system back. Or I went to meet parts of her that I left behind, some in 1986, some in the 90’s, yesterday. I SLOWED down. Over the past few years I have slowed down little bit by little bit. Slowing down is the greatest gift I have given myself because it has brought me back into one piece; because I have met parts of self I hadn’t met yet. Hello!

What happens when you slow down? Like slow down like when you lay on the beach or put your bare feet on the grass. What if you just sat in a chair, like didn’t DO anything to fix; didn’t DO slowing down, but just sat down for five minutes and looked at the room, or whatever!!

Do you notice any thoughts, feelings, sensations, anything at all. What’s one thing you notice?

What if you welcomed all of yourself back? What if you were your greatest gift?

xx Jenny

Chicago O’Hare

Henri Matisse, Daisies, 1939