That night we crashed on the motorcycle…

Mystic Template 2020 by ShiloH Sophia McCloud

As much as we tout transcendence from trauma, there’s just a certain amount that we have to go through. It doesn’t matter if you hear about it or watch a show about it or read a book about it or talk to your therapist about it. There are some things that just need to be gone through and cannot necessarily be avoided.

Part of it’s because we’re wired for it, and the other part of it is because even our preferences and behaviors may not be aware that there’s another choice.

The work that I’ve been centering the past 30 plus years is rooted in a real view I have that transformation is possible by conscious choice, and that there could be a breakdown to break through — but also that we could become accountable enough to ourselves to go ahead and break through. The curation of a breakthrough, a breakthrough that we look at and look towards, but we have to be ready and the circumstances need to align and sometimes it takes the time it takes.

Today I was like, I’m ready for a new legend, and I just heard as clear as if you were speaking it to me right now: this will come to you, but not now. Wait. Of course I don’t want to wait, but I’ll be in France in a couple weeks and that’s always an incredible opportunity to revision, and I am certainly in a time of revisioning.

What I’m present to today is how much danger was in my life. Now sometimes I discount the kind of danger that I have been through because it’s not as bad as other people, but that doesn’t make it any less impacting in who I ended up being and how my default self got shaped.

There are very scary things that normalized danger for me. And even partners and partnerships that I’ve chosen have more danger than I’m comfortable with. On the one hand, the other hand, I navigate it for long cycles of time because my nervous system tells me, I know this. I can handle this. I’m just going to love this person no matter how dangerous they are to me. I’m just going to keep loving them through it and that love is going to bring us through. And sometimes that’s not always the right decision.

The kinds of things I’ve experienced — like crashing in the middle of the night with my father on a motorcycle after a night of partying. I think I was 7 years old. I remember when the bike went into slow motion on the gravel road and we tipped. Normalized.

I remember stories of my mother being attacked while she was pregnant with me. In some way, normalized.

I remember my mother coming into my room in the middle of the night after I heard her and my stepfather fighting, and packing my little suitcase and dragging the blanket and the pillow off the bed and taking me to the car. Normalized.

Now I don’t mean normalized like, oh, this is normal and you should accept this as normal. I mean repeated patterns. I mean a part of the fabric that makes me who I am. I mean happens often enough that we develop resiliency and hypervigilance all in the same breath. I can handle this, and what the actual flying F, all at the same time.

I remember the night that all the adults in the household got arrested and me and my cousin huddled in a single bed wondering what happened and when any adults would come and find us, because everyone was in jail.

I remember being in a house where men who were threatening us would drive by on motorcycles. Our very life was threatened to the degree that we had to move. Not normalized because it was normal, but somehow expected. Even sometimes picking up women hitchhikers and bringing them home with us so my mother and my grandmother could teach them things and help them get on their feet. I remember thinking, this is kind of risky. I mean, what do we know about this person?

Yes, there were shotguns and gates and rowdy parties. Yes, there were drugs and alcohol and loud music. And yes, there were beings who were suspect and predatorial, and yes, there were indiscretions.

It becomes normalized because it’s what I’ve known. And this is true for so many of us, even if we know that isn’t how we wish it was, not how it could be. It becomes normalized because we’re just living through it and the alternative is to be in trauma all the time. And so sometimes normalizing something is what helps us get out of the trauma pattern in a way, because we’re like, oh yeah, this is just how it is.

And so at this point in my life there’s a feeling, a feeling I don’t have a word for, because it’s not allowing and it’s not surrendering. It’s more like, it’s just how it is. Isn’t it? It’s not like trust either, because it’s not like I trust that everything’s unfolding for my good, because so many things don’t, myself and others. It’s not like I trust the divine is going to make sure everything’s okay, because they’re not out there micromanaging it for everyone. I’m not saying there’s not cycles of insight and protection. And it’s not like trusting the universe has my back either. Because too much shit has gone down.

It’s more like accepting the moment for what it is. We are here now, aren’t we? How can we make the best of what we’ve been given? And that’s something I learned from my mom. She called all these changes the great adventure.

I chose to take that on and it completely shaped my nervous system. And now I find myself at a cycle of life, turning 56 this week, that I don’t want to live in normalized danger anymore. There’s really not a lot I can do about it, but what I can do is create alternate patterns. To watch the patterns that I get stuck into and to choose to transcend the trauma by practice. Because once we consciously choose it, then we actually have to practice it.

So I’m starting with that practice right now. Me and all the birds are practicing not normalizing danger, but elevating conscious choice.

Blessings right where you are, from right where I am.

Shiloh Sophia