Welcome to Exile in Rising.
I'm Anamail,
Somatic experiencing therapist for PTSD and trauma recovery.
Today I am inviting you into a very intimate threshold,
A poem called Wasteland.
This piece came from a place in me and many of us that were exhausted,
Collapsed,
Stripped of direction,
Yet still quietly alive.
It speaks to the season in our lives when everything we have poured into others has emptied us and when the ground feels like mud pulling us under.
I'm going to read the poem first and then together we will explore its somatic landscape,
The place in between.
So take a breath,
Let your body settle and receive this as a mirror,
If it's your mirror,
Or as a reminder of the quiet places in us that still want to rise.
Let's begin.
This is the poem Wasteland.
Here I am,
Looking at the wasteland of my life,
All broken,
All down.
Rising and resigning was the beat of that life.
So much effort,
So many cries.
And I ask,
Why,
Why,
Why?
As if I didn't try,
As if I didn't do enough,
As if I didn't fight.
For what?
For what?
For what?
Where is that wisdom,
That meaning of life I needed to pick up and continue with my life?
Should I rage now?
Should I weep?
Should I resign as I look back at the wasteland of my life?
Looking at the anguish,
Looking at the exile,
Looking in the landscape of my life,
I see nothing but a constant cry,
Pulling my legs through never-ending mud.
At this threshold of my life,
Between wasteland and the unknown,
I am stuck,
Unsure what comes next,
Unsure what to do with myself or my life.
In uncertainty,
I know so well,
I sit still,
Unable to look forward or up.
It seems I cannot move my legs out of this mud.
Am I forever stuck?
Am I sinking down?
Am I dying in this wasteland of my life?
All this effort for what?
To help others,
To birth others,
To make for others,
To serve others,
To bend for others,
To comply for others.
And what about me?
What about me?
What about me?
What about me?
What about this soul of mine?
What about this will of mine?
What about these dreams of mine?
What about the God of mine?
What about this anger?
Of mine,
How and why?
I cannot figure out.
Stuck in the mud of the wasteland of my life.
Drowning already hip high,
Unwilling to rise,
Wanting only to sink down.
Can I let go of this life of mine or can I let go of this past?
Can you hold me,
Mud,
So I may weep and mourn just for now?
Can I surrender and still be lifted up?
Can I sink into your warmth?
And still search for sun?
Mud,
Can I be held in my grief?
Can I hide and then crawl up?
Can you,
Mud,
Help me out?
Can you rise me from the wasteland of my life?
Can you spit me out?
Not too far,
Just close enough so I may dry.
Yet still keep one hand in your sticky mud.
Can I remain on this threshold of my life?
Not in the wasteland,
But not yet far.
Not drowning in you,
But still holding you with one hand.
Can I dry my heavy body from your mud and still dip my fingers into your heaviness?
Can I rest in the in-between,
Where it's hard to let go and hard to move on?
Not drowned,
But crawled out with your help.
I know you wanted me out.
I know you're fertile enough.
To birth me out,
Let me lie beside you as I dry.
Let me mourn the wasteland of my life.
Thank you for listening to Wasteland.
And let's just take a moment now,
Just to feel into what this poem is really naming.
In the body,
In the soul,
And in the places inside us,
That collapse when life becomes too heavy to carry.
When I wrote this piece,
I wasn't writing from a place of I am done with my grief or I am done with my living.
I was writing from the in-between,
The place where you are no longer drowning,
But you're also not standing.
And the place where the body has stopped pretending it's fine,
Where the soul is too tired to rise,
And where all the roles you played for others finally fall away.
And this poem is a map of that threshold,
Of that place of in-between.
And it's the moment when a woman realizes she has spent years rising for others and resigning for herself.
When the nervous system has been stretched and exhausted by care,
By service,
By bending,
Complying,
Birthing,
Until there is nothing left for her own dreams,
Her own will,
Her own God.
And the same goes for a man.
And the wasteland in this poem is not a failure.
It is the aftermath of a life lived in endurance.
It's the body saying,
I cannot carry it anymore.
And it's our soul saying,
What about me?
And then there is the mud,
The most important presence in this piece,
Where mud is collapse,
Mud is exhaustion,
Functioning freeze,
The resignation that comes when we have tried too hard for too long to walk through this mud.
And mud is also earth,
It's warmth,
It's holding,
It's containment,
It is a womb,
It's very fertile.
And mud in this poem is not trying to kill you,
It is trying to keep you from running,
It is trying to make you rest,
It is trying to make you weep.
Finally,
After years of strength,
It is trying to make you see you after being in servitude to others.
It is trying to birth you out slowly,
When you are ready,
There is a moment in a life and usually it comes after deep collapse,
After the dark night of the soul,
After we are so depleted and exhausted.
Then,
Then we do become ready.
But before we merge out,
We need to be in this space of in between.
When I say,
Let me lie beside you as I dry,
I'm naming the part of healing that almost no one talks about.
The part where you pause beside the life that collapsed.
The part where you mourn,
Not the future,
But the past,
The years of giving and the years of disappearing.
The years of endurance that no one named as a sacrifice.
The place where you have been choiceless,
Where we have been conditioned not to even question.
And this space is a space of grief.
And in our culture,
In Western cultures,
We don't know how to grieve.
There is a timeline of seven days in some cultures,
If you're lucky,
40 days and that's it.
But it takes longer than this.
It is the most sacred space for our soul,
For our body,
For our heart.
After decades walking through this mud.
So grief,
This space in between is a space of rest and grief.
And grief comes before emergence.
There is no timeline for grief.
Drying comes before movement.
Before we move to the next thing,
To the next project,
To the next transformation we need to do,
We need to dry out the heaviness and stickiness of that mud.
Which means we need to heal experience or experiences we had,
Which were deeply traumatizing and heavy and exhausting.
Lying beside the mud comes before walking away from it.
And this is the somatic truth.
We cannot rise from what we have not mourned,
From what we have not grieved.
And we cannot move forward without resting in the in-between.
We cannot rebuild without acknowledging the body that collapsed in the first place.
We can push forward absolutely.
We can effort as we did for decades.
And you know the cost of it.
And body cannot move.
It goes in resignation.
It goes in illness.
It goes in a deep pain.
And the rest place in-between that rest place,
Which is called resignation syndrome,
Is so important and necessary.
It requires the space to restore,
Deeply to restore.
It requires energy.
And it's also the place where we need to grieve.
If you are in a wasteland season of your own,
If you're exhausted,
If you're stuck,
If you feel like your soul,
Your feet is hip deep in mud,
I want you to hear me.
You're not failing.
You're not lost.
And you're not done.
You are in the sacred middle.
Sacred in-between spaces.
The place where the old life,
Old identity,
Old roles has fallen away.
And the new life has not yet,
Has not yet taken shape.
It's a big,
Vast landscape.
It's the place where your nervous system is trying to protect you by forcing you to slow down.
By making you as you want to resign.
The place where your body is asking you not to rise yet.
Not to move yet.
Not to act yet.
Not to plan yet.
But to rest.
To weep.
To let the mud hold you just long enough,
Just long enough for you to find your rest.
Your strength.
Without timeline.
Without agenda.
Without pressure from outside.
Expectation from this culture.
And this poem,
Wasteland,
Is permission.
It's permission to stop.
It is permission to collapse.
Permission to question everything you built for everyone else.
Permission to mourn a life that demanded too much from you.
And also,
Permission to not rush the resurrection,
Transformation.
And if this is your season,
Be gentle with yourself.
Stay close to your body.
Stay close to the ground.
Take your time and trust that emerging slowly is still emerging.
It's still emerging.
And leave outside narrative.
Outside marketing spill.
Outside social media expectation.
You're not drowning anymore.
You're not rising yet.
You're in the in-between.
In-between.
The most honest,
Sacred,
Fertile place of all.
And this is how we come back to ourselves.
This is a true healing.
How we return,
Not as who we were,
By someone else's agenda,
By someone else's expectations.
But as who we were meant to be.
Until next time,
Take care of the part of you that is in need of healing.
Emerging.
And the part of you that is still resting beside the mud.
And be gentle with yourself.
Be gentle with yourself.
Until next time.
This is Excellen Rising.
I am on a mile.
Much care.
Much care.
