Your Secret Selves Hold Golden Threads of Wisdom
On navigating the opposing forces of life and a moving exploration to loosen the tension against our selves | Wednesday Wanderings
Hi, I’m Faye, welcome! Here, we get weird and wonderful and sometimes a little naughty on the path to personal empowerment. And we do it through the language of movement. We move from prescriptive to expressive. From obedient to deviant. From copied to embodied.
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There’s not a straight line to be found in the movement of the human body. We do like to pretend, though, convince ourselves we’re on sure paths to success and social acceptance. At a certain point, it becomes clear that no matter how linear our paths seem, no matter what we tell ourselves about who we should be, and how we mold ourselves to fit those images, we’re all just wandering, figuring out this thing called life as it happens.
At its most basic, this figuring is a process of learning to navigate opposing forces. Tension and release. Freedom and discipline. Gravity. I don’t know about you, but too much discipline and I become an absolute bore. Too much freedom… well that also gets me into trouble. Lost in the wiggly abyss, not knowing which way is up, frozen and floating.
There is a balance to strike, always shifting.
Until my late 20s, I didn’t understand a thing about balance. I was all discipline all the time. A tightly wound bundle of nerves always threatening to go on the fritz. I was full throttle seriousness. No room to wander. No room to follow threads of curiosity. No room for expressing anything other than the acceptable thing.
Bleh.
You know the saying: “All work and no play makes [Faye] a dull woman.”
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“The wide-open, uncharted terrain of “write anything” can be creatively paralyzing because our minds can’t find any horizon, can’t discern any edges to press against—and this is hard for us, because it is in the space of that pressing against edges, that friction we find there, that creativity happens.” —
You know, the same goes for movement. It is the friction that provokes our creative response - ignites the idling potential of our desire to express something as true as the flame bursting from a match struck.
Yet, the apparent rules of adulthood tend to extinguish the flames of our expressive potential with ideas about what the “right” ways of being in and moving through the world are. We cling to the constraints rather than using them to free ourselves. We smother our creative impulses — our desire to dance and sing and become larger than our safe self-image — for fear of looking foolish,. The skill of foolishness is something
can tell you about.1•••••••••
Do you want to know why I’m so passionate about sharing practices of movement and creative expression? It’s because I wholly denied the power of my passion for a couple decades, and it nearly killed me. Literally. I was so disciplined (read: control freak), so comfortable in one extreme of the spectrum, that the entire movement of my life became an exercise in self torture; handcuffed to my constraints, I was blind to the living, breathing needs of my body. One of which is to release tension. I became an impenetrably dense human shaped package of anxiety pushing against my enjoyment of anything.
I mean, how can one release anything if the only thing they are concerned with is the “right” number of sets and reps and the “right” amount of “cardio” and the perfect amount of food to (not) eat and the possibility that everything might go to shit if they miss a workout or eat one too many chocolate chips?
The details of the neuroses are rather insignificant; we all have out own. The point is, we often have too tight grips on our discipline, in whatever areas of life it presents (often all of them, in subtle ways), because we are afraid of what might happen if we were to allow ourselves a bit of freedom.
The constraints become the puppet masters of our lives. More control mechanisms than sources of empowerment. And that’s a shame, because our bodies are brilliant and have so very much to teach us, if we’ll let them.
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Life for me has been fragmented. Having given my power up to so many rules and people, I find pieces of memories I’d disowned surfacing later, after. Echoes of moments I couldn’t stomach as they happened. My practice is remembering, reconnecting, moment by moment. Writing is like this necessarily, moment by moment. Language, even when it is non-linear, is linear to a degree. And though words often have multiple meanings, and sentences ripple into eternity, you can only write one letter at a time.
Sometimes I try to force it to be different. I try with all my might to be able to see everything all at once. As if that’s in any way realistic. I understand why: I’m human. There is an ocean of connections I want to develop. A forever unwinding spool of invisible threads I long to reveal through my ink and pull through my body. I want to know whether there are any threads still connected to a puppeteer.
My best work comes through when I let go of knowing, of a destination, of the particulars of a desired connection. Truth seems to express itself best when I allow myself to wander in the terrain of my body, psyche, spirit. Here, in a more spacious awareness, untethered from ideas of how things should turn out, a greater consciousness can flow through. The body is often constraint enough. Which is what today’s practice is all about.
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Speaking of today’s practice, I must thank
for the inspiration in her recent essay, secret time,I would paraphrase, but I couldn’t say it better than her:
“I no longer see the need to fracture into shadow selves. I’m safe. I’m loved. I’m happy. And it’s becoming obvious how the path I treaded for safety grows more perilous by the hour; I’ve gotten worse at the act, not better. There’s a risk of self-obliteration.
Still, I cling to women within, some inherent others manufactured, all deliberately veiled and controlled. I’m holding them close, fearful of revealing the power their secrecy begets. Wary of letting go of this “safe” way, and mucking up being authentic. I’ve spent so long gatekeeping, how will I exist with nothing to guard? How do I say goodbye to decades of hard work, my masterpiece?
It’s a frightening thought, so I’m reframing the question for my sanity — What if I release it all and can joyfully improvise my way through life? What if I find a way of existing that allows me to be both revelatory and mysterious, but doesn’t require me to stumble up to the precipice?
What if I do this and discover that my greatest strength is my capacity to embrace the multitudes within? That I can love the contradictions that make me terribly human.
What if my freedom lies not in guarding my secrets, but in courageously giving voice to the depths of myself — allowing each facet to shine forth, unobstructed by obscurity's intoxicating venom?
What if I pledge nothing but honesty and openness to myself and for myself? And learn that this does not require that I share everything. It’s about setting up a new permission structure; secrecy is no longer the default.”
All of this got me thinking of the physical implications of keeping ourselves hidden. About where all those secrets go. All the space they take up in our bodies and psyches. All the ways they crowd our spirits out. How our breath hasn’t enough space in our lungs.
It got me thinking about the hidden threads within ourselves, about seams sewn too tightly, and about how to begin loosening them. It got me thinking about how these threads are golden glimmers in the tapestries we call our lives.
So, that’s what I invite you to explore today.
The Practice
After your practice, contemplate this:
What came up as you felt into hidden parts of you? Words? Images? Emotions? Desires? Characters?
Are these things you wish to share with the world, or did you rather need only to reveal them to yourself?
How do you want to continue releasing the threads that bind you?
Works from the wonderful writers mentioned in this post <3
One last thing! If you enjoyed this piece, please click the ♥️ below so more people can find me on Substack <3 And share this post on Notes or with a friend who might enjoy it. As always I’d love to know about your experience in thecomments!
xx Faye
If you want to know more about the importance of being foolish, read
He is a wonderful writer and poet and a self-proclaimed jester. You may learn a thing or two from his work.
'...the apparent rules of adulthood tend to extinguish the flames of our expressive potential with ideas about what the “right” ways of being in and moving through the world are.'
Yeah, true. Such societal expectations and 'norms' are too rigid, regressive, and end up preventing true fulfillment and happiness in people.
The way our society is structured, in that sense, needs to change to become more fluid and progressive.
Faye, I love the paintings you share. You must be familiar with the work of John William Waterhouse. I especially love "The Soul of a Rose," but others as well.