Healing Early Disconnection
I’ve been thinking and discharging about early disconnection and how it looks like it’s at the root of oppression and of harm to our earth.
It seems that when we came into the world, most of the people around us were disconnected—from others, from themselves, and from all other living beings. Huge hard things happened to us. Adults couldn’t tell [notice] we were there as thinking, feeling, fully bodied, fully aware beings, and they treated us as if we weren’t. Disconnection. There was little or no attention for us to discharge, so we didn’t get to heal. No one gave us information about what we were experiencing, so it was confusing.
This was very different from what we expected. We reached for connection with others in our inherent human way and were met with disconnection. Many of us had no choice but to “leave” our bodies to stay alive. We gave up trying—not completely, but in big ways.
None of this was what any of us wanted. Undischarged, unhealed disconnection was passed down to us from many generations. We were surrounded by disconnection, immersed in it. We had no choice but to disconnect ourselves—though not fully, of course, or we wouldn’t be here.
We did beautifully. We held on [didn’t give up]. We still have much connection. But a tremendous amount of disconnection happened, and it looks like we can’t even tell [notice it].
I think that everything we now can’t feel or notice points to a way we were disconnected. Every place we feel separate from anyone else. Every way we feel separate from our own bodies, from our own emotions. Every way we act oppressively. Every way we can’t tell we are part of the earth and that we act as if we are not.
What are your earliest memories of being disconnected from your body, from other people, from your emotions? What are your earliest memories of how the adults who raised you, and were otherwise around you, were disconnected? What are your earliest memories of being disconnected from the natural world?
These have been some of the hardest-, loneliest-, scariest-feeling memories for me to work on, but working on them has been tremendously valuable and re-emergent!
I’ve been discharging and thinking about how disconnection led me to not feel the ways I am oppressive or connect with how other people are oppressed by oppressions I am not targeted by. I think it took massive disconnection from myself and others to not be able to feel being oppressive.
It’s helpful to learn and have information, but that only gets me so far. Healing early disconnection is what allows me to really see and connect with people and their experience and to feel when I’m acting outside of my inherent human nature.
I think it’s possible to fully reclaim ourselves and reconnect—and that if we did, we would never act out or collude with oppression. It was never what we wanted, and we would feel right away that it was “off” [wrong]. Our whole being would say no and do something completely different.
I also think we would never act out or collude with harm to our earth. That, too, was never what we wanted. We would immediately feel that it was wrong. Our whole being would say no and do something completely different. And we would know that we had the ability to do something different, and that we’d be deeply connected to everyone else while we did it.
That’s what I think is possible. That’s what I want to discharge my way to. I have a long way to go! It breaks my heart how much I can’t tell what being in oppressor roles has done to me and others—U.S. oppression, language oppression, rural oppression, white domination, all of it. And what my internalized oppression—as a Jew, a female, and more—has done. I’m heartbroken, and it terrifies me. And I’m excited, hopeful, and ready to dive more deeply into doing this work, in connection with you and with myself.
Temporarily living in Asheville, North Carolina, USA
Reprinted from the e-mail discussion list for RC Community members
(Present Time 209, October 2022)