If I recall correctly from my time playing Mario Bros., there is this thing about advancing to the next level.

It gets harder. Like. Lots harder.

You just finally got the hang of handling what the previous level was, and then you feel like a beginner again.

I’m not the first to bring this analogy to the healing journey, but I’m feeling it lately.

As I’ve worked on resolving my shit and increasing my capacity, there always comes this moment of, “ahhhh, I think I get it, I can manage my life now.”Then, BAM!I now have the capacity to look at something new/deeper/older. Or I am suddenly confronted by seeing things I had been not-so-comfortably ignoring for all of my life. It’s not fair! Each time this happens, it’s an assault on my newfound sense of space and competence.

And each time this has happened, I have chosen to accept the challenge, ask for help, and move forward.

But each time, it’s a choice. Every time since I had my first crash at 28, I have had to decide to do the hard thing. Whether it was changing the entire way I ate and took care of myself, or the way I speak to people and hold my power. That’s my story.

However, I’ve also seen it repeatedly in those I work with. Whether it’s in one-on-one work or within a group context, I celebrate wins and growth with folks… then ask if they’re game for more. I explicitly did that twice this week. It’s hard. For me, for them. Because I know how much it sucks to be doing well, and feeling like you’ve finally got some breathing room, and life hands you – what? – An opportunity? A challenge? A major suck-fest?

And you have to decide if you’re up for it. It’ll probably happen anyway, whatever it is, but you get to decide if you want to handle it like you’ve handled it in the past. That method is no longer how the new you handles things, but it’s certainly familiar. And you don’t know how to handle it in the least way you could.

Perhaps it’s because those folx who hit these moments when we are working together decided to work with me. Or it’s human nature not to back down from a challenge. But each time, my people and I step up.

Once the game begins, we are driven to keep going. To see how far we can make it. To keep climbing through the levels, no matter how long it takes us.

As someone who has spent most of my professional life working with animals, who have almost all lived significantly shorter lives than we do, I am intimately aware of the cycle of life and death.

Similarly, at this stage in my life and career, I work daily with people deeply rooted in their own animal bodies and nature. 

Sometimes, this involves deep, traumatic resolution and healing. 

At other times, it is recognizing, accepting, and embracing that we are animal organisms, which can no longer be pushed along and treated like automata.

The feeling of death – the end of a phase of my life, or the end of my ability to handle or cope with the load – has come to me, personally, several times. 

And each time, I get through it. 

I am irrevocably changed.  I can never go back to who I was.

But in embracing these times of darkness, sadness, despair, pain… I make it through. 

I usually fight it for a while!  However, when I can come to terms with the ending of who or what I thought I was, I can move forward.  Eventually.

I might hazard that humanity is heading into one of these times. Indeed, my own country, but given what we have globally done (and continue to do) to the planet we depend on, I believe it is more than local.

I see it as an opportunity for Renaturing. 

Just as the wheel of the year moves through cycles of death and rebirth, so does everything else.  Our very cells.  Our lives.  Humanity.  The earth.  The cosmos.

Interestingly, I don’t discuss this from a spiritual perspective here.  But instead, the tangible, felt sense experience of it all, year to year, cycle to cycle. 

As we enter the darkest time of the year, I am reflecting on what is ending for me.  I can mourn it all – past concepts of self and hopes and dreams that I had centered around.

I know that I am not letting it all go, of course, not yet!

And I am also not yet moving on.  That will happen, and I know that more will come.  I will continue on, slog through the darkness of the year (and a moment of life and cultural upheaval), and the light will come again. 

Eventually.

In the meantime, I am continuing to develop my own understanding and enhance my ability to perform my work. 

It still fulfills me, regardless of the capacity in which I practice it; as an individual practitioner, group facilitator, training assistant, student, or client, all these roles bring me joy, further regulation, and personal healing.

I also have friends and family, animal and human alike.  The woods around me keep me grounded in the cycles of the year.

This is the support I have to keep me going through dark and death.

So, have you had something come up in your [psyche/work/life] that you just want to scream, “AGAIN?!?!”

It might be around shame, visibility, money, confidence, worthiness, gender-related trauma, mommy/daddy stuff… 

Incidentally, I’d love to compile a list. What am I missing?

There are many ways I talk about this… “I worked on this last month/year/20 years ago, what is it doing coming back?”

Spirals, onion layers, and annual seasons, to name a few.

We are just one being.  (OK, we are a superorganism, and more- we are a direct expression of the universe, but that’s not as useful for this direct discussion.)  And the stuff we’re working with has been threaded through that entire being. 

So perhaps we have worked with shame or visibility in one facet of our lives, like purposefully choosing our personal style.  But then we run into it again the following year, when we get stuck trying to level up our business.

Or… as a somatic practitioner, this feels important to say…  Through trauma/stress/whatever, we can become less aware of particular parts of our bodies.  As we work through those parts, the same old issues are there, too.  If we were out of touch with our left shoulder because of a break or an incomplete survival response, then whatever we worked with around shame in the past is still in that shoulder because we couldn’t access it at the time. 

In that respect, we could call it a huge step and a big win when we get access to working through old shit in a new part of our body.

We are also a fractal of humanity.  So maybe it’s time for us to work on those gender issues (again) because it’s time for humanity (or just our culture) needs to do it.  And in our doing so, we are healing part of the whole.  Through time?  Through space?

Whatever way we look at it, it happens.  Repeatedly!

We will see the same themes come up time and again. 

Perhaps we will become more skilled in working with them each time, and can go it alone.

Perhaps it’ll get harder each time as we work on deeper/bigger levels and need support.

Maybe these recurrences become old friends, reminders of the lives we’ve lived and of the work we get to keep doing on ourselves.