Hello community,
This reflection is little long because I won't be sending one for awhile given our summer adventures. I packed in many nuggets here, so please save and return if needed!

Last week’s Sunday Pause welcomed Celebrator parts and reflected on our relationship with painful anniversaries. Thank you to those who shared seasons of grief you’re navigating. Sometimes our pain is met with gentleness and other times it’s met with heartbreak and discouragement. Your shares confirm the importance of trusted community, care and witnessing--the initial purpose for this Pause community.

In March 2020 during the start of Covid lockdown, I was given the idea for this community from divine Spirit on a long road bike ride (where I get some of my best ideas btw!). I was inspired to host a free, weekly guided meditation and group share on Zoom to help support and connect loved ones during this bewildering, confusing and scary time. I had been using Zoom already for 6 years due to travel challenges from my brain injury. I was fully comfortable on this platform and knew first-hand how brutal social isolation and being homebound truly was. I wanted to give something to the wider community, even though I was daunted over leading guided meditations for strangers. I had to type out every word I spoke in those early days and only invited my closest friends and family for the first few weeks. I was too nervous to invite any colleagues or post it publicly! This was a lesson of stepping out of my comfort zone for the sake of the cause. My motto was, “Give it a go, Laura, the bar is low!” That helped reassure my internal critics considerably. What do we have to lose?!

Pauses for Calm & Connection drew people from all over the world each week to welcome and befriend the parts the pandemic was stirring up, in community. What emerged from both a personal and global traumatic event became the catalyst for a shift in the focus of my life’s work. A number of you from those early days are still here!

You and I are not alone. This is the gift we can offer one another—even through Zoom, even through email, even through texts. Sometimes we are given that reminder and other times we have to rally and remind ourselves or ask for what we need. (I often lean on my internal cheerleaders during times like this.)

(Shared with deep gratitude and permission-- written by one of our community members after last week’s mailing):

"Wow, Laura, I am moving through a long list of grief anniversaries in May, June, and July. Thank you for this email, I always appreciate your thoughts, but I resonate with this one in particular. (In the past year, after the deaths of my parents, every holiday is a grief anniversary too.) I too have moved through each one differently, notably vigorous hikes in exciting new places or rituals in nature to honor my parents and my grieving parts (which are almost all my parts right now). It was so good to read your reflection on caring for yourself during grief anniversaries. Thank you, I feel seen.
with appreciation,
H.

Thank you for this, H, and the sweet reciprocity it reveals. I share an experience with you. You feel seen and held. You feeling seen and held validates my experience and we are more connected.

It takes honesty and courage to acknowledge what is happening within us. It takes a little more to express it out loud. That’s what this space is for--to nudge you into connecting more deeply with your internal system and sorting out how to honor it through witnessing.

Where can you invite in a little more honesty or courage to acknowledge to yourself what is happening within you?

What needs to happen for you to be able to express it out loud? Who would you like to witness you?

Part 2 from last week:

The transformation of a traumatic anniversary into one of joy and rebirth comes from the power of presence and witnessing as well as an acknowledgment and experience of the beauty that emerges through hard things.

A few days before the anniversary of injury, I was invited to be the client in a teaching demo for a weekend course on IFS and Medical Trauma with Drs. Frank Anderson and Lissa Rankin. Being a client in a demo (as many of you know yourself) takes a certain level of blind trust, courage and vulnerability. I knew I couldn’t agree to do this in front of 200 students without unanimous consent from my parts. After some days of reflection, I clarified that being with my medically traumatized parts in community so close to the anniversary of injury felt like a precious opportunity of care and support for these parts. To my surprise, saying yes was not a difficult decision. One of the most traumatic aspects of my unique injury was the social isolation and the solitary, decades-long effort to recover and heal from symptoms no one could truly understand. Opening myself up to a host of witnesses with a trauma therapist I trust seemed worth the discomfort or the risk. I was willing to try anyway.

We’ll never know what we’re capable of if we don’t step out of our comfort zone.

The session started with a skeptical part of me doubting how much could we even work on in an hour? Traumatized parts need a gentle, slow pace with no agenda or pressure. Frank gently reassured my parts that we wouldn’t be rushing anything. We could hang out wherever we needed for as long as needed.

The parts related to the TBI that needed attention were welcomed and held patiently and gently. They relaxed and separated enough to allow us to shift to the ongoing medical issue I deal with every day, rheumatoid arthritis. I had never addressed this issue with witnesses. With Frank’s attunement and trauma-informed skill, I was able to unblend from the RA that encases and adheres to me. I was able to extend lovingkindness towards the disease that can terrify parts of me. I caressed it like a mother would her baby.

The support and resonance from the students in the course was so healing, too. My pain touched theirs and their hearts touched mine.

Focusing on my medically traumatized parts from the TBI and the rheumatoid arthritis in a supportive community with a skilled clinician allowed me to unblend from them in unique way. This experience allowed me to unexpectedly enter the TBI anniversary with joy, Self energy and the deepest of appreciation for how hard my system has worked over the years to take care of me and help me heal—physically, spiritually and emotionally.

Thank you, cheerleaders, celebrators, managers, adventurers, some firefighters are in there, too! So many parts deserving of my love. The support and validation within my system and from beyond the filled my heart with gratitude and buoyancy. I’m still feeling it! Healing happens without agenda, with presence, patience and attunement.

Thank you to all who witness and hold our pain. We can't do this alone.

I’ve collected rocks for as long as I can remember. My favorites sit near me in my office. During the session with Frank, I held a fist-sized stone of Carrara marble, which I picked up hiking in the Apuan Alps in Tuscany, Italy, when Erik taught in Florence for Gonzaga University several years ago. This is the marble Michelangelo carved to reveal his famous David as well as the unfinished Slave sculptures nearby. I’ve always been more drawn to the Slave sculptures, because they reveal the process of chipping away at a block of marble to create and reveal the beauty and the life within.

The phrase, "Beauty comes through hard things" kept washing over me through my tears during that session.

Yes. Thank you.

What is one gift (or more) that emerged from a painful or challenging experience?

And to close, some of you have asked for a few links that relate to last week and this week's themes. Here you go, especially if you're new to the community, to me or want a repeat!

1. I apologize for including the wrong link last week for my timeshare pup Bridger dog's 4 second short on being good enough. Here it is again. May we learn from him!

2. My Caring Bridge blog for 3 years post injury for details from me, Erik, all of it. Search for lauraschmidt (no space) and you'll need to enter a login

3. The One Inside Podcast Interview with my beloved friend and colleague, Tammy Sollenberger released on my 50th birthday, October 16, 2020. Befriending Brain Injured and Pandemic Parts. This was my first public recollection of my accident and my emotion in the interview still makes parts of me uncomfortable. I decided to trust Tammy on releasing the interview and trusted it would help others. It's a work in progress to share a story of trauma with as much Self leadership and compassion as possible.

Part 2: Beauty comes through hard things

Pause with Laura

Part 2: Beauty comes through hard things

Shifting Summer Cycling Gears

Welcoming anniversaries with an open heart

Pause with Laura