The Ones Still With You - Part 3
Updated: 1 day ago
Post 3 of the series: Held by Something Older
Some of us carry more support than we realize. We’ve just never been introduced to it.
Why we feel lost, even when we’re going, going, going
Have you ever been moving constantly, checking things off, pushing harder, and still felt like you’re not getting anywhere? Many of us assume the answer is more effort or a better plan, while a quiet voice underneath says, I’m lost, and I don’t know where I’m even trying to go.
Here’s what I’ve come to believe. A lot of that busyness isn’t a lack of discipline. It’s a way of outrunning something: the old fear, the grief that never had a place to land. And when we’re always in motion, there’s no stillness in which to meet the company already available to us. Feeling lost is often a sign we’ve been navigating alone, and we were never meant to.
There’s a line of people behind you who survived things they never got to fully grieve or name. That unfinished weight has a way of settling into the next generation, quietly shaping what feels dangerous, what feels shameful, what feels impossible to ask for. But that same line also carried people who found a way to love someone, plant something, keep going, no matter what came before them. That resilience is in you too, whether or not anyone ever said so out loud.
And alongside that ancestral thread, many of us are also carrying several younger, more frightened parts of ourselves: the one who stayed quiet to keep the peace, the one who learned to leave the room in her mind before she could leave it in her body, the one who overworks or over-manages because it once felt like the only way to stay safe. What often goes unnoticed is that a wiser presence tends to sit at that same table, quietly available, waiting for us to slow down enough to actually meet it.
There’s a third presence worth inviting too, one we don’t talk about nearly enough: a future version of you. Someone who has already lived through whatever feels impossible right now, and who already knows how it turns out. Not a stranger. You, just further down the road, with the kind of steadiness that only comes from having actually survived it.
You are not just what was passed down to you, and you are not only your most frightened parts. There is steadier company already available to you, from behind you and ahead of you both.
A small practice: Setting Three Extra Places
About seven minutes. If you feel the urge to rush, that’s the “go go go” part of you. It’s welcome too. Let it sit at the edge of the table.
Picture a table with a few seats. Invite one ancestor to sit down, known or unknown to you, and silently ask, “What did you never get to say?” Let whatever comes, come.
Now invite a second presence to the same table. Not an ancestor this time, but something wiser and steadier than your most anxious thoughts. Let it simply sit nearby.
Bring to mind a part of yourself that’s been loud or exhausting lately, the one that overworks, panics, or tries to control everything so nothing goes wrong. Picture it as a third guest, sitting a little apart from the others, tired and bracing.
Now invite a future version of yourself to pull up the last chair, someone who has already made it through whatever this part is so afraid of. Let this future self look at the tired, bracing part with real recognition, and say, “It’s not your fault. I know why you do this. I’m not mad at you. I love you. And I can tell you, because I’m living proof: this gets easier than you think.”
Notice anything that shifts in that exhausted part, even slightly, as it takes that in.
Before you get up from the table, say quietly, “Some of this ends with me, and I don’t have to carry it alone, not the past, and not the road ahead either.”
If this stirred something in you
This kind of work, meeting your own ancestral line with compassion, accessing wiser guidance from within, and letting your future self comfort the parts of you still bracing for impact, is a meaningful part of the Spiritual Transformation sessions I offer. If any part of this felt familiar, I’d be glad to help you meet the company that’s already there.
With Love and Light,Deanne
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