Spiraling (again)
I've been here before. Except the view looks different this time
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During a recent sobriety support meeting, someone spoke up and shared, “I’ve been talking a lot, but I haven’t been using my voice.”
I can’t stop thinking about this sentence. What it means. What it conveys in such a concise way.
It points to the automatic act of talking just to feel relevant. The pretending we all do to convince ourselves we are participating in life. To ensure we’re being seen and heard. Except, what happens when we’re not saying what lies beneath the words? When we hide the truer vocabulary from one another. The words that we don’t string our sentences with regularly.
For this last segment of DARE TO BE’s monthly theme of awe, I want to talk about how I continue to alter my relationship with my past. With the stories I cling to about who I am. Why I am the way I am.
And how I can hold all of that differently.
The holding it differently is what is surprising me lately. And therein lies the awe. The curiosity to see myself with more nuance. More compassion. More possibility.
No longer self-averse, I am looking right in my own eyes and saying, Allison it’s time we look at this again.
Rather than letting the familiar self-itch lead me to chasing more antihistamine, whether that be food or another book with someone else’s words or another podcast that will have that hook of healing and revealing, I am scratching. Sitting and scratching. Rather than outsourcing to someone else exclaiming to me what it is I need to examine next, I am waiting to hear my own answers. I am sitting in the quiet waiting for a different kind of Guidance.
I’m trusting time and silence as I spin out on the spiral staircase of recovery.
I’m taking a rest on the staircase. Instead of spinning meaning into it all I’m placing myself down so I can stop spiraling inside. In sitting with myself I’m shifting from self-cynicism to self-synthesis.
And I am in awe of myself for it.
Because this is hard.
This spiral staircase of recovery - I’ve been here before. Things I thought I laid to rest come back to haunt me. Old stories, ways of being with certain people in my life, resurface. Why am I on this floor again? Just when I feel I made traction and real change, I see the pattern again. The room reappears.
Yet, this time, despite the same stairs tripping me up, I actually trust that I am ascending. Perhaps I am back here for a reason. There is more to glean here. Maybe I underestimated the view from this floor because I was in such a rush to take in a summit. What if the climb, the exploration and examination, is the whole point?
We use the expressions I’m spiraling or spinning out of control as pejoratives. What I’m learning is that when I feel the spin, when I’m on that merry-go-round, rather than flush myself with self-ridicule or flood myself with frustration, I can simply loosen my grip and trust this is where I need to be for a bit.
It reminds me of when there’s a riptide and we’re told don’t try to swim through it, with resistance. Swim next to it, parallel. Maybe that’s what we ought to do when we find ourselves whispering internally, here I go again, spinning out. Maybe we ought to let ourselves go down a few steps on that staircase and settle in familiar territory. Be next to it. Float and tread there knowing it’s not a permanent location. Your feet will move you up again.
I’m in a season of my recovery that feels disruptive. Abrupt disruption finds me most days. Lost feelings and longings and memories I repressed receive a request to come back. An invitation I don’t think I sent but maybe I did. Maybe my psyche knows it’s time for them to peek their heads up and come out of the shadows. That it is safe to do so now.
I suppose this part of my journey is the eruption after the disruption. Some days I don’t feel equipped to hold it but more days than not I open the door for it. I’m learning to welcome it. Maybe this is a breakthrough not a breakdown.
As I write this, I am thinking about a sentence I heard Frances Weller speak in an interview. “We must be restored and restoried”.
That is what I am in the middle of doing right now. I think that is what many of us who write from this place of deep soul realignment are doing. We are going back to the stories that shaped us and scarred us, and we are re-storying ourselves to write the wrong. To title the story Inherent Worth. To pick back up the heavy and trust we can write a new chapter without running from it all. Weaving the truth, as we felt it, knowing pain is not pathology. Letting the past resurface as research.
My recovery is turning into one long reconciliation. I return to the old stories I told myself. I pick up past pains and wonder why they stuck onto me for so long. It feels like parts work. Instead of self-recrimination it’s a deep exhale of self-reconciliation. Listening to all the stories I told myself to feel safe and weaving a thread among them all. Maybe each one has a stair on that staircase.
I’m learning how to look at that spiral staircase differently when the view is familiar. Weller’s concept of repetition feels timely.
“It is in the very essence of repetition that we get to know something more intimately. It is sustained attention which engenders depth. Soul wants repetition. Any movement towards depth requires repeated contact.”
Weller makes a distinction between soulful repetition and the kind of repetition that is “the drone of addiction.”
Maybe I just need more reps on this part of my work. Traversing the staircase again might be strength training for the psyche. Spiraling up again to tell me you need to pick me back up. Hold me. Lift don’t drift.
Scar tissue takes time to eradicate. As I rest on this familiar stair, I find new questions.
What if they’re never meant to leave us? Our scars. What if scars can point us to the stars? Our own constellations.
Pain points us north. Pain might bring us to our knees but maybe that’s because we need to be as low to the ground as possible to trust that this earth can support us. That it won’t swallow us but will hold us until we find the strength to start putting one foot in front of the other. Strong enough to climb the stairs again.
I keep reminding myself that recovery and sobriety (and LIFE !!!!) isn’t an assignment. There is no test where I’ll be handed a gold star proving I recovered. Or that I’m doing this thing right.
And when I mention recovery here, I’m also talking about emotional recovery. Creative recovery. Not just recovery from alcohol use. Or food addiction. Or (fill in the ________) with your favorite consumption that keeps you from yourself.
We try so hard to stay up. Stay positive. Keep climbing. Yet - down is holy ground.
If you’re familiar with Francis Weller's work, you know he encourages getting comfortable with the lowest deepest parts of you. His latest book, In the Absence of the Ordinary, begins by mentioning how we live in an ascension culture. Action and goal oriented, we push so that we continue moving up with stellar eyes on the prize. Success and recognition are the carrots dangling from the stick.
From the outside looking in, my sobriety and recovery trajectory looks impressive. If you were to graph it out, it certainly looks like I am ascending. My sober app spits back at me that it’s been 1,728 days since I drank alcohol. I don’t take that for granted. Day ones, for many of us, is the stair that keeps tripping us up. Except, maybe there is wisdom there that I skipped right over. There is so much discovery in figuring out why this thing has you.
I may have zero pull to drink anymore (it’s true, no desire) but I keep bumping up against all the other grooves in my system that are clogged. I say this not out of frustration or angst or defeat. I share this because it feels important and empowering. I now know to trust that when I feel clogged, the blockage is a map back to something that needs me. And if that means I have to plant my ass on this seat on this staircase for a while to let it flow through me, then that is what I will do.
Two steps forward, one step back. Stop moving. Stay. Stay with the sacred pause. Pressing mute will not dispute pain. It will only guarantee its return.
Don’t be scared when it returns. Maybe our bodies know when we can handle it. Maybe we have no idea how capable we really are when we keep our finger on the pulse of pain.
I’m trusting that this view I see on my spiral staircase is worth sharing and describing. Because souls are not meant to be secretive. Because soul work wants to be expressed. Because soul work is what calcifies creativity. Souls don’t want to ascend in a silo. Souls want to commune. They want company and companionship, even when they also require introspection, stillness, and the knowing that it’s their path alone to follow.
Perhaps a sliver of what I am sharing today will sound familiar to you. Maybe this can be a reminder that even though we all are so seemingly different, we truly are intertwined in this Universe. Maybe if I am in a season of ascension and you are going down, descending, you will remember my story. That I too circle these stairs and spin out. If my story can lift you up, trust that your story will do the same for me when I’m back down on that ground level.
Before I go, I’ll leave this here. This is who I hear sometimes on that staircase. She finds me there, reminding me what my insides really want.
COMING NEXT MONTH: Our October theme will be embodiment. Yeah (*sigh*) - something I endlessly circle around.
FEELINGS DUMP - LEAVE THEM HERE:
~We all “know” healing is not linear. But how do you deal when you feel you are back spiraling?
~Where are your feelings this Friday? What is your view today?
I’d love to hear from you all.
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Very powerful and a much needed reminder. Thank you. Allison for your Beautiful words.
This is SO good, Allison, as all of your essays are. I read it on Friday, but I needed a reread this morning to let your words really sink in. First of all, I'm so incredibly happy for you that you have "zero pull, no desire" to drink anymore. I long for that to be true for me, too. I don't crave it, and I love my sober life (mostly), but I guess I still miss parts of my drinking days... the parts that didn't have come with regrets and shame. I've certainly done enough research to know that I'll never go back to it, but the thoughts still sneak in. Anyway, this was one of my favorite parts of your essay: "And if that means I have to plant my ass on this seat on this staircase for a while to let it flow through me, then that is what I will do." I actually giggled out loud and literally pictured myself planting my butt on a step. I feel that way in this season of my life. With retirement 3 months away, I'm okay with staying where I am for a while. People keep asking me, "What are going to do when you retire?" My answer, "I'm not sure, but I'll figure it out." That's the truth. I don't know what is next for me, but I have faith that something will be revealed. For now, I hope to clean my house (and declutter!) and volunteer once a week on Wednesday afternoons at a nearby school (not in the district I'm retiring from). That's it. I am very grateful that my husband 100% supports my retirement and in fact is encouraging me to take a much needed break before tackling "the next thing." That's a HUGE change from 3 years ago. He was terrified of my retirement, mostly because having that much time on my hands would've been dangerous... no limit on my day drinking. I cringe thinking about that now:( I could go on and on, but I'll stop here. Thank you so much for sharing this piece.