The UnBEcoming

A path of relinquishing and embracing…. our winter solstice

This article is guest authored by Ann Bayly-Bruneel, a registered psychotherapist, art therapist, and somatic experiencing practitioner. For over 20 years, Ann has walked the shadowed paths of trauma, mental health, and addiction, guiding others through the labyrinth of suffering, towards inner freedom. Ann and Mark have journeyed together across many landscapes, first as guide and apprentice, now as frequent co-authors; they are both emotional psycho-somatic gardeners, cultivating wisdom from the soil of pain.

As the new year emerges, we invite you to step into the threshold with us, where feeling becomes a well of deep knowing and the unfolding of UnBEcoming!

This piece has been lovingly edited by Mark Shelvock.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Seeds of the Solstice

As light often grabs our attention, we seldom notice what is being unearthed and revived underground. Our winter solstice reminds us that within the seeds of BEcoming, there is an even subtler more profound process of undoing happening beneath the surface; a veritable cracking open of form and identity that is fierce in its process of surrendering and quiet in the subversive ways that it sheds and transforms things in less visible or tangible ways.

This article serves to illuminate a process of UnBEcoming. An accumulation of moments in my life that stacked up so profoundly that unlearning and living from an embodied unscripted existence becomes a radical homecoming and a reclamation of my grounded rootedness, authenticity and interconnectivity.

The Meaning of UnBEcoming

When I explored the definition of the word UnBEcoming, I noticed terms such as:

• unseemly

• unflattering

• inappropriate

• improper

• indecorous

These definitions used to describe a person (mostly female-identified) who does not act according to social standards or expectations. The various definitions for the word itself is revealing and invites an unravelling of sorts. For me these definitions invite the possibility of a deeper level of questioning:

Who gets to define what is proper?

According to whom and what standard is this notion of UnBEcoming measured by?

The act of questioning holds a great deal of curious space in that we can begin to see how things are organized, structured, and set in motion. We can notice whose voices and experiences are upheld, and whose are silenced, minimized, uprooted, alienated, or stigmatized.

Suffice it to say my definition for UnBEcoming is radically different than the definition allows for… in that it is more of a relinquishing of what no longer fits and an acknowledgement of what is possible when we can re-author our own story. We can welcome in meaning that is expansive and allows for multi-dimensional ways of being and relating.

Early Curiosity

Being a pattern detector is something that is inherent in my nature. Perhaps from survival, perhaps from adaptation. It is hard to differentiate nature from nurture as I navigated many systems that were not designed for me.

As a teenager, I became interested in the non-verbal or more expressive path in life as I found words limiting and unable to hold the complexity that matched mine and others’ experiences.

Most often words and actions did not line up. Naturally, I was curious about the dissonance and became passionate about the underworld of psyche and later soma and spirit as a portal to reclaim deeper levels of my authentic BElonging.

Freedom Beyond Conformity

The path of academia taught me conformity. The focus was on learning how to summarize other people’s perspectives, mostly, from a cis white heterosexual perspective that speaks of patriarchal understandings. I gravitated towards words of poets, artists, musicians, and other subversive, feminist, queer resources to find myself.

The imprints of intergenerational trauma were felt in my family and echoed in many people and institutions that I encountered. Thus, I entered a path that was both familiar and allowed me to explore this inner-standing. Early on I found a source of freedom in hearing shared stories and experiences that helped me to see the shadows of trauma that are carried, but not truly chosen.

Co-Creating in the Between

As a therapist, there is something profound and sacred in supporting journeys that allows space for people to find their authentic voice, uproot their own internal terrain, and find freedom in BEing themselves. I love how creativity helps to unearth self-expression in all its forms and discover liberatory paths that FEEL co-creative.

However true this is, early on in my career, I was always up against the pressures and designs of systems that reinforced speed, productivity, numbers, goals, objectives, and statistics. I realized that who I am as a person and who other people are does not align with many of the systems that aim to support both the people we serve and those doing the serving. The illusory question at this time that lurked inside of me became:

How do we make room for all dimensions of experience? What allows for a woven tapestry of colours, textures and makes space for creative innovation or compassionate disruption?

Art as Alchemy

Art has always been solace and refuge for me. I would confer with a journal or a canvas to work out challenging moments. Partly, because it starts with blankness and then is filled with colours, lines, or shapes - it bleeds out from the edges and spills out onto a table - sometimes inviting larger tables, spaces, or more texture to be included. In this way, there is creation and destruction happening simultaneously, and what is guiding the process is not fear. Rather, it is a radical imagining of sorts; a magical muse where things start in one form and are transformed into something completely new. I came to see therapy in a similar way and wanted to hold compassionate space for the mysterious nature of our shared humanity.

The business model was ushered into health care and many of us on the front-line observed and experienced the slow collapse of relationships, programs and funding over the years. The most compassionate people were often tasked with managing all the fallout of the changes and had no other options but to challenge, resist, or ‘quietly quit’.

For me as a creative person who colours outside the lines and boxes (and supports others to do the same), it was a natural conclusion to not only seek out spaces where my full existence could find room, but to radically support this pathway for others.

The process of UnBEcoming came from a deep place of embodied grief, loss, and heart break. It was coupled with the death of my beloved dad, my uncle, and then, within months of each other, the pandemic. This chaotic convergence of experiences was a time of pause, deep unravelling, reflection, and radical redirection. I knew that my voice and perspective mattered and so did the voices and experiences of others who were marginalized. The systems that we were taught to adhere to (i.e. government, academia, religious institutions, and healthcare) were collapsing all around us.

Inside this chaos there is a raw, uncharted and unseen path being co-created. As a novice gardener and a seed planter, I saw the vision of what happens when a seed breaks open and the blooming that is possible in the dark soil underneath the surface of what is seen.

In time, I became connected to other embodied healing justice circles; assisting other practitioners in their quest to unlearn, undo, and become more connected to their own self-authority and self-leadership. Through various experiential and somatic trainings, others were invited to grow familiar with their nervous systems; releasing old paradigms and oppressive patterns, and uncovering a new FELT FREEDOM in body and mind that awakens responsiveness to inner callings and the rhythms of collective care. I now mentor and assist in advancing decolonized approaches to therapy that makes room for extraordinary states, neuroexpansiveness, and integrative, soul-oriented frameworks.

Living from the Body and Earth

It is so important to notice how powerful it is to live from our bones and the gut of our existence… to see the body as a transformative agent and communicator.

The knowledge of our true nature is connected to the bedrock of the wisdom from Indigenous people all over the planet. I am so grateful to have been guided back towards this inner-standing again.

My life is a woven tapestry of family, friends and community and I am deeply aware and grateful of how my sense of BEing is shaped and influenced by them. And yet, within me there has always been a place that holds the capacity for radical imagination and a creative impulse and curiosity that allows me to wonder, question and notice the seen and unseen components of life.

As a tree climber, both the refined details and uniqueness of each leaf, branch and bark is present as well as a vast horizon which is laid out before me. I integrate play and hold the tensions of paradox as necessary to embracing light and shadow with equanimity. I exist to help awaken the bigger picture in my own life and journey alongside others wanting an embodied liberation too.

This is not a path for the faint hearted. It requires the heart of a lion and an embodied capacity to stay present, lean in, and let in what is messy, unbridled, and unfamiliar. It is a path that notices the cracks in the jagged lines of hearts that are broken open, and sees the magical possibilities in a seed before it bursts open; and to nourish it as it dissolves, transmutes and transforms into something not yet known.

The beauty and the stillness in the richness of the soil allows us to incubate ideas, meanings and new inner-standings that are anchored in our own story, truths and jagged pathways and we can’t fully support this mobilization in others until we can lead from it within ourselves.

Like soil, there are no borders or containers and what is on the surface is connected to the vast underground, where there are networks developing out of plain sight. When we have the vulnerable courage to see it, embrace it and welcome it in, there is a process of recognizing the value of a deeper commitment to community care that is inclusive of ourselves, each other and recognizes our interconnectivity and solidarity from a place of seeing no stranger.

Revolutionary Love

This is revolutionary love and a mobilizing force that can grow through concrete or pavement. It has a coherence and a fluidity like water that can assist in dissolving formations of rock and structures because it lives from the frequency and vibration of the heart and soul and follows the creative instinct that is inherent and natural in all of us.

My UnBEcoming was a process of not only undoing and shedding my identity from productivity and achievement. It was also about finding language, spaces and supportive community that have encountered their own light and shadow and can see and actualize the potency in the mess.

I now move within and between spaces both inside myself and within the external world – shifting, dissolving and transforming from within – not through force, but through flow and presence.

Photo by Andrey Soldatov on Unsplash

As we enter the year of the FIRE HORSE, I am aware that horses both graze and gallop and that we can choose when possible to find a pace and rhythm that aligns with our own cycles of life, death, and rebirth. Endings are BEginnings.

I have reclaimed and re-authored a pathway in my life that allows for co-inspiration to unfold within deep processes of solidarity. I am forever grateful to all of those who I have the privilege to journey alongside as we widen and co-create new empowering bridges and uncharted paths woven together from places of authentic BElonging… where we can serve both individual and collective care simultaneously!

With reverence for the seeds beneath the soil and the currents within,

Ann Bayly-Bruneel

References

With gratitude to Valarie Kaur and her project, Revolutionary Love, which was an inspiration for this piece.