I bleed with the full snow moon.
It feels fitting.
My body is in deep winter and this moon is named for the snow that falls heaviest in the February winter of the northern hemisphere.
I am called to retreat. To rest. To fold into myself in an embrace like that of a mother. To mother myself, after the last few weeks we’ve had, is exactly what I need. I honour this.
No rushing. No pushing. No urgency. Just rest. Time and space to heal a little more, and try to reset my nervous system and body.
We’re safe. The ordeal has passed, and now comes healing again. ‘But sit in this as long as you need,’ my mind whispers. Don’t push it, listen and respond as you need.
I went from the midst of spring’s creative abundance and was thrown into the depths of winter.
Summer and Autumn skipped in a flash as a small body, moving too fast on fawn legs, fell too hard. The resulting dental trauma a blur of a week of dentists, hospital, general anaesthetic and emergency extraction. Of post-op recovery not trauma-informed, or child-centred.
Of trauma and re-trauma.
A small body screaming with all the might of his lungs, till they rushed us out. The quiet spaces for recovery shattered by his distress. All we wanted to do was to leave that place too.
I walked out of the doors of a hospital for a second time, a shell of myself. Holding tight to another child let down by a system too rigid for human care - a child traumatised and separated, and who has not been the same since.
We held each other close. Two bodies co-regulating, seeking safety and security. He was safe, I was there - I told him this repeatedly, comforting him as best I could. He was home and I could protect him again. But I couldn’t protect him then and the pain of the separation and what he went through hit me in waves that afternoon as his distress continued.
It sneaks up on me when I take a moment to myself, and I am brought to my hands and knees on a bathroom floor in the dark. My wracked sobbing filled with the pain I’ve held for his brother and now him, for what their small bodies have endured. For the helplessness I felt as I tried my best to be there for them. For the fear I saw so clearly in his eyes, and the panic, as he threw himself away from the theatre table. Away from the nurses in recovery.
His whole being telling him to fight, to run.
His realisation that the person there to protect him, couldn’t from this.
The sound of his screams ringing in my ears.
The silence the day his brother was born deafening.
The feelings that rise up in me the same, because my body doesn’t know the difference and probably never will. My mind now working overime to bring us all back into our bodies, into safety.
I watch as he slowly finds his way back to himself.
Night terrors lessen as days go by. The screaming ebbs till it’s a phantom sound in my ears in the middle of deep night, startling me awake to the silence of sweet dreams.
His upset and quick temper ease back to the temperament we’ve always known him for. But I can see, like his brother, his nervous system is more sensitive now, more on alert.
A distinct before- and after- of a child with unbounded energy, fearlessness, and character, now a little muted. Quicker to cry and need comfort. Less ready to go out and explore. He looks to us more frequently for reassurances of safety.
I can only trust that with time, we’ll see him return in full colour. The nervous system support I seek for myself I can teach them too, and I can only hope it is enough, so they can adapt and thrive in a world not designed for sensitivity.
For now, we rest.
And live in a cycle of internal winter, while the world around us blazes in summer heat.
