What does it mean to live free?
The search for freedom has always been my greatest love, and my greatest sorrow.
I’ve searched far and wide for it, climbed mountains, gotten lost in hot orange deserts looking for it. The freedom I’d find was temporary and fleeting. I’d lose hold of it somewhere on the road halfway back to home…
I’ve learned, through my own healing journey, that freedom is not a place, or a person. Freedom is of the mind, and no matter where the fuck you run to, you always lay back down with that mind of yours at night. There’s really no escaping it.
Turns out I had been running away…avoiding, if you will…the things I’d been needing to confront; a classic trauma response. The mind is a powerful thing; it will do whatever it needs to do to keep you feeling safe, even if that means avoiding what needs to be processed at all costs.
The cost of trauma is our stability, our sense of agency, our peace of mind & soul. And so, many of us run…some of us run to drugs, some of us run to sex, some to mountain tops to forget.
But the running gets tiring, and eventually we find ourselves worn down, faced with accepting that we cannot live this way our whole lives. We must seek out the calm. We must allow the help. We are worth the work it requires to heal, and through that healing, we find the freedom.