The Rainbow Connection

The other morning I asked myself what rainbows are to me? What are they symbolic of? Because they’d been showing up, and I knew they had something to tell me.

To me, they are magical things often associated with childhood.

Things that appear out of thin air, and can be there in a second, and disappear the next, and then reappear somewhere else just as quickly.

They are a phenomenon of light and water — two of my most favorite things. They are the resultant connection of storms and sunshine.

They are a vision — equal parts real and unreal. Detectible and undetectable to the eye… depending on the angle you’re looking from.

In children’s drawings, they are often depicted connecting clouds that partially cover the sun to a shining pot of gold.

I cannot even with the metaphors here.

When I was a little girl, I loved rainbows. To this day, I can still see Kermit the Frog singing Rainbow Connection by his pond.

But then life happened, and I got very cynical.
I left rainbows behind.

To the point where my mom would sing that song to me to try to cheer me up or remind me of myself, and I would feel physically sick with anxiety. But I’d also get teary eyed every time. Like something wanted to emerge out from under that, but I was definitely not ready for it.

But let me explain. You see, when I was between the ages of 10 and 13 my mom went through a personal journey and healing process of reclaiming her truth and whole self. She came to grips with abuse in her past, she went to therapy, she went back to school. Although this would prove to be a most wonderful thing for us all in the end, unfortunately at the time it came at the price of me losing my family and world as I’d known it.

My parents divorced. My mom came out. All wrapped up with the hormonal minefield of puberty and the transition to the seven hells of middle school.

There was immense fear, panic, dread, and incalculable grief in the house during that time. There was the disillusionment and dissolving of the family on many levels. There was repressed anger, blame and resentment even though everyone was doing the best that they could with the mess, and I folded into the weight of all that sadness like a sponge.

I learned then, that reclaiming who you are, healing, and being your whole true self will result in losing yourself and your world as you know it. It will cause you to lose people, just like I saw. And so I made some kind of subconscious vow to never, EVER, do anything like that because that is what it would mean. Of course, I had no idea I was making this vow, nor did I have any idea that that is NOT really true, but it was there nonetheless. Driving my every move for more than twenty years.

I did not consider this a trauma at the time. People get divorced, it happens. People live through far FAR worse stories and events, who was I to be upset about this? So I discounted it, I made it into a happy story, I jumped to the end where everyone was okay and better-off, I skipped over it. I skipped over the pain and trauma. We do that as children, to protect ourselves.

I could not revisit or acknowledge that pain, because to really do so, would mean to have to feel the crushing weight of it all, all over again. But also for the very first time. I say “for the very first time” because I never fully felt it to begin with. It was still trapped in my body.

When all of that happened, I just… FROZE.

It is a well-known fact that we humans deal with fear in one of the following three ways: fight, flight or freeze.

I FROZE.

In my teens and twenties, I would try flight as well, by running away into alcohol, drugs, starvation, and binging and purging. And I am GRATEFUL to those things for holding me while I needed them. For providing a soft place to land until I was ready to feel this tidal wave of pain that was just outside my doorstep. I have tremendous compassion and empathy for the girl in me who needed these things, and tremendous gratitude that there are things in this world that can soothe our weary human souls until we want another way.

But when I started healing that eating disorder at 29, and then those other vices after that, and all the way up to when I started working on my professional and financial life at 39, it all led right back to that doorstep. But this time, I finally had the guts to open it, and all that old trauma rushed in and hit me like a ton of bricks.

What I didn’t know then, but know now, is that this happened because when my mom started working on HER professional life — going back to school, starting a new career, venturing beyond the borders she previously had, etc.—that’s when little me saw the proverbial shit hit the fan. So the reaction to me working on similar things in my own life, was a voice that rose up from deep within that history and said “oh, here’s the part in YOUR story where the shit must hit the fan big time too. Get ready to lose yourself and everything you believed in!!”

It is one thing to say this, but how this FELT inside is like nothing I could ever describe to you. Anyone who’s been through it understands. Like drowning, or like floating untethered in the dark of space. I was right back there where the rug was pulled out from under me, where everything I trusted and believed in, and felt safe in, was revealed to be a lie. It WASN’T a lie, but that is how it felt to that little girl at that time, and I had to honor that.

I had to let her feel it all the way…so she could UNFREEZE.

Because she was trapped there. Trapped in that living room, frozen. I wish I could tell you that this was a fast process. That I closed my eyes and the sun shone in the room of that memory, and everything was new.

But it was not. It was not because it was not just a matter of feeling it. It was a matter of — if I unfroze her and REALLY reclaimed her — what would that do to me and my life? Would the whole thing just happen all over again?

Would it cause me to lose my whole family? My loves now? My life? Would it cause people to reject and disown me, as I saw people do to my mom? Would it cause people to talk behind my back, would they be nice to my face and say things when I’m not there? Would I not belong anymore? Would I one day wake up and realize I was a lesbian too? Was I really someone I don’t even know? Would I lose my husband and the love of my life?

This was the ultimate not-knowing. We all know how excruciating not-knowing is for humans, and this is the ultimate form of that, when you don’t know who you really are on the other side of all this.

It was absolutely TERRIFYING.

But not because of any present circumstances, it was only terrifying because I was finally fully feeling that old terror from twenty years ago that I’d never allowed myself to feel.

I’d been so afraid of that girl in me, and all that she might mean if I really and truly let her in. I had made her my enemy out of necessity. I had rejected her long ago to keep me safe. And because of that, I had allowed myself to be rejected, again and again, in a thousand different ways by a thousand different people.

I refused to see her brilliance. I refused to unthaw her from that room and let her out. I had no fucking idea what that would take.

But it turns out… all it takes is love.

All it takes is to just keep letting that sun come out from behind those clouds a little, and to let those clouds rain down as much as they need to and as much as they please, so that light can finally shine upon that water, and a full spectrum of color can burst forth from that sky.

It has been a couple years since I first opened that door, but I am starting to see those rainbows.

We humans are terrified of our brilliance.

My story is one out of billions of stories of how and where along the way we learn that in order to be SAFE we must extinguish our light. We learn to extinguish it when we are not accepted or shamed for certain parts of ourselves, or see other people not accepted for theirs. These messages may have helped keep us safe for a while, but it is time to reclaim and recreate our own safety — the safety to be our WHOLE SELVES, no matter what.

Feeling these feelings, reclaiming these lost parts, unfreezing this frozen girl and re-owning her, has NOT resulted in the losses I feared. It has not resulted in me being anything other than who I always was, even if some people cannot see that, or think otherwise. And it has only brought me closer to myself, my family, and my loved ones. Including making my marriage even more incredible than ever before, because it finally washed away my blocks to true intimacy.

Yes, I may have started saying and doing things that upset some people, that rocked the boat or caused them to like me better when I was quieter, and sweeter, and smaller and more people pleasing. But all true and unconditional love has endured and been made so very much more tender and beautiful.

And most importantly, I am learning to love myself, despite the hundred million messages I see every day that tell me I should not, and don’t have a right to.

There are so many times when I’d prefer to run back and hide in the image of prettiness, thinness, “healthiness”, powerlessness, sweetness, quietness, needlessness, selflessness and “perfection”. Each one of those images comes with an unspoken promise that people will love us if we can just be enough of that thing.

It doesn’t work. It’s never enough. It never will be. Look inside, look at every attempt you’ve ever made. Has it lasted? You already know this is true.

The only way out is in, as they say.

When you hear yourself repeating for the hundred millionth time that there is not enough time, not enough money, not enough love, not enough beauty or kindness… reach inside.

Reach inside to the only place there will EVER be enough. The place where you ironically often find all the time, love, money, beauty and freedom you were after in the first place. The place where YOU are enough.

Depending on where they’re currently standing, people may not see the rainbow. They may not see the rainbow you see.

That DOES NOT make it any less real.

It is there. As a FACT.
Whether they can see it, or not.

If you move from yourself, you may not see it either.
So stay with yourself. Just stay.

Bring home your colors. Let every one of them shine. And you will find yourself that pot of gold.

xo,
Sunni

P.S. As this little girl in me unfreezes, the story is free to finally complete.

I can finally, truly experience the fact that it DID all turn out so beautifully. New families were born, new mothers, and sisters, and brothers… the love multiplied exponentially, and we all grew our hearts and minds and souls, ten fold! And because of the track it put me on, I met my best friend and the love of my life, I came into the work I do and love, we had our beautiful boy, and we made a beautiful messy, imperfect life.

But I could not TRULY let any of that in when I was trying to just skip to this part without the unfreezing. Without the warm embrace and welcoming back home of this bright little dreamer in me.