Worthy of Spaciousness: Personal Parts Work
It’s a Thursday a few weeks before Christmas and I’m sitting under a ponderosa pine tree several hundred feet above the creek that runs through the land we live on.
I’m drinking Dandy Blend mixed with cacao and cardamom and star anise with a touch of maple syrup and cream. This is my favorite kind of moment, the kind I have spent the past 36 years following my bliss to find.
And yet I am having a hard time enjoying it fully because a part of me is wildly uncomfortable with this gift of a mid-day, mid-week excursion to one of my favorite spots.
This is the second day this week that I have stayed home in lieu of going to the farmers market to sell bread or herbal medicine simply because it wasn’t my turn for either. So it’s the second day this week I’ve been leisurely in my waking up, spent an hour reading while drinking my first cup of coffee, and another hour drinking my second cup of coffee and working on some art.
It’s the second day this week that I’ve been able to sleep in and work on the creative projects I yearn to have more time for every single day, and yet a judgy voice made it very clear to the person wrapped up in the down comforter that she was being super lazy. And what the Judge meant by lazy is that it was 10:30am and I hadn’t yet done anything that looked like “work” or directly brought in capital.
Which is messed up for two reasons. One, because the belief that I must spend the majority of my waking weekday hours engaged in money-making activities is a lie constructed by capitalism to keep a wide population of people toiling in service of fattening the wallets of the very few individuals who hoard the majority of the wealth and power in this country. And I do not want to perpetuate that ideology within or outside of myself.
Two, that shaming voice was just wrong! I was working on a project that will be for sale as soon as I finish it, and spending time on it is the only way it will ever be complete.
Does that fact that I enjoy it so much and am able to do it in bed make it less valuable?
My plan had been to do some writing (aka real work) after my second cup of coffee, but I hadn’t taken my usual morning walk and my body was antsy to move by that point.
But the Judge inside was resistant—it was afraid a walk would eat another hour out of my potential productivity. So after some internal back and forth I made a deal with her. I tied on my trail sneaks and loaded up my backpack with my thermos and sweater and computer, and headed out to walk and write.
About a mile or so up the trail I dropped my pack and my camping chair and pulled a tarot card to inspire my writing. The King of Wands. There’s many ways I could interpret that, but the little guidebook for the deck I’m using (Tarot for Change by Jessica Dore) sees this King as an invitation to work with what’s emotionally “hot”. She writes,
“…If you can find some orange coal in the ashes that’s a little bit too hot to touch, now you can start cooking. Taking great care not to move too close unless you know you’ll be safe, to be curious about those spaces is to access an inner alchemist that lives to transmute.”
Ah, right. Curiosity. This is a core principle of parts work, and perhaps of most healing work. Curiosity is kind and open. Excited, even! The opposite of judgement. (Though judgement has been known to disguise herself as curiosity).
My first instinct is to push away what doesn’t feel good, convince it it’s wrong with a logical argument or just shove it in a corner and demand silence from it. But I’ve learned through experience that technique never works. Instead, parts work invites us to challenge that instinct by creating safe space inside to get to know the parts of ourselves we resist.
Today, it was my Judge. And so, before pulling out my computer to get work done!, I settled my body on the earth, closed my eyes, and welcomed it as it was. I noticed how the Judge showed up in my body as a fist clenched around my heart, and I let it know I sensed it.
And then I thanked it. Yes, I thanked it for its good intentions, knowing that even the meanest-sounding parts of me are actually just trying to support my wellbeing. The fist softened a bit at my appreciation.
Next, I asked what it was afraid would happen if I didn’t get all the things on my to-do list done today. The Judge had a lot to say about that, but ultimately it was afraid I’d crumble into a sad sack of worthlessness.
I empathized with it, let it know I could understand its fears, and asked if it would like to do something different besides playing inner drill sergeant if it could trust that I wouldn’t let myself become a sad sack of worthlessness.
And it did! It was willing to back off for a bit. And suddenly this Judge transformed into a youthful and exuberant being who deeply wants me to bring all of my creative visions into being.
The fist opened, and offered me my own heart.
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I offer this story for a few reasons. One, because I know I am not alone in my cell-deep internalization of the demands of capitalism and the discomfort that can come with spaciousness, pleasure, and rest.
So may this be a reminder to you if you need it:
You are worthy of spaciousness. You are worthy of pleasure. You are worthy of rest. Even on a week day. Heck, especially on a week day!
As Tricia Hersey of the Nap Ministry reminds us, we do not need to earn rest, pleasure, and spaciousness. We get to have them all because they are our birthright, they are a part of the natural cycle of life, and, most importantly, they feel good.
And you know what kind of world I want to live in? That’s right. I want to live in a world where everyone feels good. It’s kind of hard to be an asshole or wage war or demean other people when we feel good, right? And what’s true on the world stage is true at home, too. Don’t you prefer living with people who feel good?
I also offer this story to give you a small sense of how I apply somatic parts work to my daily life. It is a consistently alchemical process for me, one that transforms some of my hardest-to-experience parts into my best allies.
To be sure, the process I shared is just a tiny glimpse of the full range of parts-work possibilities, but I hope it gives you some idea of what “parts work” is all about. If you’d like to learn more about it, I invite you to book a session or a free consultation with me to learn more and maybe even try it out.
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I was going to stop at the sentence above but can’t because the anti-capitalist part of me is uncomfortable signing off with a call to action, even though the part that wants to share this powerful practice with others is delighted.
It’s an inner conversation I’ll have to take up another time, though, because I’ve got more work to do!
