Camilla's

It was a snow-covered March Wednesday.
Late at night a house for sale appeared in my feed – in a Facebook a group I am not a member of – a private sell. It did not make any sense and I knew this was a desire coming into form.

I had asked for my new home to find me…
Three weeks earlier having a walk in this little village I said “ok, show me if it is here”
The wish was a black wooden house with white windows, surrounded by green, a big tree to sit under, maximum an hour from the city and there it was – all of it that evening 11pm was unfolding right in front of me.

I clicked the pictures and an immediate ‘ah, there it is’ spread itself wide in my body.
Eventhough it was late, I wrote the seller. He replied right away.
The day before entering a journey to Lapland – teaching a retreat that forever changed my life – I drove to the little wooden house and fell in love.

Two weeks later mesmerised by the Northern Lights of Finland I returned home for the most effortless, smooth meeting with my advisor, the paperworks flew, the price agreed on – all new to me never having bought a property before the price but with such ease.

Pause. Still a yes.

The day of the final yes was coming, the period of 10 days to change our minds seller and buyer was over – the signing of the purchase agreement was to land.
A final check in with my belly.
I called my realtor and said “Let’s do it” – a phone call to be a three month sleigh ride of let’s NOT do it.

The dance of doubt
That exact day was the entry into a field of real rawness. Nothing in me could feel the house. My expectations of feeling relief, joy, excitement none of that was present.

Doubt got to be the main character the three months to follow. “What have I done”. “This is not right”. “I made a wrong decision”. “I f… up”.
Why all this “no” after having followed yesness only? Merged with a self beating up harshness was the dance partner of surrendering – an invitation in for opening deeper.

My beautifully habituated go-to fixing what was wrong mode was volume up and yet “There is nothing here for you to do and everything for you to be” was the background of the crunchy tune playing in my body.

Doing no thing until the need for anything to be different has stopped.
July 1st came and with my landing gear far from down, it became a bumpy unpleasant arrival. I was ready to put a For Sale sign on immediately.
It was through the eyes of loved ones I got see the beauty and fall in love.
I created an adorable sanctuary that found me.

Now almost 4 weeks in rooting on this land and in this amazing house that I had given so much energy of wrong-doing into I am resetting.
It landed a few days ago when the immense silence finally found rest in my deep body.
Wrongdoing myself for (again) having failed in choice making.
A core belief – a hidden driver – running the show in so many areas of my life got revealed. “I suck at decision making…”

I could hear the old story I have been telling myself ready to begin anew. On a clean white page freed through the body beginning with something in the lines of “This is just perfect.”

An invitation in
When all outside stimuli is taken away and the only surroundings are the green alive ones the last layer of distractions are stripped away. Seeing how an entire life has either been away from or towards the next….

We truly are creators of what we desire to experience… Can the journey be a riding the edges of discomfort? Indeed. In the disguise of fear love has its way with us shaking us open.

“The Move” became that one step closer to myself, the one I did not want to take. In what felt like loosing my footing became me found by the ground.

A first property bought in Marketplace on Facebook Messenger. With a city girl’s nervous system reassembled, I can now announce Landing Gear Down and the love letter of “this is just perfect and…” is being written

Which story are you writing today?

Click to hear the soundscape “Let’s cross over”

My whole life I have been in an inner fight.
I was too loud, too big, too fat, too sensitive, “you can’t be part of this pack with all those emotions, I heard. Said sarcastically in the there this did become my truth.
The constant reaching for achievements to justify my belonging.
The learnt goal-oriented way.
The tempo of getting stuff done making me joggle several balls in the air far faster than I can even imagine possible in hindsight.
Was this a way to feel part of the pack all along?

The baddassery of getting stuff done – the sensation of I got this. The fulfilling feeling of crossing yes done! off the list. It was an amazing sense of accomplishment and yet it took so much effort. I was exhausted.
And I let go of everything.
I gifted myself with time and spaciousness created for the newness to bloom, for play rather than work, for letting rather than getting. Dedicated to leading with pleasure and playfulness in the most non-linear creativity I ever experienced I unlearned and weaved myself free of the known.

Coming home
A day not long ago I went home to where I grew up.
I felt the clay of the soil in which I grew up under me, I had no idea I missed it.
I had not heard the longing for homecoming until I was home.
I sat at the shore of the fjord seeing the sunset and realized I had traveled the world marvelling in breathtaking sunsets while all along right there down the hill from my childhood home there it was in its red, purple and orange greatness.

Asked a few months back “what do you really desire” I boldly stepped into responding expecting to swiftly list several answers to this simple question… and I was stuck.
I did not know. What did I really desire? I remember wondering am I loosing it, going nuts just here in a meeting in zoom? My mind, heart, belly scattered in all directions.

Far from what I desired I had run faster than I could follow and the fear of not finding my way back broke me open. I was on my knees and at a point of not even caring anymore.
Through the excavation of filters, constructs, limiting beliefs and the habitual go tos, all came to surface and I met them heart first in their unwrapping.

It was me in my own way. I was coming home.

A chosen path of effortlessness took me to the most uncomfortable, painful, beastie darkness within. The degree of fear for survival, of money, of not fitting in, being outside the pack, all dissolved the day I gave in and let it all die for the new to be birthed – the desires in their bright delight was unfolding within the darkness.
It was love in disguise.
I was awakening.
I had forgotten me and was taking Remembership.

The desire watered for years – freedom – hello!
A prayer answered finding me at a slow enough pace to receive it.

…..

My story now goes from being mine to everyone’s
It came out of hiding behind the battle, the white knuckles of tightly gripping for now being able to surrender into desires.

May we keep giving ourselves permission to re-write our story and lovingly receive those of others gifted to us.

Please feel free to share your story below. Which desires are singing in your chest wishing to be experienced?
I am easy to reach.
Just write me.

with-in love,
Camilla 🌳

She who
a wild writing by Camilla

She who ravels open. Allows the cracking of her every cell.
The breaking, a feeling almost not to bear.
She relax open. Awakens to all that was always there, ripening, hiding – fought in a battle she could not win. A fight that was not anyone else’s but hers.

She broke open, her heart overflew with the dark blood of her heartbreak, the acid of her self-disgust, the heat of her disappointment.

She who layed there. Knew she was about to wake, break, shake, to let not get.

She who had feared change and wanting to contain a power, a force not possible of controlling.

She who now knew.
Knew that today and every day she was to open, allow, make love to every petal of not enoughness, fear, doubt, self critic.

She who now looked at the world as the ever-widening partner of a dance she was here to participate in, fully!

She who did not care how it looked any longer.
She had so much to give but had forgotten the feast of love given to her. She who did not see the love. She who was blinded.
She was about to burst into tears when finally love did show up on her doorstep.

She, in a constant feeling of there was more. A yearning for opening, for being taken, loved open and be the never-ending moreness of opening for the ocean to fill her.

She who sits dreaming about what to have.
She who when it exists in her internal world create, speak, live share herself from behind the walls of fear of not feeling as good as or too much if…

She who learned to hide the real truth. She who can dance furiously and when in the presence of others would be the dimmed version, the adapted outfit, the more adequate one.

She who has broken open to love. Making love with life while falling in love with each and every single moment. She who made breath her lover.

She who can lay for hours until her inspiration leads her to the next moment.
She who rules her world solely through, by and as the love that runs through her.

She who is about to let you in – the truth about her, you get when you invite it.
Invite her in and she will open and as she is in opening so will you.
She will let you know, see and be the light that you are.

She who dares to break her own heart open to have life be lived through her.
She who gives permission to it all pleasure fear, love, joy, doubt.

She who knows that there is nothing for her to do, but all for her to be.

She who is now ready to be seen, ready to be heard, ready to empty onto the page in her raw directed openness.

There I was in love. I had fallen. I had allowed myself to fall…. it was a listening journey. A journey in a world of change where the big pause button had been pressed by mother nature.
A needed pause, an about time for us all to stop and listen and hear what really matters. A pause causing so much fear collectively and yet I loved it. I loved the needing to stay in place doing no thing, reorienting myself, the main purpose being love. Being loved, sharing love, talking love and holding love – most importantly finding my self love. Maybe the exact time we all have been preparing for. Fear on high volume, boundaries of how to feel safe and for all of us an unvoluntary vulnerable jump into the river of the unknown. Trust stood its test and the need to show up to what was happening on the inside threw its doors wide open. The raw truth of who we are when normalities and what we might had taken for granted was taken away.
The listening to our body’s lead enhanced with the knowing that only we – you and I – could adjust, unlearn to re-learn in the adaptations needed when the cosy confines of opportunities to seek pleasure, entertainment, connection no longer there…. only Mother Nature in all her spring time beauty as our best teacher in sustaining our joy more silent than ever calling us all back home.

I loved it.
Landing in the middle of the wilderness of Northern California she called me back home and even though a pandemic was not what I was planning on for my three month stay in the mecca of conscious movement, it turned out to be exactly what was needed to find love – self love to follow myself home.
A grief deeper than deep accompanied me when this luscious adventure was coming to an end. A grief of having to leave the land that made me feel more home than ever before, leaving the god of a man who had taught me about the woman I like to be, the grief of going home to the known.
I realised I thrive in the unknown. Old fears became uncharged almost worthless in my inner landscape of worry land. The unknown presented itself as a beasty bastard at times and yet a gift to finally to let it go, I mean really let it all go. Let go of every single story and illusion of how things should be looking – a complete let go of myself and my passion to what I do.

One day in the magical meadow the grief showed its deeper meaning – actually I was grieving the ending of a shut down world. The expectations most of all the ones towards myself, the what’s next, questions not even ready to be heard arose. The world had changed and so had I forever. I was on a three month quest to go with effortlessness and it was coming to an end. With the world opening up again changes still unpolished old habits of self judgement surfaced and it wasn’t pretty.

When finally having my visa extended my entire body was feeling a degree and depth of relaxation like never felt before. The last weekend to be in this land of home I marvelled in natural time in relating with the man I had fallen for honouring him for his strength, his truth and devotional commitment to himself. I bowed for the dance of dialogue we shared non-stop for 2 months. My stay was coming to an end, ease was swirling in every cell of my body and everything felt like solidly landed…. at least that is what I thought.

We layed on the bed him reading out loud to me and in the mirror in front of me I saw my naked body. What I saw was the direct opposite of what I had seen and been seen with for months. My self hatred and disgust came, and it came with volume fully amped up. My body shut down and the words of the very interesting book he read out loud (one of my favourite things in the world by the way) was not enterring my body, I could not hear anything. I was deafened by my own inner voice beating me up for being fat, ugly, digusting laying there with all that skin in big folds. Laying next to a honk of a man, did he even like how I looked? He probably just did me for the amazing conscious love making we experienced, my size being a turn-off. He came to the end of the chapter and started talking about the last part he read. I was still in shut down not even hearing what he said.
My body was burning. My belly tightening, an acidic sensation ran up my heart and the inside of my throat thick. I managed to find the courage to open my mouth and share what was going on. There I lay still naked sharing my deepest wound of all and he received it.
He began talking about himself and his own experiences of hating himself. I did not listen, I still could not hear. I was way too busy to tend to what was going on in and under my skin. He wished to understand the disgust I felt. He wanted to let me know he did love my body but nothing, absolutely nothing was getting in. I only heard the parts and words fitting my story of him turned on by thin, long, lean bodies as far away from how I am carved out. I told him how my listening happened through the eye of a needle and whatever he would say, I was not able to receive.
All that I had experienced of luscious, sexiness and bodily freedom just died right there in an instant! I was all closed and could only do one thing, surrender.
The quest I was on when coming here for three months had one more stone to turn – the need to work with the disgust and shame I had with my body not for me to carry in this life time. Of course it needed to appear in my last week here. I was caught by surprise of how self hate that had not been on the menu the last months – the quite opposite in fact – and here it was was served as dessert, a deep talk and sweetly snuggled up drifting into sleep.

And that was not the end of it!
The following morning I woke up from a dream of being in a room with him having sex with a beautiful woman thin, tight skin, flat bellied her carried by him, her legs around his waist, them having amazing sex. I could not get out, I wanted to but I was obligated to see them in their ecstasy doing things him and I could not – one thing is for sure this girl dancer is too heavy to be swung around like that….
I woke up with the images not wanting to leave my head. After dancing for an hour I was doing my best to create some kind of spaciousness in belly and head. The images of them, the self hating image of myself, the words he had said – especially the ones not said – was pounding loud and fast in my body.

Mother Nature was calling me home and I went to the field. I called a dear friend. She lovingly listened, gave no advice, just nodding and let me know how much she loved my fleshy belly. After emptying the overload of words and emotions I could open myself up for space again and so I did…. in wide format.
In the following meditation a tree with a red stem and strong, shiny, green leaves grew out my heart. I opened my eyes. I saw the blue between the leaves of the tree more than the tree itself landing in a place of surrender and gratitude to what had been shown to me. My self hatred that had been stead asleep and needing to surface to be seen and nourished and it had nothing to do with him, I knew that all along.

Right there in the knee high grass of the meadow I saw “the what’s next”. In all its colours, shapes, ways and qualities I had gotten to experience what so many of us long for. Daring to feel the uncomfortable, have the tough conversations, be vulnerable when hiding away was the easiest. Him the honk my teacher, I the listener to a sleeping beast within me. The dance communion that always had freaked me out – when intimately relating in particular – and there in a pandemic far away from home I was forced to be with what was appearing from the silence. Being seen 24/7 and no where to run. I met myself at the edge and fell over to discover a creativity long not felt. I was ready to come up for air. “You learned your lesson, now make it a teaching” was the message.

What was in my way was the way.
I got to experience how the song we play to ourselves has a direct effect on our ability to show up to what is actually happening and on what we bring to the relational dance with an other.
I showed up to and with what was happening in me. Painful truths were shared with a grace and clarity without making the other wrong.
Is that not what life is all about?
Is that what we all longed for before we were asked to stay at home? To see and be seen in our true selves, connected, loved and held for whatever bullshit coming up?
What an amazing opportunity given to make us feel more, do less and be true.
If this real living is what a forced shelter in place a wondrous gap taking us all out of the normal brings, I vow myself to show up for the presumed second wave’s teachings heart first. I call it following ourselves home…..