In the past seven months, I’ve lived through a season of endings.

I left a 9-5 job that shaped years of my life.

I left the city I called home for over a decade.

I watched familiar identities, routines, and daily rhythms conclude.

As tempting as it was to rush toward whatever came next, I wanted to do something different with this particular set of endings: stay as present as possible for them.

There’s something important about staying in relationship with a situation or experience as it ends—to honor the ways we were moved and impacted. To close the relationship with as much finality as is possible in the moment.

And that’s what I want to do today with Unshakable.

First, thank you to those who joined me during Unshakable’s time (and a huge shout out to those of you who have been with me through the many iterations and evolutions of my work).

Simply put, Unshakable was about the inner stability that’s possible when you devote yourself to loving yourself.

Not in some basic “self-love” kind of way, but in the bones-deep-shadowy-integration kind of way.

The shameful parts.

The stuff you don’t say to your partner.

Often the feelings you haven’t even named to yourself yet.

All of it.

Unshakable posed this question: what kind of life and relationships are possible when you are the source of your own stability?

The transformations I witnessed with my clients and students were truly gorgeous.

Again and again, the work seemed to lead people to the same places: more access to their true selves. More taking up of space. More them, more often. Boundaries set. Needs expressed. Parts of themselves once exiled, welcomed home.

But somewhere along the way I began noticing something: every conversation I was most excited about—every breakthrough that hummed in my body for hours after I witnessed it—kept pointing toward the same thing.

It wasn’t just about more access to their true selves.

It wasn’t just about taking up more space or setting boundaries.

It wasn’t even about welcoming parts of themselves home.

It was about relationship.

Relationship:
with sensation
with parts of the body
with longing
with grief
with doubt
with other people.

I’m much more interested in the essence of what building an unshakable core requires: intimacy with oneself.

But not in the way everyone and their mom are already teaching about intimacy on social media.

I will never be your traditional intimacy or relationship coach.

Because here’s my definition of intimacy: sustained relationship with truth.

Under this definition, intimacy can happen with a lover, a bodily sensation, a desire, pleasure, or uncertainty.

It can happen with each and every moment.

The common denominator becomes something much larger than closeness—it becomes presence and, most importantly, relationship.

The willingness to stay in relationship with what’s alive in each moment.

That is the foundational principle of becoming unshakable.

And that foundational principle—rather than the outcome it leads to—will be the focus of my work in this next iteration.

What’s changing:

• Unshakable is becoming The Intimacy Codes, which will continue to be housed on Substack

• Why The Intimacy Codes? Over many years of work with students, clients, and my own engagement with life, I began noticing recurring principles—patterns that seemed to appear whenever true intimacy was present. I started calling those principles The Intimacy Codes.

• You’ll notice me exploring intimacy more explicitly in our bodies, our relationships, and our erotic and sexual lives. That’s intentional. Some of the deepest lessons about presence, trust, power, and surrender are found in these realms.

• My work is expanding into experiential mentorship, immersive workshops, and in-person experiences that allow embodiment these principles

• Existing subscribers don’t need to do anything

What remains:

• My devotion to a sustained relationship with the truth—and sharing it with you

• Teaching you practical, embodied practices to do the same

I don’t know exactly where this path will lead, but that’s not what’s being asked of me.

What’s being asked of me is the very thing underlying all of my work and my life: can I stay in relationship with what’s true for me in this moment and say yes to it?

That’s the practice we’ll continue returning to, together.

Thank you for trusting me through every iteration of this work.

I don’t take it lightly.

To new beginnings,
Grey

[This week’s email is in response to a reader question. Transcript and captions available in the media settings. Submit your question for a future newsletter.]

Reader Question (from S):

Hi Grey:

I’m really enjoying your content, and the insight you provide is very valuable. I saw some of your latest reels where you explained about over-functioning in a relationship. I find myself in this dynamic often, as I think I have fear of abandonment or being taken for granted. In the past I really struggled to communicate my needs and always felt too much for asking. I mostly find myself exhausted from giving and not receiving in return.

In my current relationship, I’m actively learning to draw boundaries and voice my needs, and yet I find myself having to do most of the emotional labor by requesting repair or seeking resolution after conflict. I really want to improve the relationship, but I’m not often met with the same level of involvement or willingness from the other person.

It would be really helpful if you can provide some insight about what a partner needs to do when they stop over-functioning and they see that the relationship is not working when they take the step back. What would be the right thing to do then if they still want the relationship to work?

Thank you.

~S

Join me for The Unshakable Core: A 10-day immersive experience for intuitives and sensitives who over-function, overthink, or shut down in relationships and are ready to shift the pattern for good.

Get the intimacy you want

In case you missed these conversations:

• Being Intuitive Didn’t Save Me From Bad Relationships; Here’s what did.

One of the greatest frustrations of my life was being intuitively and psychically gifted in relationships…and still struggling deeply in them.

I could read a room the second I walked into it—sometimes before I even arrived.

My partners and friends felt disarmed by how quickly I could name what they were feeling, often before they could.

I could see the dynamics of a relationship as if they were painted on the wall in front of me, clear as day.

And still: I struggled.

I read everything—boundaries, attachment, intimacy, communication.

I took the courses.
I learned the skills.

And I kept finding myself in relationships with people who could somehow make everything about them.

Or with people where I was doing all of the checking in, making plans, and initiating repair in order for the relationship to stay afloat.

I felt a lot of shame about that.

How could I see so clearly and still not be able to change anything?

For a long time, it made me doubt my gifts.

But here’s the truth I had to learn: insight isn’t the same as capacity.

You can see everything and still shut down when your partner says they want a weekly date night and for you to plan it.

You can understand relationships deeply and still feel small, angry, and resentful when someone talks over you in conversation instead of saying what you’re actually feeling.

That was the missing piece for me.

And that’s why I created The Unshakable Core: A 10-day immersive experience for intuitives and sensitives who over-function, overthink, or shut down in relationships and are ready to shift the pattern for good.

Not to give you more insight and awareness, but to teach you how to relate to yourself in real-time.

That is true intimacy.

This is for you if:

• You can read everyone else so clearly but feel like it’s nearly impossible to meet quality, mutual, reciprocal friends as an adult

• When you open up in your relationships and they make it about themselves, you feel abandoned and shut down

• When conflict comes up, you track the other person’s patterns instead of staying with what you’re feeling

• When your needs aren’t being met, you work harder to explain, justify, and correct instead of noticing what it brings up in you

Inside the Unshakable Core you’ll practice:

• Learning how to stay with your overwhelm, irritation, or shut down when your partner says they want a weekly date night and for you to plan it

• Saying what you’re actually feeling when someone talks over you in conversation instead of getting small and feeling angry and resentful

• Naming and feeling the consequences of the pattern in your relationships where you’re doing more of the checking in, planning, and initiating of repair

That cycle where you understand everything and still end up in the same relationship, different name and face?

That stops here.

This is for people who are done understanding their patterns and are ready to actually move differently inside of them.

We start soon.

Join The Unshakable Core

Can’t wait to see you inside,
Grey

P.S. Join me for The Unshakable Core: A 10-day immersive experience for intuitives and sensitives who over-function, overthink, or shut down in relationships and are ready to shift the pattern for good.

If you want deeper, truer intimacy in your relationships, please put down the podcasts and books on attachment and do this instead:

1. Practice coming into your body, again and again.
   
   Fall in love with yourself with the same abandon you did with every relationship you now regret.
   
   Track your sensations, learn your triggers, know what lights you up and what doesn’t.
   
   Get a sense of where and how your “no” and “yes” live in your body.
   
   Stop expecting a level of intimacy to come from someone else that you don’t even give to yourself.
   

2. Grow your capacity for discomfort.
   
   You’re spinning your relational wheels because you’re engaging in the same behaviors and expecting different results.
   
   You have yet to EMBODY all of that information you have.
   
   Head knowledge, insight, and awareness do not translate into changed behavior. Embodiment and integration do.

The first practice leads into the second.

True intimacy comes from relating to others from a stable, separate self.

You get there by knowing yourself first and then moving through the world as that person.

To understand how you’re currently embodying a stable sense of self, separate from others + where deeper support may be needed, download my free Unshakable Core™ Audit Taster.

Wishing you the juiciest intimacy imaginable,
Grey

P.S. On April 17, I’m opening the doors to a virtual 7-day experience that will change how you relate—to yourself and others—forever. You’ll get the details first.

Have a question about what it takes to relate to others from your own sense of self and inner stability? Have another question about intimacy and connection? Submit a question for April’s Q&A.

Submit your Q

In case you missed these conversations:

• If You’re Feeling Shaken by Uncertainty Right Now, This Is for You; A reader asked: If I were really grounded, wouldn’t uncertainty impact me less?

• You’re Not Wrong for Wanting This Kind of Intimacy; Turns out 155K people on Threads feel this too

  Thanks for reading Unshakable! This post is public so feel free to share it.

  Share

  
  

Two Sundays ago, as I sat on an air mattress in my apartment—the only piece of furniture remaining—I wrote a brief reflection about the sober play party I had attended the night before.

I posted the reflection to Threads (my new favorite social media platform) and continued on with that day’s tasks for Project Depart Minneapolis.

Sitting at just 68 followers at the time of the post, I most certainly did not expect the 155k views, over 150 comments, the DMs, and the hundreds of followers that poured in.

I was stunned, delighted, but not surprised at all.

Here’s what I wrote in the post:

Last night I attended a sober play party where the first two hours were a workshop on how to stay in your body when approaching someone, when being approached, when negotiating, and how to discern an embodied yes or no.

And I will tell you: there is nothing hotter than people committed to knowing their embodied yes and no and being able to express it.

These types of events are the future of embodied intimacy: a physical, somatic, and energetic understanding of oneself as a separate person before—and in the midst of—relating to another separate person.

This is one way that the perpetuation of unprocessed pain stops. And another pathway for the expansion that’s possible when you’re rooted in yourself first.

The most frequent comment on the post was some version of “where was this space / who held it / where can I find something like this near me?”

The DMs were the same.

So why wasn’t I surprised by the response?

Because there’s a collective yearning—and therefore a collective call—for a new way of relating right now.

A truer kind of intimacy and connection.

Maybe you feel it too?

It’s a yearning for intimacy not forged from sameness and enmeshment but two separate beings relating in their differences and similarities.

This is why a stable sense of self—separate from others—is a prerequisite for true intimacy.

Because intimacy is the capacity to be present with another person’s experience.

Even—and especially—if that experience is different from your own.

Even if that experience results in you having big feelings.

If I was to sum up the feeling that my Threads post inspired, it’s this: POSSIBILITY.

That there was a group of people somewhere, held in a container, choosing to be sober, vulnerable, and awkward as they learned and then practiced what their embodied yeses and nos felt like.

Who risked owning their desires and their pleasures in the company of others.

How fucking refreshing. How hopeful.

If it’s possible for them, maybe it’s possible for you too?

Unequivocally YES.

Whether a play party is your jam or not, just notice what reading the post brought up for you.

Maybe repulsion, maybe curiosity, maybe a clear not for me, maybe a longing for a setting where you, too, could practice feeling into your embodied yes or no.

Whatever your response: it’s information, and it’s important.

Because it’s of you.

And that’s just one tiny piece that makes you, YOU.

Separate from anyone else.

Imagine bringing that kind of self-intimacy, clarity, and confidence into your relationships.

If you want guidance on what it takes to create a stable sense of self—separate from others—download my free Unshakable Core™ Audit Taster.

Here’s to a new, truer type of relating,
Grey

P.S. The workshop was led by experiential sex and relationship coach, Kat Kolegas. You can find their website here. If you’d like to reach out to them via email, let me know, and I’ll share their info with you (per Kat’s consent).

Have a question about what it takes to relate to others from your own sense of self and inner stability? Have another question about intimacy and connection? Submit a question for April’s Q&A.

Submit Your Q

In case you missed these conversations:

• A Simple Practice for Transforming Your Harsh Inner Voice; An example of how you begin to create safety from the inside out

• If You’re Feeling Shaken by Uncertainty Right Now, This Is for You; A reader asked: If I were really grounded, wouldn’t uncertainty impact me less?

[This week’s email is in response to a reader question. Our first ever Q&A format! Thanks to M for being willing to go first. Transcript and captions available in the media settings.]

Reader Question (from M):

Hi Grey:

There’s so much uncertainty right now, and I’m noticing how much it impacts me, even after years of therapy and healing work. Some days I can’t focus on my work, other days I catch myself doom-scrolling or feeling this low-level tension in my body all day that makes it hard to really be present with anything. Part of me thinks that if I were really grounded, I wouldn’t feel this anxious. I’ve been following your work for a while now and really resonate with the idea of being unshakable, but I feel anything but that right now. Any words of advice?

Thank you for your work in the world.

~M.

For specific-to-you, concrete suggestions for how to embody nurturance, protection, and guidance in your life, get your Unshakable Core™ Audit here.

Submit a question for April’s Q&A.

Submit your Q

In case you missed these conversations:

• Does your life feel more like a sanctuary or a prison?; How to start disassembling the walls.

• A Simple Practice for Transforming Your Harsh Inner Voice; An example of how you begin to create safety from the inside out

[I’m trying out a new audio newsletter format this week. I’d love to hear what you think! The transcript is below for my readers.]

The theme of harsh, yet subtle, self-judgment came up in 100% of my client sessions this week, so I want to talk about it here and how I helped them transform it.

In all of the instances with my clients, challenging external circumstances were already happening in their lives and then, on top of that, they were adding self-judgment about the ways that they were handling or coping with the difficult circumstances.

Self-judgment that they were triggered after years of healing, even in the midst of understandably triggering circumstances.

Stories about how their very real and valid feelings meant all kinds of terrible things about them.

Ouch.

Here’s how I supported them in transforming it:

1. I observed that the self-judgment was happening in the first place.
   
   When you’ve internalized the voice of a critical parent or partner, it’s often so insidious that you don’t even notice it. It’s that familiar to you.
   
   This is why having an external witness can be super helpful as you’re learning to track and transform this voice.
   

2. I had my clients locate where the critical voice lives in their body.
   
   Where does the sensation live? What’s the texture, shape, and size of it? Is there a color? Sound? Temperature? Does its energy move fast or slow?
   
   This is what it means to relate to your parts from an embodied place, rather than from insight and awareness.
   

3. Next, I had my clients identify what the critical voice is trying to protect.
   
   This is as simple as asking the part: what are you trying to protect me from? I believe that all of our parts are benevolently working on our behalf, even if it doesn’t feel that way.
   
   This answer will give you a lot of information about the pain that it’s protecting you from.
   

4. Once my clients understood what this judgmental and critical part is trying to protect them from, they were able to offer it some witness and compassion.
   
   The reasons for the protection are often very tender.
   
   Then my clients thanked the part for doing such a good job protecting them.

   Join 200+ readers learning how to create lives they actually want to be inside of.

When you go through this process I’ve just outlined you’ve done two things: you’ve made an unconscious way of relating to yourself more conscious (which means you can actually work with it), and you’ve deepened intimacy with yourself by relating to aspects of self, rather than judging them and pushing them away.

That’s integration and the path towards wholeness, baby.

Your system can’t change and transform if it doesn’t feel safe.

This simple practice is one example of how you begin to create safety from the inside out.

You can’t create a life you want to live inside of if your internal experience is not a safe place to be.

If you want support transforming your inner harshness and self-judgment into kindness and self-compassion, I have openings for 1:1 mentorship right now.

You can schedule a 20-minute Connection Call with me to see if we’d be a good fit for doing this work together.

I love you all and I’m rooting for you.

Transform your inner harshness

If you’re ready to create a life you want to live inside of but don’t know where to start, there’s still time to submit a question for the March Q&A.

Get the A to your Q

In case you missed these conversations:

• Why You Give Your Authority Away to Teachers, Guides, and Healers; And how to start reclaiming it.

• Does Your Life Feel More Like a Sanctuary or a Prison? How to start disassembling the walls.

Sunday, March 1st was the last time I’ll pay rent in a place I did not actively and freely choose to be.

Not in a city I needed to live in because that’s where my parents chose to raise their children.

Not in a town where I chose to go to university on a tennis scholarship because I so badly sought my parent’s love and approval.

Not in places where I pursued my master’s degree or PhD studies to prove to myself and others that I was worthy.

Not in Minneapolis where my ex-partner was accepted to grad school, where I struggled for 10 years to build my own life because of this truth: it was not a place I wanted to be.

I chose the relationship over knowing what I wanted.

During the pandemic I did leave Minneapolis for two years. I made a choice to move back to Wisconsin, a place where I had felt the greatest sense of community in my life through grad school cohorts and a chosen family for many years.

But then, I fell into a familiar pattern and gave almost everything away for a romantic relationship—for the dream I had been trying to realize for so long: family.

When I realized I gave that dream away to the wrong person, I came back to Minneapolis because I had connections and networks here, and I needed something stable as I slowly rebuilt my life from the inside out.

But I returned to Minneapolis out of necessity, not because I actually wanted to be here.

Now, for the first time in my life, I am setting out to find a place I want to be.

To continue creating a life I want to live inside of.

The clients I work with don’t come to me in crisis. Meaning: if you look at their lives from the outside, everything looks picture perfect.

They have partners and families, well-paying jobs, are in leadership roles within those jobs, and are well-known in their communities and networks.

The secret they silently suffer with, however, is that they often want to escape their perfectly constructed life and its accompanying responsibilities.

Not in a life-ending way, but in a “I don’t really want to be doing these things” kind of way.

But they don’t know how to stop because the stakes feel so high; it feels like everything will come crashing down around them if they stop the well-oiled machine of their life.

Overwhelm is a near-constant state.

Silent resentment and reactivity leak out sideways at their partner or children.

Their friendships feel more transactional and depleting than reciprocal and nourishing.

They say yes to work projects and things others ask of them or want them to do, even though what they really desire is more stillness, inner peace, and less efforting to manage their curated lives.

They have built lives they don’t actually want to be inside of.

The carefully constructed and curated life—the walls that have kept their lives together—are fortresses, built around them in order to survive.

Walls—once constructed to serve as a sanctuary—now a prison.

I recently asked a client: what would have to shift in your life so that you didn’t have to retreat from it in order to feel peace and safety?

And I ask you the same question now.

Make a list.

Tell the truth about what you wish you could escape in your life. This level of honesty will help you begin to understand what your walls are made of.

When your nervous system begins to feel a greater sense of internal safety, you don’t need to hold so tightly to your external trappings to feel safe anymore.

This is what I witness happen for my clients continuously: disassembling the fortress walls, one brick at a time:

• Adjusting a workout routine or diet that was more about control than it was about health.

• Decreasing responsibilities at work to make time for what my client actually wants to prioritize in their life.

• Letting go of relationships they don’t really want to be in anymore.

These might not seem like drastic transformations, but they’re happening at the speed of the body and result in lasting, integrated change.

Stability.

This is exactly how you begin to build a life you want to live inside of, from the inside out.

Until one day you look around and realize the walls have come down, and you’re exactly where you want to be.

Whether that’s setting out for full-time travel, having reciprocal and nourishing intimate relationships, or being able to access a sense of inner peace, you’ve been an active creator in what you’re experiencing rather than living inside something built out of necessity and survival.

You: author of and actor in your precious life.

If you’re ready to start or continue disassembling the fortress you’ve built up around you, I have spots open for 1:1 mentorship.

Learn more here or schedule a Connection Call with me.

Rooting for you,
Grey

If you’re ready to create a life you want to live inside of but don’t know where to start, send me a question for the March Q&A.

For the March 18th newsletter, I’ll be answering a reader question via audio.

Submit your question here

In case you missed these conversations:

• Why Your Dreams Matter More Than Ever; Yes, even as the world falls apart.

• Why You Give Your Authority Away to Teachers, Guides, and Healers; And how to start reclaiming it.

  Thanks for reading Unshakable! This post is public so feel free to share it.

  Share

Last week I read Lissa Rankin’s “whistleblower” piece on Substack in which she called out the hypocrisy and spiritual narcissism of her fellow spiritual influencers. Big names like Oprah, Byron Katie, Gabby Bernstein, and Martha Beck were named.

Although I was not at all surprised to read her accounts, what Rankin’s article lacked was the nuance I want to bring here, which is an exploration of how and why so many people are willing to give away their authority to someone else in the first place.

Yes, we can call out the hypocrisy and harm of folks in leadership positions with immense power and influence, but to focus solely on their actions without acknowledging that there was another consenting adult in the relationship is leaving out an entire piece of the dynamic.

And that’s the piece of the dynamic I’m interested in. Because that’s the piece where there’s actually the greatest opportunity for change.

Why? Because when I focus on my part of the dynamic, I’m taking responsibility for my role in it, which is actually the only thing I have any control over. I’m not insisting that other people be different, which is a thing I can’t control.

It’s been almost one year since I named publicly for the first time that the romantic relationship that upended my life in 2021 and completely devastated me was with a narcissist.

It took me almost three years to fully understand what had happened—and another full year to name it out loud—even though I grew up with a narcissistic parent and come from a lineage of maternal narcissism.

I shared that post publicly as an antidote to the extreme shame I carried for years about how I could’ve possibly found myself in that situation. Again.

Because, as I later began to see, this dynamic was everywhere in my life: in roommates, friendships, romantic partners, bosses and, yes, even teachers and healers I worked with.

When I say everywhere, I mean everywhere.

In that same post, I talk about why I stopped going to Survivors of Narcissistic Abuse support groups, and it’s the same reason I named at the beginning of this piece: because although I had experienced harm at the hands of many people—and did not deserve it—there was something *in me* that made me susceptible to this type of person and dynamic.

Do you see? I can name the harms of the abuse, grieve all it has cost me, and get serious about healing the thing within me that made these types of people and dynamics feel familiar.

This is exactly what the saying it’s not my fault, but it is my responsibility means as it applies to healing.

For me, part of that responsibility-taking was exploring why I was so quick to abdicate my power to someone else.

Why did I automatically assume that they knew more than I did? That they were further along than I was? Were better off than me?

Why did I almost instantly place them in a one-up position rather than as an equal? Even if they did have more training and expertise in an area, why did I make them more of an expert on my life than me—the one actually living inside of my experience?

Because I wasn’t inside of my experience. Not fully. Not even close.

This is why I wrote in last week’s piece: You can’t have inner stability if there is no YOU to stabilize.

When I talk about (re)claiming your dreams, learning to track the sensations of your body, getting to know your myriad parts, saying “I believe you” to whatever feeling arises within you, I’m not just blowing therapeutic smoke up your ass.

These are some of the very mechanisms by which you exist in the world.

Not as some thought form. Not as some idea of a person.

As a human, with a body, with wounded parts that have been exiled for years, and full of desires and yearnings that are specific to you.

When you grow up in a dysfunctional environment, regardless of whether one of your caregivers was a narcissist, you learn very quickly that there are parts of your true and authentic self that need to be shut down in order to survive.

You become a hologram of yourself. Yes, the world can see you, but you’re essentially an empty light form.

If that reads as harsh, it’s because the consequences of being a reflection of other people’s expectations, values, and dreams for you are harsh.

I know you’ve felt them, even if you’re not ready or able to name them yet.

These consequences include the betrayals you’ve felt in relationships where you trusted someone else to guide and care for you, the smallness and terror you feel dealing with certain relationships in your life, and the deep shame you feel about a part of you that’s so full of rage, you’re terrified that if the world found out about this part, you couldn’t possibly be loved.

These “consequences” are beautiful parts of your humanity as well.

And it’s learning to name them and eventually love and integrate them that is the antidote to giving away your authority to someone else.

This is how you begin to fill up the hologram—moving from an ethereal light form that bends and curates based on what’s around it, to becoming a fully embodied human.

A human with needs, preferences, wants, vulnerabilities, and imperfections.

From this place, you get to make a more conscious choice about what information and beliefs you take on as your own because you know yourself well enough to know what aligns or what doesn’t quite fit.

But without a grounded sense of self, there’s no “default filter” through which to run the information.

From this perspective, it’s easy to see why so many people would look to gurus, guides, and healers who promise enlightenment, healing, and transcendence.

Not only is it a giving away of authority, but there’s also the appeal of not having to feel and experience the pain that has gone unfelt for years.

I know the allure of that false promise well. I tried to outrun my pain for most of my life.

Spoiler alert: fully embodying yourself includes the painful stuff too.

So, yes, call out the hypocrisy and harm of folks in leadership positions with power and influence, but don’t stop there.

Watch your instinct to use blame as a distraction from turning inward and reflecting on: is there something within you that made you susceptible to this type of person and dynamic?

Not from a place of judgment and shame.

Not instead of naming and grieving the ways you were harmed.

But as a way to explore healing the thing within you that made these types of people and dynamics feel familiar.

This is the kind of responsibility-taking that will change the world.

Tell me: have you had this type of experience with a teacher, healer, or guide before? If so, what did you learn from the experience and/or how has it impacted who you choose to learn from now?

Leave a comment

With heart,
Grey

Have a question you want answered?

Starting in March, once a month I’ll be answering a reader question via audio. This will take the place of one of the weekly written essays. I’m excited to add this more personal and relational format!

Submit your questions here

Resources and Support

• Through March 20, 2026, I’m offering single, sliding scale Stabilizing Sessions. In these sessions, I help you:

  • Learn to identify felt sensations in your body (take up space!)

  • Identify what is pulling you off center (refine your filter!)

  • Identify at least one concrete, embodied action moving forward for ongoing stability (self-devotion for the win!)

    • Sessions details:

      • 60-minute sessions via Zoom

      • Sliding scale $150-$350

      • Offer is limited to three sessions

      • You can either schedule a free, 20-minute Connection Call with me to see if we’d be a good fit, or reply to this email to schedule your session.

• For help identifying the cracks in your inner stability, learn more about my Unshakable Core™ Audits.

In case you missed these conversations:

• When Touch or Affection Feels Hard to Receive; Here’s what might be happening and what can help.

• Why Your Dreams Matter More Than Ever; Yes, even as the world falls apart.

In just over a month I’ll depart Minneapolis to live into my dream of traveling full-time.

This is the embodiment of a vision that was seeded almost eight years ago by a simple sentence written in a journal, but one full of true longing: “I want a life where I travel more.”

At the time I was dating a woman who traveled extensively, sometimes for several weeks at a time. This triggered not only my anxious attachment but a double-edged feeling of envy + a sinking feeling across my shoulders that carried the story “that will never be possible for me.”

This was long before I understood how our dreams and desires are invitations back to our true selves, back to wholeness. And I had no idea the journey I would be invited on in order to become the person entrusted to embody such a dream.

This was also before I understood the link between this dream and younger parts of me. The version of me who delighted in long family road trips in the summer, sitting atop horses in my yellow collared shirt and Strawberry Shortcake shoes.

The version of me who was the only one under the age of 40 who spent entire rolls of film on ocean landscapes, tree lines, and sunsets.

It might seem like an odd time to be talking about living into your dreams when there’s so much happening around us that feels overwhelming, terrifying, confusing, and uncertain.

But I think it’s the perfect time, and here’s why:

Not only is accessing and stoking your dreams the antithesis to living in survival mode, saying yes to what you desire is a way of taking up space.

It’s a way of carving out a life that belongs to you because it originates from inside of you.

It’s an integral part of separating from your parents, relatives, ancestors, or anyone else who told you who and what to be (or what you’re not).

If you’re someone who’s created and curated a life based on a false self—roles and behaviors that you took on in order to survive—it’s almost certain that your dreams got lost in the process.

Maybe your dream isn’t full-time travel, but maybe it’s a creative practice. Or a hobby that you’ve been interested in exploring. Or joining a community choir.

But it’s important because it is of you.

You can’t have inner stability if there is no YOU to stabilize.

You will not find stability living out other people’s wishes for and expectations of you. Promise.

What I see happening in the world right now is all of the ways unprocessed survival energy is being kicked up for folks—and understandably.

But without conscious awareness that that’s what’s happening, it’s launching folks right back into familiar roles: the hero, the scapegoat, or the lost child.

Staying vigilant, bracing for the next bad thing to happen is a trauma response.

Depleting yourself and ignoring your own basic care in order to care for others is a trauma response.

Feeling guilty that you have more privileges and freedoms than the folks who are more severely impacted by what’s happening right now is a trauma response.

I’m guessing that the idea of stoking your own dreams and desires right now feels like an extremely selfish thing to do, especially when there are people suffering greatly, right?

But often the fears of centering oneself (falsely labeled as “selfish”) belong to a young part who had to self-abandon in order to inappropriately care for a parent who was too depressed to get out of bed, for example.

In that example, if the child had centered their very legitimate needs, they wouldn’t have survived.

How wise.

When you’ve integrated these parts, you can more easily say “this is what I have capacity for right now and how I’m going to show up” because you understand that having your own needs and desires is not selfish at all.

You can more easily separate yourself from what is happening externally and still know yourself to be worthy and of value if you need to step back and care for yourself.

You understand that if you aren’t constantly vigilant and tuned into what’s happening that you’re not solely responsible for the fall of democracy.

It sounds silly when I write it out, doesn’t it? But for these parts, it does feel that extreme. The stakes do feel that high.

The invitation right now to understand who you are separate from the collective is only just beginning.

There’s never been a better time to learn who you are outside of familiar roles that have kept you alive but that you know also deplete you, overwhelm you, and keep you feeling small.

Holding on to (or beginning to cultivate) your sense of self right now when the urge to be pulled into the chaos and noise is an unbelievably radical act.

If you’re waiting for the external world to stabilize in order for you to show up for your life, you’re going to be waiting forever. And don’t you think you’ve already waited long enough? 40 years? 55 years? Even 30?

Create a life you want to live inside of, not that you have to retreat from in order to feel peace, relaxation, and safety.

The world, just like those who benefitted from you playing roles that served their needs, will never give you permission.

You will have to reclaim it.

I’m here alongside you as you do, endlessly cheering you on.
Grey

P.S. I’d love to hear from you: what’s one dream or desire that feels alive for you right now (that does not involve the collective in some way)? Leave a comment and let us know.

I want your questions!

Starting in March, once a month I’ll be answering a reader question via audio. This will take the place of one of the weekly written essays, and I’m excited to add this more personal format.

Have a question about becoming unshakable? Working with guilt? Staying connected to your heart in a heart-breaking time? Or anything else that’s alive for you?

If it matters to you, it belongs here.

Submit your question

Resources

• Through March 20, 2026, I’m offering single, sliding scale Stabilizing Sessions as a support in this time of collective change and uncertainty. In these sessions, I help you:

  • Find a felt sense of stability in your body (practices you can take with you!)

  • Identify what is pulling you off center (the world is a difficult place, but your suffering comes from how you’re relating to it)

  • Identify at least one concrete, embodied action moving forward for ongoing stability

    • Sessions details:

      • 60-minute sessions via Zoom

      • Sliding scale $150-$350

      • Offer is limited to three sessions

      • You can either schedule a free, 20-minute Connection Call with me to see if we’d be a good fit, or reply to this email to schedule your session.

• For a deeper understanding of the cracks in the foundation of your inner stability, learn more about my Unshakable Core™ Audits.

In case you missed these conversations:

• Your Critical Inner Voice? That’s Not Your Inner Authority; It’s someone else’s pain you’ve internalized.

• When Touch or Affection Feels Hard to Receive; Here’s what might be happening and what can help.

  Thanks for reading Unshakable! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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Here it is, the end of your long day—finally.

*Deep sigh of relief.*

You’re sitting on the couch next to your partner, the kids are finally in bed, and you can tell that your partner wants to connect physically, even if it’s just cuddling up together on the couch.

You know by now that one of your partner’s primary love languages is physical touch, and you’ve had more conversations than you can count about how they’d like more physical affection from you.

You’ve heard their requests, and you’ve tried diligently to remember to reach for their hand while you’re out on a walk, touch their low back as you walk by them in the kitchen, or be the one to initiate sex.

Sometimes remembering feels easy and natural—especially when you’re feeling more spacious and open—but other times it’s truly the last thing on your mind.

And not only is it the last thing on your mind, it’s the last thing you want! Although you’d never say that to them.

But you want to show up for your partner, and you know that humans are “wired for connection,” so there must be something wrong with you for not wanting it, right?

I hear some version of this from my students and clients frequently. And I lived it for many, many years myself.

Let me start by saying, first and foremost: there’s absolutely nothing wrong with you.

If you have a hard time right now receiving physical affection and offering it to others naturally, it simply means that your nervous system equates physical affection with threat.

Touch with and from others feels unsafe.

Not that *the person* with whom you’re experiencing touch is unsafe, but that the sensation of touch itself feels unsafe.

If you grew up in an environment where you were not consistently held, rocked, cuddled, and nurtured in the ways that infants need to be physically nurtured, this registered as chronic stress in your system.

Nurturance feels unsafe because it’s unfamiliar.

If you grew up in an environment where there was inconsistent care or abuse, the body might now equate touch with threat because that was its experience.

If you rarely feel a desire for touch, it’s not because you’re broken and aren’t “wired for connection” the way it seems like everyone else is—it likely means you had to suppress your need for physical touch when you were young because that need was going unmet.

Young humans don’t have the capacity to bear that level of chronic physical and psychological pain, so they have to disconnect from it in order to survive.

How beautifully beneficent and protective your brain and body is.

For students and clients who struggle to give and receive physical affection, I recommend exploring soothing self-touch practices.

There’s a part (or parts) of you that deeply desires to be comforted. Your work is rebuilding trust with that part, listening to how it wants to receive comfort, and then providing it to the best of your ability.

Experiment with what kinds of touch your body likes or desires. Head or face petting? Light touch on your arms or torso? Side-rocking? Self-hugging and self-embrace?

Your brain is going to want to answer the question; kindly remind them that I’m not asking them. I’m asking your body.

If you have an aversion to touch, it’s likely that none of these are going to feel “good” to begin with.

You’re growing your system’s capacity to be with the uncomfortable sensations that arise as a result of touch.

You might experience shame, disgust, or feelings of nausea as you begin to touch yourself in soothing ways.

Remember: it’s unfamiliar to your system. See if you’re able to bring gentleness and compassion to the discomfort that arises, loving the discomfort too.

A capacity to receive and be soothed by self-touch is an integral part of inner stability and falls under the Nurturance component of inner secure attachment.

Growing your capacity for touch doesn’t begin with other people—it begins in your relationship with yourself.

As within, so without.

When you’re able to find safety in soothing self-touch, you’re creating a system that can more easily discern what kinds of touch feels good and safe with others too.

You’re no longer hugging friends because that’s what sociable adults do, or providing affection to your partner because that’s what loving partners do.

You’re doing it as a natural extension of what now feels familiar, safe, and good to your system.

This is what embodied change looks like.

When something becomes embodied, you don’t have to think about it anymore.

You reach for their hand because you want to.

You look forward to your end-of-day time together because you can once again feel your own need for touch and affection.

You can easily say “I actually don’t have capacity for that tonight, I need to tend to myself for a bit first” instead of doing the thing anyway because you don’t want to hurt their feelings.

You’re embodying what is real and true for you instead of showing up in the ways you think you should.

You’re unshakable.

With heart,
Grey

P.S. If you want concrete practices for embodied change that are specific to your nervous and attachment systems, learn more about my Unshakable Core™ Audits at the button below.

Learn more about the Audits

Resources

• I’m currently offering single, sliding scale Stabilizing Sessions as a support in this time of collective change and uncertainty. In these sessions, I help you:

  • Find a felt sense of stability in your body (practices you can take with you!)

  • Identify what is pulling you off center (the world is a difficult place, but your suffering comes from how you’re relating to it)

  • Identify at least one concrete, embodied action moving forward for ongoing stability

    • Sessions details:

      • 60-minute sessions via Zoom

      • Sliding scale $150-$350

      • Offer is limited to three sessions

      • You can either schedule a free, 20-minute Connection Call with me to see if we’d be a good fit, or reply to this email to schedule your session.

• In case you missed these conversations:

  • Three Reasons I’m Checking in With Myself Before Taking Advice From the Internet; Especially on how to show up right now

  • Your Critical Inner Voice? That’s Not Your Inner Authority; It’s someone else’s pain you’ve internalized

    ---

If your inner voice is critical, harsh, and judgmental, that’s not your inner authority speaking.

That critical voice belongs to an external authority—perhaps a parent, sibling, teacher, or a societal message about who you are and what you’re worth.

But it’s been with you for so long, you might not even be aware of its tone and the things it says to and about you.

You’re likely not even aware of how often it influences the decisions you make and what you believe is and is not possible for you.

How do I know that those critical, harsh, and judgmental thoughts are from an external source?

Because your inner authority speaks the truth about you.

Your inner authority is full of grace, kindness, clarity, and wisdom.

It says things like: It’s okay to not know. It’s okay to be scared. It’s okay to have fun and be playful.

Criticism, harshness, and judgement are not the truth. They’re someone else’s pain that you’ve internalized and made your own.

The way you think about and talk to yourself has a direct bearing on your sense of inner stability.

If you think about your sense of inner stability as the framing of a house, consider a framing built with kindness and compassion versus a framing built with criticism and judgement.

The latter might still look like a house on the outside, but its internal architecture is frail, lacking true stability and support. It’s not a safe place for its inhabitants (read: you).

Every person who’s taken the Unshakable Core™ Audit so far has described their inner voice in one or more of the following ways: harsh, judgmental, critical, sharp, unsatisfied, and full of doubt.

Ouch. That’s a lot of ongoing internal hurt.

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When you begin to embody your inner authority, your inner voice begins to speak the truth, on repeat, without much conscious effort.

You regard yourself with much more grace, compassion, and kindness.

You have a robust inner stability, and you are imperfectly human.

You become a safe place for yourself—a place where your mistakes and your celebrations are all welcome.

You become the place you want to return to.

With heart,
Grey

P.S. To become a safer place for yourself, learn more about and purchase an Unshakable Core™ Audit at the button below.

Learn more about the Audits

Resources

• I’m currently offering single, sliding scale Stabilizing Sessions as a support in this time of collective change and uncertainty. In these sessions, I help you:

  • Find a felt sense of stability in your body (practices you can take with you!)

  • Identify what is pulling you off center (the world is a difficult place, but your suffering comes from how you’re relating to it)

  • Identify at least one concrete, embodied action moving forward for ongoing stability

    • Sessions details:

      • 60-minute sessions via Zoom

      • Sliding scale $150-$350

      • Offer is limited to three sessions

      • You can either schedule a free, 20-minute Connection Call with me to see if we’d be a good fit, or reply to this email to schedule your session.

• In case you missed these conversations:

  • On Living in Minneapolis Right Now; In service of true wholeness and belonging

  • Three Reasons I’m Checking in With Myself Before Taking Advice From the Internet; Especially on how to show up right now
    

    Subscribe now

#1: We all have different nervous systems

We all have different backgrounds and experiences, trauma and attachment histories, hormonal makeups, and bodily capacities.

We are interdependent, yet separate people.

This beautiful variety is what makes us human.

#2: We all have different ways we’re called to show up in this lifetime.

It’s my belief that each of our souls have a divine mission, and we each have a different part to play in the larger whole.

What you’re here to do might not be what I’m here to do.

And what you’re here to do isn’t my business (meaning: trying to convince you that you should be doing and living as I am is likely to cause me a lot of suffering when you don’t do what I think you should).

#3: My authority comes from inside of me.

My responsibility is to myself, first and foremost.

Meaning: I’m responsible for tending to all that arises on a moment-to-moment basis. Once I relate to my experience, I can make a conscious, informed, and embodied choice about my next steps.

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I’ve been sitting a lot with a question from one of my teachers the past couple of weeks: if I don’t center my pain and discomfort, what is this time requiring of me?

Not to bypass the pain and discomfort that’s here—not at all—just creating some distance from it instead of being consumed by and enmeshed with it.

This allows me more embodied agency.

For me, this time is requiring me to get super clear on my embodied values and integrity, what is and is not my responsibility, and what energy is mine/not mine.

And how to keep moving towards what’s calling me, even in the midst of immense chaos and suffering.

That’s the invitation of this moment.

So, I ask you: what is this time requiring of you?

And if you aren’t sure, maybe that’s the very invitation. Maybe this time is requiring that you get curious about and explore the myriad ways that clarity feels hard for you.

Or how overwhelm, immobility, or confusion settle in.

Or what keeps you disconnected from your own internal authority.

When you base your actions on what someone else tells you that you should be doing right now *without* checking in with yourself first to see if that’s actually aligned for you, you have left yourself.

And we need people centered and grounded in themselves more than ever right now.

In that vein, I’m currently offering single, sliding scale sessions.

Details:

• 60-minute sessions via Zoom

• Sliding scale $150-$350

• Offer is limited to three sessions

If you’d like to connect and see if we’d be a good fit, you can schedule a 20-minute Connection Call. Or, if getting 1:1 support from me feels like a clear yes for you, you can reply to this email to schedule your session.

I don’t know how long I’ll be offering 1:1 sessions in this format. I offer that with transparency, not urgency, as this offer is specific to the current moment we all find ourselves in.

If you’re wondering what’s possible in fewer sessions, here are some shifts a former 1:1 client experienced after three sessions:

We had three sessions this summer. Three small sessions that shifted a fundamental anchoring in myself.

Learning to be curious about my own embodiment has been a game changer. What am I feeling right now? Where do I notice it?

How often am I making space for these questions?

When I came to you, I was unsure about how to spend precious summer time; should I take that trip? How much energy am I giving my parents? Relationships? Where and how do I want to spend myself?

I did take the trip. I honored my mom. I resisted my Dad.
I joined a sports team and ended up being more capable than I had imagined.

I held a beautiful witchy memory circle for my sister this Thanksgiving.
My niece and I built a fire and honored that 10 yr grief. We got matching star tattoos.
It was warm and loving to spend the week together.

I’m still haunted by the ghosts of unresolved things. But something is stirring differently in me.

I’m grateful for the time with you this summer. I’m grateful for the ways I am opening to my own experience.

Thank you for putting up guide markers on this path!
~S.F.

Wishing all of you peace, ease, and an inner stability so robust that no one or no thing can take it from you.

With heart,
Grey

P.S. If you want to cultivate greater inner stability in this time of uncertainty and change, I’m currently offering single, sliding scale sessions. You can schedule a free, 20-minute Connection Call with me to see if we’d be a good fit, or reply to this email to schedule your session.

Schedule a call

• I was a recent guest on the Third Space Podcast. Host Zander Keig (a fellow trans human) and I discussed the oppressiveness of forced conformity within queer and trans communities. Listen to the episode here.

• In case you missed these conversations:

  • What The Relational Wilderness™ Forged in Me; Why I don’t regret what it took to become unshakable

  • On Living in Minneapolis Right Now; In service of true wholeness and belonging

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Every weekday morning, I get up at 6am to sit with a group of strangers from the internet, mindfully. Our sole intention is to return to the present moment, again and again, and to love everything we find there.

We begin each sitting session by chanting the Suffusion with the Divine Abidings.

For those of us who recite the chant, we’re committing ourselves to the cultivation of a heart-mind imbued with loving-kindness, compassion, gladness, and equanimity, without hostility and without ill-will.

The lines don’t read: I will cultivate these qualities of my heart-mind without hostility and without ill-will…

…only towards people who look like me.

…only towards people who agree with my political views.

…only towards people I deem as “good” and “moral.”

…only towards people who aren’t engaging in behaviors that make me feel all kinds of intolerable feelings.

No—this is not a conditional chant and prayer.

It is a summoning of the unconditionality of these qualities.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve learned to take the weight of my words seriously.

And it’s this seriousness, combined with moments like what’s currently happening in Minneapolis, that invite me into the complexity of what it truly means to root into and embody my values.

Right now it feels like I have just as many questions as I do “answers,” and I’m writing this for the folks who also have—or desire to have—capacity to hold the complexity of this moment in their hearts.

For those who also understand—even if it’s the smallest recognition—that to take a stand for your immigrant neighbor while also dehumanizing those pursuing them are in direct conflict.

I have lived in Minneapolis through the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing uprising, the political assassinations of the Hortmans, the Annunciation Catholic School shooting, and now the killing of Renee Nicole Good.

My heart is heavy, and my body is tired.

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I keep seeing posts from Minnesotans on social media that talk about our hardiness and resilience in weathering these multiple collective traumas together, and while I appreciate the sentiment and good will of these posts, to me, they’re perpetuating a narrative that enduring hard things while continuing to engage in the same behaviors should be lauded.

Coming from a dysfunctional family system, I took pride for years in my ability to adapt and endure before sobering up to the reality of my dysfunction, which finally allowed me to make conscious choices to relate to myself and others in different ways.

The posts I’m seeing imply that the problem is outside of us—that these things are happening TO US rather than as A RESULT OF US.

A scroll through my feed reveals a similar displacement of responsibility and blame:

The conservative right blames it on folks of color, poor folks, the radical left, etc., etc.

The progressive left blames it on all cops, oppressive systems, fascist policies, guns, etc., etc.

Each believing that they are correct, and the other is wrong.

All of this blame fueled by the misunderstanding that there are inherently good and bad sides here; that is the belief that will continue to divide us.

The progressive left takes the quote from Mother Teresa I used to begin this piece—that “we’ve forgotten that we belong to each other”—and apply it only to the marginalized and oppressed.

No, friend: it applies to everyone.

For years I found safety and belonging among the progressive left because I identified as a marginalized and oppressed person and, at the time, I needed that sense of protection and belonging.

But the more I began to see how my insistence on a narrative of pain in order to belong was actually keeping me from healing and thriving, the more I realized how the progressive left was just as fundamentalist in its beliefs about right and wrong as the conservative right was.

It just appeared “better” because the beliefs were, at face-value, in the service of inclusion.

The more and more I untangled myself though, the more similarities I saw between the progressive left and the criticisms I had held about the conservative right for so long: I couldn’t talk about dissenting views without fear of being canceled or losing relationships. I couldn’t ask the complex questions that live inside about the very complex things happening in the world.

How is that freedom? How is that true inclusion?

That’s not the capacity for difference that I long for—a capacity that actually allows for and facilitates wholeness.

From a perspective of wholeness:

I am George Floyd, and I am Derek Chauvin.

I am Melissa and Mark Hortman, and I am Vance Boelter.

I am Fletcher Merkel and Harper Moyski, and I am Robin M. Westman.

I am Renee Nicole Good, and I am Jonathan Ross.

Not because of the values and morals I embody and the choices I consciously make, but because I am also a complex human—trying to get my needs met—who has been born into this interdependent world and called Beloved by God.

And so are you.

And, I believe, until this inner division is healed, we will continue to see it embodied in our external world.

As within, so without.

Growing a true capacity for difference, for a heart imbued with loving-kindness and compassion starts inside.

It is an internal orientation and way of relating to the world.

It all comes back to relationship.

And not the conditional kind.

How do we hold folks accountable for heartbreaking violence while also maintaining their humanity?

How do we let our pain move us into right action that isn’t fueled by hatred?

How do we keep our hearts open in the face of so much violent loss without blame?

My honest answer is that I don’t know. I’m also asking and living into these questions right now.

But I do know that reacting out of fear and hatred is not any better than doing nothing at all.

Both are an unconscious + reactive turning away from what’s actually present: pain.

One is just seen as “ideal” because it’s active—it’s fighting fascism!—it’s embodying what so many have decided is the correct way to enact change right now.

I’m merely inviting a moment of pause, of slowing down and re-orienting.

Taking a moment as I do every weekday morning with strangers on the internet to return to the present moment, again and again, and to love everything—and everyone—I find there.

With heart,
Grey

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• In case you missed these conversations:

  • Three Signs You’re in The Relational Wilderness™; Helping you locate yourself.

  • What The Relational Wilderness™ Forged in Me; Why I don’t regret what it took to become unshakable.

Any time you spend prolonged periods in the wilderness, you can expect challenges.

They are times meant to shape and forge you, to deepen your connection to yourself and something bigger than you.

My time in The Relational Wilderness™ was no different.

I ended relationships that had been central to my sense of identity and community.

I began new relationships and then quickly outgrew them as I continued to grow, heal, and evolve.

I was confronted, again and again, with the impacts of the relational environment I was raised in: emotional illiteracy, an inability to clearly and confidently advocate for my needs, good boundaries, and a lack of discernment about the emotional maturity and health of others.

I epically blew up my life.

I watched myself enter into the same pattern, with the same type of person more times than I can recount here.

And not just romantic partners: housemates, bosses, friends, community members and, yes, even teachers and therapists.

It was downright comical at some point. Truly.

I experienced heartbreak, betrayal, a lack of belonging, and deep loneliness. Whew!

Every one of these moments was an invitation to return back to the assignment at hand: I had stated outright at the end of 2018 that I was desiring a different kind of relating, and that was exactly the call that was being answered.

Throughout everything I named above, a common thread was there: what needed to change within me for me to have the different type of relationship that I was longing for?

What was the work necessary to go from an attachment system impacted by developmental trauma to one that had earned its secure attachment?

The learning curve was S T E E P and, for me, exquisitely messy and human.

And, because I continued to say yes—to stay engaged with the process—as messy and painful and hilariously human as it was, I learned to embody an inner stability, a secure attachment with self, and a secure way of moving through the world and my relationships.

I became unshakable.

I want to be clear: being unshakable doesn’t mean that you don’t experience difficult things and/or aren’t impacted by Life—not at all.

On the contrary: being unshakable means having the capacity to stay engaged and present with how Life is asking to shape and transform you.

It answers the question: what can actually change and transform in your life when you don’t abandon the larger process you’re within and/or abandon yourself within it?

Where I see most people get stuck with this question is one or a combination of the following:

• They can’t or don’t see themselves in a larger transformational process (so they attribute their hardship to being some version of broken)

• They lack the nervous system capacity to stay with the sensation of discomfort that is a natural part of being human and is most definitely a part of relational healing

Both of those things require a felt sense of holding or being held—either by oneself or by someone or something outside of yourself. Ideally both.

Being unshakable allows you to become the holder (of yourself) and the held (you can relax into truly being supported).

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If you’ve said yes to a healing or transformational process, especially as it relates to your relationships, it’s quite likely that there are some aspects of it that are known (e.g., your origin wound) and some aspects that remain unknown (e.g., where all of it is headed).

It might feel like you’re letting go of more than is being built right now. And maybe it’s felt that way for longer than you’d like.

But, if you can stay engaged with this process, something sturdier and more stable is being built, even if you can’t see or feel the tangible proof of that yet.

For folks whose bodies and systems aren’t running secure attachment as their default way of relating to themselves and the world, creating inner secure attachment can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack.

Perhaps it’s news to you (it was to me!) that secure attachment consists of three distinct, yet necessary, components: nurturance, protection, and guidance.

Having these as concrete anchor points in an otherwise abstract process was an absolute game-changer for me.

It allowed me to apply the somatic, parts work, and attachment work I was already engaged in an embodied way.

At this point in your healing journey, you likely know that there’s a massive difference between understanding something cognitively and EMBODYING it.

It’s the difference between awareness and lasting, integrated change.

So, what does it actually look like to embody the three components of secure attachment?

How can you locate yourself within the larger transformational process you’re in?

How do you grow your nervous system capacity to be with discomfort—to be both the holder and the held?

What most people are missing isn’t effort or insight; it’s a clear way to see where they are in the process and what actually supports the next step.

The Unshakable Core™ Audit is designed to answer all of those questions by assessing how you’re currently embodying nurturance, protection, and guidance—with yourself.

The Unshakable Core™ Audit is for you if:

• You’ve been doing healing work around relational, developmental, or attachment trauma and want support translating insight into embodied inner secure attachment.

• You’ve experienced meaningful internal shifts, yet the relationships you long for—mutual, nourishing, emotionally available, and intimate—still feel just out of reach.

• You find yourself believing you’ve finally found a healthy relationship, only to later realize you’re replaying familiar patterns despite your awareness.

• You’ve been on this healing path for awhile and want a concrete way to assess your progress—to see how your inner work is showing up in your body, choices, and relationships.

• You’re newer to this journey and want to shorten the gap between awareness and embodiment, so insight doesn’t stay stuck in your head.

• You’re supported enough right now—by people, practices, or structures—that exploring your inner world might feel challenging or confronting but not de-stabilizing.

What’s Included:

• A 33-item assessment designed to evaluate how you’re currently embodying the three essential components of inner secure attachment—specifically in how you relate to yourself.

• A customized PDF report of your audit results. After reviewing your responses, I’ll walk through each section, highlighting:

  • What you’re already doing well

  • Areas that would benefit from additional care and attention

  • Three concrete practices—one for each component of inner secure attachment—to support your next steps.

• A personalized audio recording in which I guide you through your audit results, bringing the PDF to life through my voice and relational presence.

Audits are now open for purchase.

Click on the button below to learn more and/or purchase your audit.

Purchase an Unshakable Core™ Audit

When you have an inner stability that belongs to you because YOU CREATED IT, it is much easier to navigate times of uncertainty and liminality + continue to engage with the larger process you’re in.

That’s an inner stability that nothing and no one can take from you.

With heart,

Grey

P.S. Unshakable Core™ Audits are now open for purchase. If you’re ready to explore how you're currently embodying the three essential components of inner secure attachment, learn more here.

Points of reflection / connection:

1. What comes up for you when you sit with the question I posed in today’s post: “What can actually change and transform in your life when you don’t abandon the larger process you’re within and/or abandon yourself within it?”

2. What feels like the biggest barrier for you when it comes to staying present and engaged with Life?

3. What do you think might shift for you if you had a clear way to see where you are in your process and what actually supports your next step?

• In case you missed these conversations:

  • The Relational Wilderness™: What is it? Putting language to an experience not widely talked about.

  • Three Signs You’re in The Relational Wilderness™; Helping you locate yourself.

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If you missed last week’s piece on what The Relational Wilderness™ is, I recommend you read that before proceeding; it gives the necessary context and foundation that today’s post builds upon.

As I said in last week’s piece, one of the things I wish I had had in my time in The Relational Wilderness™ was the language for what I was experiencing. I hope today’s post helps you begin to put language and understanding to some of what you’re currently experiencing (or have experienced).

Three signs you’re in The Relational Wilderness™:

1. You’re being pulled towards relational healing by something that feels much bigger than you.
   
   

   Perhaps some experience or set of circumstances has put you on the healing path.

   
   

   Maybe it was a divorce or the end of a romantic partnership.
   
   

   Maybe it was the experience of betrayal and rupture in a community or friend group you couldn’t imagine life without.
   
   

   Maybe it was growing up in an environment where your basic and beautiful needs for nurturance, protection, and guidance weren’t met, and you’re in the process of reclaiming those things for yourself.

   
   

   Maybe it’s just a quiet inner knowing nudging you towards a different kind of relating but you haven’t been sure what it’s asking, if that voice really belongs to you, or where to begin.
   
   

   Whatever the reason or circumstance, it feels like something outside of you, beyond you, and something that, if given the choice, you wouldn’t necessarily ask for.

2. What you desire / long for relationally isn’t here yet. And every time you think it is, it then turns out to be something else, or just another iteration of the pattern you’ve been healing for years. You teeter between despair and the hope that comes with the vision and dream that’s been planted in your heart.
   
   You’ve done and have been doing the work that you’ve been told “calls in and attracts” the right partner, new besties, or community.
   
   

   You’ve cleared out relationships that were such obvious replications of previously toxic patterns.
   

   You’ve been setting new kinds of boundaries.
   
   

   You’ve been doing the hard work to understand your feelings and needs and then make requests based on those things.
   
   

   You’ve made a commitment to yourself and the Universe that you’ll never let yourself be treated that way again.
   
   

   In the healing work you’ve done, you’ve felt your heart soften and stretch—oh, how it hurts so good—ready for that good and healthy relating! Bring it on!
   
   

   And yet: nothing seems to stick.
   
   

   You’ve let yourself try dating again—excited to take your new skills for a test ride—only to find that once you get excited about a connection or two, familiar patterns play out. Maybe they stop replying to your messages after some good back and forth.
   
   

   You’ve formed some close relationships in the healing community you’re a part of, but when you’ve tried to deepen with some folks offline you find, to your disappointment, that they’re not as emotionally available as you thought.
   
   

   It kind of feels like, no matter where you turn, there’s that pattern again, playing out with a different name, face, and scenario—even when it started off so differently this time!
   
   

   You had a brief moment of hope. A brief moment of feeling like all of this healing and being present with your pain was worth it.
   
   

   Only to have, yet again, another door close.
   
   

   Maybe, you think, emotionally mature and available people are actually mythical creatures. Maybe no one really is securely attached. Maybe all of this intense healing work is for nothing.
   
   

   What’s the point?

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3. Although you’ve found tools from traditional frameworks helpful—they’ve helped you make major progress in some areas—there’s always been this other piece missing, although it’s been hard to put your finger on exactly what that is. Nothing quite seems to soothe the soul.
   
   You’re smart. You’re resourceful. You’ve been taking care of you for a long, long time.
   
   

   You’ve likely found practitioners and healing spaces/communities—whether online or in person—where people are speaking a shared language.
   
   

   Maybe you’ve learned about your attachment style and how that’s impacted your life.
   
   

   Maybe you’ve taken a deep dive into understanding how your stress and trauma lives in your body—how to regulate and co-regulate and down-regulate and up-regulate and all of the regulation tools.
   
   

   Maybe you’ve learned how to box breathe and have tried breathwork and reiki and myofascial massage.
   
   

   Maybe you’ve read Codependent No More and Attached and are subscribed to all of your favorite podcasts on relationships.
   
   

   These have all been amazing resources and tools.
   
   

   And yet: there’s still this quiet ache inside, as if there’s still something missing.
   Something you can’t quite put your finger on.
   
   

   Maybe you just need to regulate more, you think.
   
   

   Or maybe the longing for something deeper is real.

   ---

When you’re able to locate yourself in the larger process you’re in—even when that process is deeply liminal—it helps anchor you.

It allows you to attune to your experience and that, in and of itself, calms the nervous system.

It says: hey, you’re okay. I know it’s dark out here. And lonely. And seemingly endless, but you’re right where you’re supposed to be.

Promise.

Understanding where you are also helps you understand the current assignment and curriculum—something more concrete and tangible than “I’m healing my attachment wounding and/or trauma.”

That something concrete is what I call your Unshakable Core™.

In January, I’ll begin offering Unshakable Core™ Audits, a 33-item questionnaire that assesses how you’re currently embodying the three components of secure attachment—Nurturance, Protection, and Guidance—with yourself.

• Nurturance – how you nurture yourself (everything from the tone of your inner voice to how often you engage in soothing self-touch)

• Protection – how you keep yourself safe (everything from setting boundaries in current relationships to observing your intake of news and media)

• Guidance – how you lead yourself (or allow yourself to be led and supported by others)

If you want a preview of the full audit, I’ve created an audit “taster,” which is a free resource you can get here or at the button below.

The Unshakable Core™ Audit Taster is a gentle entry point into understanding how you relate to yourself through an attachment lens.

Get the Audit Taster

With heart,
Grey

Points of reflection / connection:

1. Which of the three signs outlined in today’s post feel most resonant to your experience?

2. How do you / have you been making sense of your current location on your healing or transformational journey? What stories or beliefs do you have about it?

3. How does it feel to consider that judging—rather than attuning to—your current location is causing you more pain in an already-challenging process?

• In case you missed these conversations:

  • What If You Didn’t Have to Hold It Alone? A short guided practice + an invitation.

  • The Relational Wilderness™: What is it? Putting language to an experience not widely talked about.

Subscribe now

In the fall of 2018, I began to sense the inner rumblings of an invitation into The Relational Wilderness™.

I didn’t have much more than an internal knowing and longing for a different kind of relating.

I knew that the ways I had been relating for my entire life were not the end game.

Connection felt extractive, exhausting, needy, and would soothe my anxiety for a while, but was never quite enough.

I felt trapped in a never-ending cycle of constantly looking outward and seeking + grasping in order to feel okay temporarily.

I had the awareness that I was repeating unhealthy patterns in my closest relationships—a lack of reciprocity, people who minimized or had no space for my feelings and experience—but no matter how much I talked about it with my therapist or how many podcast episodes I listened to on relationships, the needle didn’t move much at all.

When I look back at my journal from that time—November and December of 2018—I was both processing the drama and discontent of my relationships, and I also kept writing this phrase: I know I need a different kind of relationship.

I had no idea what that meant concretely, but I also knew that there was something so important in my longing. I knew there had to be a different way.

In early 2019 I took my first big steps towards that longing, ending a dating relationship that was a terrible fit and drawing boundaries in two of my closest friendships, effectively ending them.

I knew that how I had been doing relationships for all of my life was no longer working for me, and I had no idea what the alternative was—because it wasn’t yet familiar to my body—but I set out to find the answer with not much more than hope and a longing.

Why the Wilderness metaphor?

The Wilderness as metaphor describes a liminal—often challenging—time of transformation, growth, self-discovery, and a deepening spirituality.

You’ve left what’s familiar and set out into the unknown—sometimes that’s a choice you consciously made (e.g., leaving a friend group or community setting) and sometimes it’s a choice that was made for you (e.g., a romantic partner breaking up with you).

It’s dark out there. And lonely.

It feels excruciatingly vulnerable and disorienting.

It seems like you’re grieving more than you ever thought was possible to grieve.

You wonder if it will ever end and, if it does, how will you know when you’re done with your time in the wilderness? How will you know when you’ve found that illusive thing you left the familiar and known for?

As much as I love how popular and mainstream therapy has become, it’s also lost the sacredness and honoring of what it means to choose a transformational path.

In addition to the popularity of therapy, there’s been the simultaneous rise of pathologizing whatever ails us which, in turn, means it must be fixed.

From that vantage point, when it comes to the realm of relationships:

Having insecure attachment is a problem.

Co-dependence is a problem.

People-pleasing is a problem.

What if all of these were merely invitations to rebuild your relational landscape from the inside out?

To be an active agent in the creation of your relational world?

What if you viewed your relational challenges as an invitation rather than a fate destined for hardship and struggle?

What if your desire for mutual, nourishing connection and deeper intimacy and belonging served as a North star, rather than a constant reminder about what you didn’t or don’t have?

This doesn’t mean that you bypass the grief, rage, anger, or sense of injustice that you didn’t receive the necessary ingredients to experience and receive the ease of connection.

Not at all.

All of that is a welcome and necessary part of the journey.

But it’s a massive reorientation from “I’m forever fucked relationally because I grew up in a neglectful environment” to “I’m deeply devoted to creating an internal container that has the capacity and skills to experience and receive the ease of connection.”

Can you feel the difference there?

The first is relating to the world from a place of brokenness; the latter from a place of wholeness.

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Why The Relational Wilderness™ specifically

When I began asking those questions in late 2018 and then began to make concrete shifts in my relationships in 2019, I had no idea the process I was embarking on.

I look back at sentences in my journal from that time that read things like “I’m working on my secure attachment” and I give a hearty LOL and “Oh, babe. You had no idea what was coming.”

Looking back at that time—and the last seven years—I would’ve loved a framework like The Relational Wilderness™ to have held me, to have given me some idea of what I might expect, to help me come up with a plan of support and resources, and add some tools to my toolkit for the seven-year journey ahead.

Beyond “work with a good therapist or healer” and “make sure to have social support.”

Yes, both of those things are good to have, but what The Relational Wilderness™ asks of you is beyond and much deeper than those things.

I needed a framework beyond what I understood from traditional therapeutic spaces as “attachment healing” or “trauma healing.”

I needed a framework big enough to hold the magnitude of the larger process I was in. A framework that would’ve helped me locate myself in that journey and what I needed at one particular point in the process versus another point.

I needed to know how to hold both the unknown aspects of the process I was in—intangibles that differ from person to person, nervous system to nervous system—but also the very concrete embodiment practices and relational skills that I could hold onto and root into, knowing that when I worked them, I would also be worked and transformed.

I needed to know that I could expect almost a complete turning over of my friend group and community and the kinds of stories I might tell myself about what that meant about me.

And most of all: it would’ve been life-changing to not feel so alone in it all.

My time in The Relational Wilderness™ was some of the loneliest of my life.

Yes, from time to time I would find healing spaces and podcast episodes and memes on social media that would give lip service to how lonely healing can be, but I never found a comprehensive resource that said: You make sense. What you’re going through—all seven years of it—makes absolute sense. And here are other people also going through this process.

All of the things I listed above—the things I needed so badly while in The Relational Wilderness™—are what I want to give to you.

I can’t make your time in the Relational Wilderness™ shorter, less confusing, or easier, but I can be alongside you.

And so can others who are also in The Relational Wilderness™.

Fellow journeyer, wanderer, and wayfarer: Welcome. Thanks for being here.

With immense heart,
Grey

P.S. One of the gifts of my time in The Relational Wilderness™ was the creation of inner secure attachment, or what I refer to as my Unshakable Core™. In January, I’ll begin offering Unshakable Core™ Audits, a 33-item questionnaire that assesses how you’re currently embodying the three components of secure attachment—Nurturance, Protection, and Guidance—with yourself.

If you want a preview of the full audit, I’ve created an audit “taster,” which is a free resource you can grab here or at the button below. The Audit Taster gives you example questions from each section of the full audit and a very preliminary understanding of where you might be in the process of developing your own your Unshakable Core™.

Get the Audit Taster

Points of reflection / connection:

1. Does The Relational Wilderness™ as a metaphor resonate for you? If yes, are there particular qualities/experiences of it that resonate more with your experience than others?

2. When it comes to your experience in and of relationships, do you view yourself as something broken that needs fixing, or as something that is already whole, with ongoing invitations to return to more and more wholeness?

3. If you identify as someone who is in The Relational Wilderness™ right now, what do you wish someone had told you about it? What has felt much harder than you imagined when you set out on this journey of healing and transformation?

• In case you missed these conversations:

  • Do Phrases Like “Support Is Always Available to You” Make You Feel More Alone Than Supported? It’s because it’s not your body’s experience. Yet.

  • What If You Didn’t Have to Hold It Alone? A short guided practice + an invitation.

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[Below is the text of the guided practice. Listen to it above, or read through it below.]

Imagine you walk into a room.

Inside the room is a group of people (or animal + plant beings), sitting in a circle, all of whom have been waiting for you.

Maybe you recognize some of them; maybe not.

Either way, they’re here for you.

As you walk in, they raise their eyes and faces to greet you, delighted to see you.

Warmth and welcome emanate from each of them.

One of them even says, “Hello. It’s so good to see you. Welcome.”

You notice there’s an empty seat in the circle—your spot—and you join the group.

This group has been gathered to help hold something you’re carrying right now.

Maybe it’s overwhelm.

Maybe it’s grief.

Maybe it’s fear or anxiety.

Maybe it’s loneliness.

Maybe it’s the weight of depression.

Maybe it’s a truth that you haven’t spoken to anyone yet.

The group surrounding you has no agenda or expectation for how you share what you need help holding with them.

You get to decide.

Perhaps you need to tell them all of the details.

Perhaps you need to just cry while they hold witness.

Perhaps you need to turn your back to the group and sit in silence.

Perhaps you need to be held in someone’s arms, or hold the hand of the person next to you.

You get to decide.

But, if and when you’re able, see if you can experiment with the idea of letting this group hold some of what you’re holding and, when you do, notice how it feels.

Notice how it feels to be met with warmth, presence, and attention.

Notice how it feels to not have to be so alone with what you’re carrying.

Notice how it feels to not have someone fix what you’re feeling and still be alongside you.

Just notice.

Stay as long as you need to stay. This group is here for you.

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The above practice is a small example of the type of practices and invitations Rachel Svanoe Moynihan, SEP and I will be facilitating in our day-long workshop this Saturday, December 6.

Through a combination of teaching, embodied practices, and small and large group reflections, we’ll consider pathways back to ourselves, our hearts and our power, so we can sustain our engagement in the creation of the world and connection we long for.

Over the course of the day, we’ll explore:

• Your current vision and longing for your life and the world

• Ways that your body and nervous system might be making it difficult to take action towards or embody that vision and longing

• Where you’re struggling the most as a human in the world right now

• Embodied and relational practices to help return you to connection

• Practices for working with shame and powerlessness as well as embodying your power, presence, and aliveness right now

Details:
When: Saturday, December 6 from 10am-5pm
Where: Meraki Building, 100 West 46th St, Minneapolis 55419
Nourishment: Lunch provided by Axis Mundi Catering (with tea and snacks throughout the day!)

If you’re in the Twin Cities, we’d love to have you.

Registration closes Wednesday, 12/3.

Register for the workshop here

With heart,
Grey

• In case you missed these conversations:

  • When You Know You’re Ready for a Different Kind of Relating; But you’re not exactly sure how to get there.

  • Do Phrases Like “Support Is Always Available to You” Make You Feel More Alone Than Supported? It’s because it’s not your body’s experience. Yet.

Now is the time to hold faithful
To your dream, to understand
That this is an interim time
Full of awkward disconnection.

Gradually you will come to find
Your way to new friends who will open
Doors into a new belonging.

Your heart will brighten
With new discovery;
Your presence will unclench
And find ease,
Letting your substance
And promise be seen.

Slowly, a new world will open for you.
The eyes of your heart, refined
By this desert time, will be free
To see and celebrate the new life
For which you sacrificed everything.

~Excerpt from John O’Donohue’s “Blessing for an Exile”

When I first entered into what I refer to as The Relational Wilderness™, I didn’t have much more than an internal knowing and longing for a different kind of relating.

I knew that the ways I had been relating for my entire life were not the end game.

Connection felt extractive, exhausting, needy, and would soothe my anxiety for a while, but was never quite enough.

I felt trapped in a never-ending cycle of constantly looking outward and seeking + grasping in order to feel okay temporarily.

I had the awareness that I was repeating unhealthy patterns in my closest relationships—a lack of reciprocity, people who minimized or had no space for my feelings and experience—but no matter how much I talked about it with my therapist or how many podcast episodes I listened to on relationships, the needle didn’t move much at all.

When I look back at my journal from that time—November and December of 2018—I was both processing the drama and discontent of my relationships, and I also kept writing this phrase: I know I need a different kind of relationship.

I had no idea what that meant concretely, but I also knew that there was something so important in my longing. I knew there had to be a different way.

In early 2019 I took my first big steps towards that longing, ending a dating relationship that was a terrible fit and drawing boundaries in two of my closest friendships, effectively ending them.

I knew that how I had been doing relationships for all of my life was no longer working for me and my body, and I had no idea what the alternative was—because it wasn’t yet familiar to my body—but I set out to find the answer with not much more than hope and a longing.

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Maybe you feel this hope and longing for a new and different kind of relating too?

But maybe you also downplay or dismiss it because you don’t have any concrete evidence that connection and relationships can actually feel and be different.

Yes, maybe you’ve had the rare experience or encounter with a human who lights up that knowing in you—just enough to give you hope (you’ve finally found them!)—only for it to be fleeting or to end up just exactly like every other relationship that’s come before them.

How crushing and disappointing, right?

Then you take this as confirmation that the kind of relationship and connection you’re seeking actually *doesn’t* exist. Not for you, anyway.

This liminal space is the hardest part.

It’s the part where you’ve said yes to the journey—to the healing, to the longing, to the desire for a different way. But you can’t yet see how this is all gonna shake out.

Part of you doesn’t believe that it actually will.

The longing is real and the faith is waning because you’re right: it has been a long fucking time.

It’s exhausting and it’s the loneliest you’ve ever been and you’re beginning to wonder if you imagined the entire thing. The possibility of something different.

I know this liminal place well because I just spent seven years in it, and this is the exact space I guide students and clients through.

One of the things I commonly see is an incorrect attribution that goes like this:

Because the type of relationship and connection you desire isn’t here yet = something is wrong with the longing.

And, because that beautiful longing comes from you: something is, therefore, wrong with you.

My students and clients often come from environments where their earliest needs for nurturance, protection, and guidance weren’t met.

What happens in those scenarios is that the child has to internalize the belief that their need for those things is bad.

They don’t have the ego or cognitive development to understand that their needs aren’t being met due to a lack of capacity on the part of the caregiver, not that the needs are wrong.

So, as an adult, when the very healthy and beautiful longing for mutual, reciprocal, nourishing relationships re-emerges (because it never went anywhere, was just suppressed) and continues to go unmet, the familiar interpretation comes through: the need must be wrong.

No one can possibly meet it.
It’s too much.
It’s built on the stuff fantasies are made of.

Let me correct these for you:

Your need and desire for mutual, reciprocal, nourishing relationships is beautiful and exactly what your system is built for.

There are folks out there who would absolutely delight in connecting with you this way (yes, there are people who know how to ask questions about you and listen lovingly to your responses!).

It’s not even close to too much.

That longing you feel, which might feel like a far-off dream or fantasy, is your guide for this time.

It carries a truth that is moving you towards the type of connection that your body has been hungry for longer than you can consciously remember.

But your body and heart haven’t forgotten. And they won’t.

The question isn’t: does this exist and can I have it?

The question is: can you stay engaged with all that has arisen and will continue to emerge in this liminal time in order to say yes to the longing?

If you’re answer is yes, or even a reluctant “I don’t know yet,” I invite you to join Rachel Svanoe Moynihan, SEP and me for our upcoming day-long workshop, How to Be a Human Right Now: Cultivating Capacity for Presence, Feeling, and Connection in the Face of So Much Personal and Collective Suffering.

Over the course of the day, we’ll be exploring concepts and practices that directly relate to growing your capacity to be with what is arising in your experience right now, as well as deepening your relationship with self (which directly impacts your capacity to connect with others!).

Learn more about our day-long workshop

Whether you’re in the Twin Cities or not, the replay of the live call Rachel and I hosted last week, (Re)turning Towards Connection: Embodied Practices for Being a Human Right Now, is now available.

In this call, Rachel and I guide you through two practices: one that explores how to find a felt sense of safety from inside of the body and one that explores a felt sense of connection to self + also being supported by others.

This call is a great way to get a taste of what we’ll be doing in the workshop on 12/6.

Get the replay here

With heart,
Grey

Points of reflection / connection:

1. Do you relate to the idea of being in a liminal space when it comes to the quality of relationships and connections you’re currently trying to create in your life? Where you’ve left one way of being for another, but you’re not quite sure what the end point is and how you’ll know when you’ve arrived?

2. What stories, narratives, and attributions about yourself and the world emerge for you when you’re in the midst of uncertainty or a period of long transformation? How and where do these stories and beliefs live in your body?

3. If I invited you to write out your ideal version of relationships, community, and connection in your life, what would that look like? Do you have capacity to let yourself long for such an experience? Notice what this question lights up for you (e.g., pain, doubt, delight, etc.).

• In case you missed these conversations:

  • Do Phrases Like “Support Is Always Available to You” Make You Feel More Alone Than Supported? It’s because it’s not your body’s experience. Yet.

  • One Thing I Misunderstood About Connection For a Long Time; For those for whom “we’re wired for connection” isn’t that simple.

    ---

I still vividly remember when a therapist I was seeing during grad school told me to “hug a pillow” when I told her how lonely I was and how deeply I longed for a romantic relationship.

This was long before trauma-informed therapy and somatics were as popular as they are now, so her pillow comment felt basic and flippant and, honestly, I felt radically unseen.

She clearly didn’t understand the depth of my body’s longing.

And, truth be told, it would still be years before *I* would even understand the depth of my body’s longing.

I blew her comment (and what felt like insensitivity) off, most certainly did not hug a pillow, and carried on, forming connections and relationships like you do.

But I continued to hear phrases like “you’re always supported” or “connection is always available to you,” and they rang some chord deep inside.

Yes, I knew theoretically that this was the truth, but it just wasn’t my lived experience.

And that made me feel like something was wrong with me.

I would look around at other folks, and it seemed like they not only believed that they were always supported, but they embodied that belief.

They moved through the world as if that was the truth.

What was I missing, and how could I begin to feel in my body that I am always supported? How could I move beyond a theoretically knowing to a bone-deep knowing?

When I first began to hear these phrases I had a robust circle of friends, deep connections in community, and what felt like a life full of support.

And yet: when I was outside of these spaces, in the quiet and slowness of my own experience or home, anxiety and deep insecurities would creep in.

The connection and support I did have never quite felt like enough.

I was caught in an exhausting cycle of constantly looking outward and seeking + grasping in order to fuel the belief that I was always supported.

Connection was regarded by seemingly everyone else as this end all, be all, but to me it felt extractive, exhausting, needy, and would soothe my anxiety for a while, but was never quite enough.

My body had zero reference point for what mutual, nourishing connection actually felt like.

I had—what I refer lovingly to as—a leaky bucket problem.

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Here’s what I mean:

Think of the container that holds your capacity for connection and relationships as a bucket.

Everyone’s bucket has holes or leaks in it to various degrees based on a number of factors.

When you connect with someone, the ideal is that the connection pours into your bucket and that your bucket can hold the nourishment from that interaction, whether that interaction is a compliment from a friend, a check-in text from your cousin, or a two-hour coffee date with your bestie.

Your bucket maintains that nourishment, and it fills you up.

However, the more holes you have in your bucket, the more you need folks to pour in.

And, depending on the size and severity of the holes, you might need *a lot* poured in to maintain some feeling of being full, or even half-full.

The work I do with students and clients is to help them patch the holes in their leaky buckets.

And it’s the work that I devoted myself to for the last seven years: repairing my own leaky bucket so that my body now has the experience of mutual, nourishing connection and does, in fact, know that it is always supported.

Not just as a beautiful, heady concept, but as a felt sense in my body.

That therapist I saw during grad school was on to something, even though I was highly resistant to it at the time.

A felt sense of support begins in the body.

And if you grew up in an environment where the body and brain quickly learned that your basic needs for nurturance and protection were not going to be met, that experience lives on in the body until it’s given a different experience—yes, in relationship with others but, even just as importantly, with yourself.

As I said in last week’s email, we are hardwired for connection, and we need it.

But if you’re bringing your leaky bucket to every relationship, no amount of connection will ever be enough. Ever.

So, how do you begin patching those holes so your body can begin to hold the truth of the support that is available to it, always?

Try this simple practice: take a moment to notice what is holding up your body right now as you read this.

Are you sitting upright in a chair? Lying down on a bed or couch?

Let your body really experience the felt sense of being supported by that surface.

Notice the places the surface makes connection with your body and spend a moment really feeling into that contact and connection.

Notice what it feels like to really lean into the support, and see if you can allow the body to soften into feeling supported by even 10% more.

Repeat.

This simple, yet powerful, practice is just one example of what Rachel Svanoe Moynihan, SEP and I will be exploring with folks in our upcoming day-long workshop, How to Be a Human Right Now: Cultivating Capacity for Presence, Feeling, and Connection in the Face of So Much Personal and Collective Suffering.

If you’re in the Twin Cities, we’d love to have you. Learn more about and register for the workshop at the button below.

If you’re unable to make the workshop, check out these additional resources:

Want to feel more emotionally supported? Read this.

A short video about the Leaky Bucket Problem.

With heart,
Grey

Learn more about our day-long workshop

Points of reflection / connection:

1. What comes alive for you when you read or hear phrases like “you’re always supported” or “connection is always available to you”? Do your mind and body have different opinions about the truth of these statements?

2. Do you have a leaky bucket problem? How does that metaphor land (or not) for what your experience has been around connection?

3. If you widen your definition of support to also include the myriad ways your body is supported throughout the day, how does that begin to shift your overall feeling of being held up and cared for?

• In case you missed these conversations:

  • One Thing I Misunderstood About Connection For a Long Time; For those for whom “we’re wired for connection” isn’t that simple.

  • How to Be a Human Right Now; Connection as the path forward