Quiet Victory
Featuring a Big Growly Dog on my Street
I was such a scared little one when I was young.
I felt soooo much in an unstable unhappy home environment. Even now, after many years of healing and learning how to hold and parent my innermost sensitive child, that trembling one, she still has moments of fear that seem to pop out of nowhere.
Moments like having that hard conversation or stepping into something new (ahem-first month on Substack!). Then there’s moments where I see how much she is aware she is safe now, healed and integrated.
Like yesterday, as I stepped out my front door to head into the forest for a morning walk and a huge bristling brown dog came barking up the road and charged at me. Instantly, I stood tall, deepened and slowed my breath down while I scanned my eyes over the scene to tell my whole nervous system that ‘I am safe’.
As I stood grounded, radiating strong sensitive waves of calm energy, the charging dog suddenly backed down and moved away from me. A stunned neighbour, watching the whole scene across the road told me afterwards that the dog had bit him and bit his dog twice before. He was sure it would go the same way with me.
It was a quiet victory there, smack dab in the middle of the street. Such an amazing experience to observe myself working with my scared parts, to experience my inner growth amid all that frenzied barking, and to observe just how much I have learned to be in my inner strength amid really aggressive and shocking energy. I was thanking all of Life (and my dad, now in spirit, who, when I was little, was the first “barking” scary energy to kick-start my healing journey to courage) for all the opportunities to learn how to create peace within me as I turned and made my way towards the trees.
I am grateful for many teachers along my path providing me the vital tools I’ve learned over the past decades. Tools which have supported me to get to the place where I could not only calm my nervous system in real time, but also observe that fear-filled aggressive dog have a shift in state. The gift for any of us who grew up in feeling unsafe is that we become curious which opens up a search for new ways of being so that we are not stuck on rinse and repeat.
What a marvel that it can be a full s*#$-show playing out on the external scene yet we can find our courage and stand in our sovereignty, choosing our internal state of being. That’s the only thing I have learned I can control, my internal reality. As I pondered this, I turned to leave the forest and saw this perfectly timed shocking graffiti image (the one I popped into this post) jump out at me from the side of a shack as if to drive home the point one more time!
Indeed, wild and crazy things are popping up around us all the time, when we least expect it, yet when we keep focused inside, regulate our physiology and tend lovingly to our most tender and sensitive parts inside, we walk in ease and leave a ripple of calm in our wake. Our highest inner choices, while quietly internal, are powerful enough to upgrade the field of energy all around us, right down to a big old growly dog on the street.