On Hysteria

The word “hysteria” has the same root as the word “hysterectomy.” Women have been fighting being judged as hysterical for millennia.

I had a beautiful insight into this the other day. [Robyn Lynn] and I were hanging out, and she was deeply upset, expressing extreme cynicism and despair about her life and Life in general. 
As I paused in trying to defend myself or make her better in order to push away my own discomfort, I was able to sense into her experience, and realized that a large portion of it was transpersonal. She was dipping beneath the crust of the Earth, and narrating the shadow world that exists between the surface and the core. I realized that this was a service- that she is built for it. Women, (at the risk of stereotyping and offending), are built for touching and expressing this shadow- the place of doubt and despair, of pain and irrevocable loss. 

Until the other day I hadn’t really appreciated this essential and shamanic role that women can play when they seem distraught or enraged or inconsolable. Essentially, they are bringing shadow to light and moving part of the unfelt charge of humanity and the Earth through their bodies, as a way to heal and make whole the full range of human experience. 

There is really very little room in Western culture for men or women to see the innocence and beauty of this. We just think that something is wrong and needs to change. 

All it took was for me to see this and name this and Robyn’s whole body relaxed, as she felt witnessed rather than judged, and could actually look at celebrating her experience, rather than assuming that it was wrong, was doing harm, or needed fixing. (Not that she needed reliance on me to do this- but it definitely helped when I stepped out of a pathological orientation and dropped into seeing the beauty of what her psyche was doing). I was left with a sense of awe, as my assumptions were turned upside down, and the shadow revealed itself as the light.

As I deepen assuming the best in my life, I’m noticing more and more a shamanic underbelly to Life itself, and an appreciation of the magic that is taking place in ways I see, in ways I don’t yet see, and in ways I may never fully understand.