Undoing

When one of my early clients spoke of finding our sessions helpful in dealing with ‘knotty issues’, the word ‘undoing’ came to me.

It seems to me there are many knots and much to undo. I have not been happy with this website for a while.  I’ve been in a knot about it; feeling that while I had moved on, it had not (pardon the pun).  The very act of re-writing feels like an act of undoing, a loosening of the old which is in turn allowing the new to arise.

My sense is that there are knots in, on and around all of us.  Some we recognise, others we don’t. Some we want to undo and others we ignore. Some feel small, others feel big.

We have ways thrust up on us. Ways that are not ours but become ours. Ways that do not serve us. Ways that do not help us to find and know, ourselves or each other. We tie ourselves in knots, trying to be who we are not. Trying not to be who we are.

Who is this ‘we’ I keep referring too? Often ‘we’ tie ‘them’ up in knots. Who is ‘them’?

The process of undoing can and often does involve discomfort and surprise.  What shape will I take if I allow breath to fill my body? What happens if I undo my blindfold and see the people who cannot breathe?  What might I say if the knot in my throat loosens?  What might I do with what I come to Know? 

We may meet things that have been hidden and contained by knots.  When we meet them, our chances of undoing them increase. 

Attending the Newport Black Lives Matter march and Quaker a racial justice training have shown me some of the vast knots that I had little or no conscious awareness of.

I have come to understand that it has been my White privilege that has enabled me to be at the stage of beginning to see.  Writing this is part of my working at undoing. To release me. To release us all.