In my most recent post, I shared a meditative visualization connecting the third eye, heart, and sacral chakras to assist with the transmutation of the past and the emergence of the new. This week I had an experience of expansion of a memory that I would like to share with you.
Last Friday, I decided to braid my hair using hair extensions. I love box braids and boho locs. I’ve been doing these styles myself for years. Sometimes I go to the salon, other times I do them myself. I enjoyed switching from one style to the next and I love to be able to do this myself. I would play my favorite music, get my hair styling tools ready, and braid away for hours. This time, however, I was not enjoying braiding my hair. The braids were coming out beautifully and yet, I was feeling tense and even achy. Box braids with extensions is a style that can take me 6-7 hours depending on the length I choose. I did not mind. It is a whole ritual that has been very meaningful to me. It made me feel in control of creating any vision I had for my hair. In the end, I would be a bit sore and tired, but I also felt very gratified.
I took deep breaths and reminded myself of how much I enjoyed this ritual. I reminded myself that I could take breaks and/or finish the style the next day. It did not work. I was confused. Eventually, I stopped braiding because I had plans to go to the movies. Thus, I decided that I would make an appointment for the next day with a fabulous braider and stylist who had styled my hair before. After the movies, I was sitting in my living room when my scalp began to ache. It is not unusual to feel some tension with box braids. When you grow up having your hair braided daily, you almost do not even notice this tension. This time, the tension was pretty bad. It was as if my scalp was yelling, “Take these braids down now!” So, I did. I undid four hours of work and took all the braids out. Although it was frustrating, I felt relieved and clear that for some reason I did not want the braids at the moment.
The next morning I woke up feeling sad. I tuned in allowing my body to show me what this sadness was about. As I tended to the sadness, tears began to flow. Grief became palpable. I then got the sense that I was releasing a part of my identity related to my hair. But I’ve never loved my hair more than I do now and adding hair extensions to switch styles had nothing to do with not loving my hair. So, why am I feeling sad? A thought came in that “releasing, shifting, and/or transmuting something that no longer aligns can be sad even if I am gaining something beautiful. Even if I arrive at the awareness that I unapologetically love my coils, a loss is still a loss. Also, I felt as though I was losing a very meaningful ritual. But then I tuned in more and realized that I did not have to stop doing the braids. The use of extensions was not the issue here. There was more underneath that was calling my attention and that I needed to explore.
A few days later I was in the middle of a channeling session in ceremony with Cacao when my guides took me on a powerful journey that took me deeper into this exploration. I was shown an image of my inner child. She was around 9-10 years old. I could tell that she felt constricted, and ashamed. She didn't want her hair to look that way. A message came through: “There was no love, nor appreciation for her hair. Therefore, a big part of her shrunk. She felt she needed to hide her hair, change it, replace it. It was no longer hers. You can feel this inner child’s shame now. It brings you sadness to feel embarrassed about how she looks. She is inviting you to move beyond this embarrassment and see her beauty. See her beautiful eyes, her beautiful skin, her beautiful hair. You are invited to make her feel loved, and appreciated, make her feel beautiful. You know now that she is a multidimensional being full of power, full of beauty. Yes, you can go there where she is. Play with her hair, play with delicious creams and hair lotions. Try different styles. Make her feel creative, expansive, and free to express herself.”
As this message was coming through, I remembered that my mother cut my hair very short when I was 9-10 years old. I went from below the shoulder-length hair to about two-inch-length hair. She did not take me to the salon, she did it herself. I had been complaining of migraines and my mother felt badly about it. I was being treated for the migraines, but she thought that braiding my hair so tight every day was contributing to the migraines. The migraines were a symptom of layered intergenerational and ancestral trauma, which I was able to identify and process as an adult.
My inner wisdom said, “You experienced a lot of shame about this haircut. You had no control over this. A big part of you was cut off. It was as if your self-expression was cut off as well.”
The message continued, “At the same time you were also released from tightness and constriction in your scalp caused by the daily braiding. You and your mother were released from the tensing energies between you and her during braiding time. There was found space for you to begin to play with your hair on your own. Do you see the other side of the coin now? Your inner child part needs to take all the time she needs to release the feelings attached to her experience and to see an expanded perspective of it, but it is important that you show her the bigger picture and other possibilities” I had addressed this experience in therapy before, but I had not seen this aspect of constriction, tightness, and inhibited self-expression that came up with the haircut. I also did not see how the experience shifted things for me and my mother. That it indeed released me from the daily pulling and tensing energies between me and her concerning my hair. So many layers there that I will continue to explore.
Then, multiple images of my younger self began to appear in my higher mind. I saw myself at 11, 12, and 14 years old. My mother had been relaxing my hair straight since I was 11 years old. After tapping into memories of my relaxed hair, I also saw alternative scenarios of my adolescent self creating different hairstyles with my natural coils. I was playing with Bantu knots, puffy updos, soft twists, and rounded gorgeous afros. My hair looked hydrated, shiny, and bouncy in all these images. It felt as though I was re-writing my memories and offering my adolescent self other possibilities. It did not feel like I was denying what happened.
On the contrary, I was being invited to look at this face-to-face again. This was what the sadness and palpable grief was signaling. I was being called to tend to this history, appreciating the layers with love and compassion for myself and my mother and expanding beyond it using what I now know. My adolescent self felt more expansive. I acknowledged my mother’s complicated relationship with her appearance and with her hair in particular. I acknowledged again the macro systemic layers and the effects of internalized racism.
“You now see that your mom was doing the best that she could with what she knew at that time. She wanted you to look the way that she thought you would be accepted and loved because she related to her hair the same way. Decades later, you made a different choice because you wanted your daughter to have a different experience with her hair. You modeled for your mother your renewed love of your natural coils. You inspired your mother to stop relaxing her hair and embrace her beautiful curls”
As I received this message, I began to smile. I felt the grief fading away.
“Rejoice in the beauty of this. Not only in your ability to heal and expand your perspective of the past but also in your ability to play with quantum energy. You can use your powerful imagination and knowledge of how energy works. You know that imagination and energy are not bound by time and space. You can therefore play with re-writing memories, re-creating narratives”
This exercise is not so different from techniques used in some models of psychotherapy. The premise in that context is to access the unconscious narratives and reshape them consciously. What I love about going through this visualization during a deep meditative and channeling state is that I do not approach the exercise from the mind but from the sacred heart. I experience the blissful, high vibrational expanded heart state and from there, I can also tap into not-so-happy” emotions, thoughts, and/or images. Shame, grief, and guilt all show up and are allowed to be seen and expressed, while I can maintain a level of centeredness.
This is what my guides refer to as “the cosmos within the sacred heart state” and “the vastness where there is no emptiness” The different visualizations and meditations I have shared in this blog can help you arrive at your sacred heart. There, your higher self remains a guide and a neutral observer that allows all parts regardless of form or feeling to be present, to be expressed, to be re-known, to be re-birthed in Unity Consciousness.
This does not happen overnight of course. Healing takes time. We peel the layers, let go, expand the perspective of our experiences, and then peel some more. What is fundamental here is to remember that denying the expression of painful parts only prolongs the process. We are invited to validate with love and compassion the expression of all of our parts allowing their transmutation, leading to our expansion, our integration…Our rebirth.