You're Safe Here

Mar 08, 2024

A few nights ago, I was talking to my parents on speakerphone while they wound through the backroads home from my niece’s basketball game. My dad was behind the wheel (he always is) and my mom was holding the phone and our nervous elderly maltipoo in the passenger seat. I asked them to tell me a story from my childhood. My mom laughed,

“It took you a long time to walk without holding onto something.”

“What?” I was truly appalled. “I figured I was an over achiever at everything!”

“Oh, you could walk. You would walk confident circles around the coffee table. But when we would crouch just a few kid steps away from the table and hold out our arms, you wouldn’t do it. You’d stretch as far as you could without letting go and reeeeeeach. You’d bounce back and forth. You really wanted to do it. You’d try. And then you’d just yell until someone came to get you. You were so frustrated.”

She told me that story and I felt that stretch, that reach, that yell, in my bones. Not just in my little kid bones, but in my fully grown adult bones. I could feel myself edging away from the table until I had just one hand on it, one finger, a pinky, and stretching out my other hand as far as I could, willing myself to just let go, to leap, and not being able to do it yet. I am still that kid, fingers on the table reaching out.

Two years ago a therapist told me that our most basic need is safety. It’s the core of wellness and mental health. It’s the key. It’s the base. Everything we try to build crumbles without it. I revisit this image from her website often.

Source (my previous therapist’s website)

Feeling safe is what helps us regulate our nervous system, feeling safe is what helps us leave fight or flight mode and access the rest of our brain, feeling safe is necessary before we can build deeper connections with ourself and others. Feeling safe is necessary before we can take risks.

Feeling safe was the first step in alleviating my depression.

I had never considered my behavior through a lens of risk management, but when I did the evidence felt obvious. I was operating in the world with a skin of anxiety. I had a hard time making decisions or taking risks. I didn’t really trust people and struggled to be really vulnerable. I was hyper vigilant about observing other people for mood shifts. I was always assuming people didn’t really like me or wondering if I had been annoying. I was insecurely attached to everything: partners, friends, jobs, the places I lived. I was anxiously attached to the world, to my life, because I didn’t feel safe.

So I went digging. How did I learn that I was not safe? How did it get wired into my little brain? Lifelong attachment styles are usually built in our first two years of life. With parents who fought for me to be born, who adored me and built their life around me, how could I have developed anxious attachment? My parents were obsessed with me and my siblings. They were involved, supportive, My childhood was perfect. I was definitely safe.

Were we?

The kid in me found evidence of unsafeness that adult me couldn’t see. She brought me the stories of a baby wrapped in onions by a mom who couldn’t figure out what was wrong. “Stiff Stuffy Steph” screamed until her body was a board and she was red in the face. She was so full of snot she couldn’t breathe. She spent her mornings with giant dogs she was allergic to and a mom exhausted from working nights and fighting doctors who didn’t believe her when she said her baby needed x y or z during the day.

I’d already known these things about my childhood. Adult me had seen all of these acts as evidence of my parent’s deep love — which they are. But kid me has a kid brain and kid brains don’t understand intentions. If a baby can’t breathe, all she knows is that she cannot breathe - she doesn’t know her parents are trying everything to figure out why. When she screams out that she’s hurting and no one stops the pain, she doesn’t know why.

My depression has always come with symptoms of complex trauma and I was disgusted at myself for that. I felt guilty and weak and confused when the symptoms I read in the The Body Keeps the Score about people with PTSD from actual WAR resonated deeply with me. I felt embarrassed and dramatic because I didn’t have “real trauma”. I felt ashamed. Even now, a part of me wants to hit backspace until these words disappear because she can hear someone who probably doesn’t exist saying “okay, whiner, these things aren’t that bad.”

But instead adult me finally sat down at the table with little me and said,

I hear you, I believe you, that sounds so hard. Illness and allergies that wrack your body are hard for adults, but for a baby? Who just entered the world? It makes sense that you didn’t learn the world was safe. It wasn’t. It’s not your parents fault and it’s not yours either but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t hard.

And when I finally said those words, more parts brought their evidence of not being safe to the table.

Two year old me told stories of giving away her dog because she was allergic. Four year old me told stories about being annoying and too much and talking A LOT. Eight year old me told a story about a poem she wrote and dreams that she shared that was a little too dark for the grownups. Ten year old me told stories about putting a blanket over her mirror every night so Bloody Mary couldn’t visit. She told another about levitating a friend in our unfinished basement and never being able to enter that basement without running and turning every light on ever again. Twelve year old me told a story about eating with a teacher because her best friend turned all of their friends against her. Fourteen year old me told the story of our first boyfriend and best friend found sneaking around together at 2 in the morning. Sixteen year old me told me a story about not being cast. Eighteen year old me told a story about crippling peer feedback in her first college voice class. Twenty year old me told me a story about her first post-college mentor who poorly juggled her heart, fresh enthusiasm, and trust. They all had stories - of feeling unheard, of too many boyfriends who cheated too many times, of jobs lost, of harsh feedback, of crying in a loved one’s bed while he turned his back, of a pandemic where we lost our job and had to sanitize our groceries and coming into contact with .

Every single part of me who was hurt was holding a story about not feeling safe.

They handed me their stories with a slight flinch; they winced waiting for the smack of shame I had inflicted before - the “this is not that bad”, the “this is actually your fault”, the “that’s not trauma”, the “that’s life, buck up girlie”.

But I was quiet. I looked at each of them as they told their stories and I cried. And they reached out and held my hand.

Those things were hard and scary, especially at your age, especially for a person who is naturally sensitive. I like your sensitivity. I’m sorry I made you feel shame. Trauma takes many forms. I understand why you are scared, but I am not scared. I can hold these things.

When they gave those stories to me and I finally listened without judgement or shame, we started to build safety together.

But it couldn’t really work until I felt like I deserved it. I couldn’t stop shaming and wincing until I believed I deserved love and compassion more than I deserved shame. Until I stopped comparing myself. Until I stopped worrying about what someone else might think instead of listening to what I knew.

Because a lot of feeling safe in a world we can’t really control, is about knowing that no matter what happens, I am safe and loved and held because I love and can hold myself. I had to feel like I deserved that love. And I do. So do you.

Feeling safe has changed my world. Literally. When I see the world as a safe place, I live differently. I am kinder. I walk lighter. I connect. I dream. I am more interested in taking risks. I have space for self discovery. I want to be creative. I’m interested in improving the world and feel like it’s possible. I see things differently when I am safe. I need less from other people and so I can love them exactly as they are. Kid me is so present and alive, I can feel her hand in mine every day. We play. We built a fort in the bottom bunk of our hotel room last night. We experience awe and delight everywhere.

I am so full. And it extends out of me. I’ve seen it in the people around me. Work is brighter. Yesterday, on a work day no less annoying than any other and one where I was frankly not as prepared as I’d usually like to be, a local said several times that “so many roadies come in here with bad attitudes and you are just… great.” We finished load in an hour earlier than scheduled and the entire process was a delight. He hugged me the next day after we loaded out.

Being a person who brightens the places I enter is something I have always wanted to be. And here I am, I just had to like me enough to make myself safe here.

How I know I’m safe

I protect myself. I am capable of that. I can make my world safe. I trust myself to protect me — a trust built through action. I started listening to myself and my parts. I started trusting my gut. I stopped abandoning myself in favor of other people. And I continue to protect myself. I set boundaries with people who hurt me. I leave situations and places that don’t feel safe. I do things I say I will. I am gentle with myself when I fail.

And ultimately, I know I am safe because no matter what happens, I will still be loved and held. By me. Nothing will stop this love. This unconditional love I have always wanted is now a guarantee. I am always safe because I am in control of my safety.

“You are safe” is a new constant in my world. I put a hand on my chest and every part hears me whisper and sits back down at the table, trusting and ready for what’s next.

I surround myself with people who protect me. Knowing I am safe with myself has allowed me to also be safe with other people. If I am trustworthy and I love myself just exactly as I am, why couldn’t other people do so too? My love for myself makes me brave. It makes me show up as me and that helps me find the people who love me how I am. And then, big leap here, I accept their love. And I love them too. And we protect each other. And the world is safer.

I look for signs of safety in the world. This is part of why gratitude and surveilling for good and awe practices work - they rewire our brain into seeing the world as a safe place. I’m not naive, I live in New York City, I’m a woman, I know there is danger here. But I also know I can be as smart as possible and also not focus on those things are emblematic of the world.

I believe the world wants me to win. I know it. I trust it. Why wouldn’t it? Why would a world exist and why would I exist in it if I wasn’t meant to be here? Why would I deeply feel like I want things that are just not meant for me? Why would I have these dreams if they’re not meant to come true?

I believe there is something greater than me, whether it’s a God or nature or just a source of energy, and whatever or whoever it is, they are rooting for me. It sounds a little woo-woo and I used to scoff at the kind of stuff, but part of me also always loved it. I was a self proclaimed Jesus freak in high school. I fell for a bartender because he did magic tricks. I love magic. I love knowing there’s something mysterious, something bigger, something that winks and giggles with delight in the background. I can feel when I am aligned with this source of delight. It feels good.

I can soapbox right now, but I’ve struggled with this part, as recently as today and probably again tomorrow. With trusting that the universe gives a shit about little old me. With believing I deserve all the good things I want. With the naïveté that seems necessary to believe in a world that is good when so much is on fire. With the privilege that feels built into a universe alignment, God is rooting for you, abundance mindset.

But I’m not naive and I still don’t believe in a naturally cruel universe. I know I have privilege I know it’s important for me to acknowledge it. But I can also acknowledge my privilege and use it instead of letting the guilt of it eat me or instead of using the guilt as an excuse not to act. I am not useful to myself or to anyone else when focusing on the suffering.

I’ll probably continue to struggle with these things and others. Me struggling with it doesn’t change the truth.

Safety lets us leap

Everything good comes from a leap of faith.

All change comes from a leap of faith.

But to take that leap we have to believe we are safe. Even if we acknowledge the risk, we know it will not kill us, we know we are held, we know we are safe. We know someone will still love us no matter what happens.

We give ourselves evidence of past success instead of precautionary tales of potential failure. We show ourselves the ways we didn’t die when we tried that last thing.

When we are safe, we can skip, we can run, we can jump, we can leap.

What I really came here to say is…

I genuinely believe you are safe here. You. Here in this little Substack place, yes, you are safe to be completely you when you are reading this and when you are writing comments. You are safe with me and if I can help you cultivate that in any way, I want to. I feel safe with you. I feel safe here in this space. Thank you for keeping it safe. Thank you for giving me evidence that if I leap, I will be caught.

Beyond being safe here in this space, I also know you are safe in this world.

Whatever has made you feel unsafe was not fair and I’m so sorry that it happened. It is not silly. It is not kid stuff.

You belong here exactly as you are - as your weirdest, secret, most true self. There are people who are dying to meet exactly that you that haven’t yet. I am knocking on your door. Come out and play. There are spaces made for you. Your dreams are possible. You deserve them.

You deserve to feel safe and loved and held. You deserve your own time and energy. You deserve the love you have to give.

You deserve good things. You deserve everything you’re wanting and everything you give to other people. You deserve calm and ease and joy. You don’t have to do anything to earn it. You don’t have to be a better or different version of you. You are good enough to be held exactly as you are even if you still want to grow.

If you think you don’t deserve it and you can’t convince yourself otherwise right now - that’s okay - you’ll get there. Maybe there’s someone else in your life that you think deserves it more than you - fine - I can promise you that they will receive the safety and love you give yourself tenfold. I’ve seen it. So love you and build safety for you for them too.

I want you to know you are safe because I know it will change your world too. And you deserve this good that I got. I want you to have it. I hope you do already. I can’t wait to see what you do with it.

It’s safe.

Let go of the coffee table.

Leap.

You will be held even if you fall.

People might even cheer.