“Your eye shadow and mascara is so sparkly! But that’s your job isn’t it?”
“Yes. I guess it really is.”
A year after my father died I set aside a certain amount of money and bought all different colours of mascara. Red, blue, pink, purple and sparkles to go on top. It was my moment of joy to adorn myself with frivolity and whimsy to remind me of him. It was an act of radical hilarity, which was so him. It was my little way of opening my own eyes wider and bringing attention to where my fairy Witch soul was residing after so many tears. I still cry but now when I do it’s Rainbow Town on my face.
I’ve known my job, my magic, my medicine since I was very small but I never really had the words to express it. And then, one day before meditation and choir, a funny, brilliant buddhist had dropped the mic right down my top.
The sparkle, the “riz” as the kids say, the magic beans - we all have something. And when I’m not red with rage about the injustices of the world or … maybe when I am, that’s when it pops up.
Which part of me in Internal Family Systems is it? Shirley or Val, they’re very alike but slightly different. Val can clean the entire house, clean the yard, make dinner, and build a new Canadarm for those looking for a hand, but Shirley…. oh Shirley. Shirley has a big, watery laugh and throws her boobs out of her shirt for the laugh and shock of it. Shirley can stop a bus with her smile and naughty look in her eye. Shirley can tell if there’s just one person struggling in the room and she can zone right in on them and make them snort laugh. Shirley is under the umbrella of Val. They maybe be sisters, in fact. Either way, Shirley is the sparkle, just as Shirley Temple’s mom used to say to her before the cameras would roll,
“Sparkle Shirley!” And she would.
When I am allowed to fully embrace the flow - the sly smile of Shirley - I can connect to the earth, the ancestors and all the pain and pleasure in the room. I can call them, I can tickle them I can wake them up. Sometimes I shouldn’t and I know it but most times, if allowed, my job is what fills me up and overflows into the garden and everything grows.
When people talk about the neurodivergents having a super power it annoys the hell out of me but, if I can get quiet for a small second, I believe they’re right. It’s just an overused, trope like “every thing happens for a reason” or “what doesn’t killl you makes you stronger,” yada yada yada. Maybe everything does happen for a reason, but please do not explain away my trauma with spiritual bypass. My super power is the ability to think ten thousand times faster than neurotypicals, - to think in ways that are unacceptable and don’t make sense, to move and move, to not need to eat or pee or sleep, to go so far beyond multitasking that the word hasn’t been invented yet. Hold on.
Infinity-tasking. You’re welcome.
BUT… yes, there’s a but…when this superpower is crossed with trauma - and let’s face it, trauma has been trending for a long, long time - it becomes a state of serious yuckma (a great word I just made up, let’s get it trending!)
There’s a cost, a price, a sacrifice. Sometimes it shows up as anxiety, depression, addictions of all kinds including binge eating or a casual UTI. Sometimes it reveals itself as a feeling of never fully being present in one’s own life, a lack of gratitude or full blown chronic scarcity. Never done, never enough. Relationships are difficult to say the least. The most important relationship is the first to go, the one with myself. I am often last on the list and when I fight the patriarchy because my body is screaming for attention from me, then I go down the rabbit hole of healing. So many appointments, devices, therapies, physio, workouts, audio books…. if I can only do it all, or get the perfect combination, I will figure it out and be fixed. No.
There are no systems for fixing trauma or neurodivergents, none that I know of anyway. There is no fixing. This life is moving, growing and always in transition. It is fluid, a spectrum and therefore never finite. The best we can do is move with it, pause with it, and move again until it’s done. Then we will become the food for something else to grow, and our sparkle will be the nourishment that inspires and grows someone else’s sparkle.
But until then, I’ll be reapplying my mascara.
And so it is. Tikkun Olam.
Blessed Be!
Love, Shoshana
Executive Witch of Community OutWitch |
