I've resisted getting my ears pierced since realising that it entailed pushing a needle through my earlobe to stick tiny pieces of metal through the holes. I couldn't have been older than four when my mom urged me to get earrings and I made her explain what that meant.
Of course I refused in a panic, adamant that I'd never, ever agree to such a procedure. I wondered who in the world even got such an idea and who would ever voluntarily sacrifice their earlobes for such barbarism.
That I was surrounded by millions of women who happily did wasn't on my radar yet.
As I grew up, I realized that earrings are just another ornament people enjoy wearing, albeit one they accept permanently altering their body for.
But personally, I was still a big, fat "No" to them.
In 2020, after years of only feeling safe wearing a masculine-styled facade, my relationship to femininity and the feminine pole itself pulled for healing. I started wearing dresses and skirts and a bit of make-up—things I never wore voluntarily as a teenager. I put on bracelets and necklaces and really allowed myself to enjoy traditionally feminine things.
Until then, I'd rejected them for multiple reasons.
One, the societal emphasis on women's only value being their looks and nothing else, and the complete disregard for the fact that women are the literal portals of human life. Women's bodies bring a new soul down onto Earth. We're connected to the void, to the big mystery. But what I, and every other woman my age learned, was that masculinity is the path to happiness, success and respect. The more you act like a man, the better.
Two, the hyper-femininity of the women and girls in my direct environment who put total emphasis on youth, anti-aging, tons of make-up, flashy looks, hook-up culture and every other superficial concern in the book.
If being a woman meant running after men all my life, hurting my body by pumping her with botox, starving myself, spending hours on my hair and skin each morning instead of sleeping, suppressing my real feelings to act "nice", and obsessing over every wrinkle until the day I die. . . then I'd rather not be a woman. Or not act like one at least.
Predictably, that's also when the woke mind virus hooked into me. I might've been the only "tomboy" in my class, but online there were lots of girls who didn't fit into the "stereotypical" woman. I could enjoy my masculine interests like Lord of the Rings and war strategy video games without the need to defend myself.
And for that aspect I'm grateful. I had an equal interest in playing with dolls and racing cars as a kid, and as a teen I learned to embrace the masculine side of myself. Sciences came as easy to me as languages and history, and I had a genuine hunger for knowledge. I actually studied Chemistry for 2 years before the rigidity of that profession wilted my feminine core (a sensation I couldn't have named at the time) and I realized a job in the sciences wasn't my path.
I was hungry for knowledge, yes. But the type of knowledge available on the masculine side wasn't my calling. Not really.
Which brings me to the final point:
Three, the fact that I'm a twin whose twin brother died in-utero.
Realizing this was one of those huge, earthquake-like downloads I've received by life. I remember it like it happened yesterday.
It's the end of September and I'd begun the path of embodied healing a mere week ago.
I had so many questions. When did my avoidant attachment begin? Where did this grief I'd felt my entire childhood come from? Why did my life have to be a single thread of abandonment, betrayal of friends, bullying and conflict with others?
What was wrong with me? And when did it start?
It was around 10pm. I was in bed, listening to a guided meditation, when the female narrator said, "Everything that happened, let it go. Everything, from the womb to—"
I don't remember the rest because my eyes shot open in understanding.
I'd known I had a twin who died. It wasn't a secret.
But it was also never really talked about. I'd never seen my mother or anyone else in my family grieve him. I had no idea I was even allowed to grieve him.
That shockwave led me to research, and I found books, studies and written accounts of other "womb twin survivors" whose pre-natal life began like mine.
"A Healing Path For Womb Twin Survivors" by Althea Hayton opened an unknown dimension of understanding in me. The book reflected my peculiarities which I'd always assumed stemmed from some kind of autism, or that something's fundamentally wrong with me since birth.
For the first time, I realized that my repeating patterns of being abandoned, feeling invisible, disliked and rejected stem from a loss I had no influence over. It wasn't my fault my twin brother died.
I also don't have proof my twin was male. I don't need any. I know it.
Frankly, my family was unprepared for my sudden preoccupation with an event that, for them, had ceased to matter 24 years ago. My mom admitted she'd been glad only one baby survived. Considering the lack of father and financial means to care for two children, I understood her pragmatism. But emotionally, I couldn't possibly brush off what happened to my brother.
Interestingly, this wasn't the first early sibling death in my direct family history. My grandma (mother's side) lost her own baby brother due to diphteria as they fled East Prussia during WW2.
The book "It Didn't Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle" by Mark Wolynn touches on how unprocessed trauma can weave into the genetics of the future generations, repeating those same patterns until one descendant resolves them.
Recently, I've unlocked access to my generational war trauma, loss of homeland and historic identity. When I say "unlocked access", I mean that I can physically feel in my body where that stuck energy resides, which is the entirety of my upper back, throat, arms, shoulder blades, the back of my ribcage, left thigh and heart, as well as a spot in my left abdomen which I've since released.
Those areas have always been numb, greyed out, or tight. Only through connecting to the specific frequency of my ancestry have they thawed. I'm increasingly able to feel my heartbeat in my shoulder blades and back as I encourage those tissues to open daily. There's involuntary twitching, nausea, and spasming in response.
When you add energy into your body and begin to understand the underlying energetics of your behavior patterns, the body is actually the last thing to change.
Why?
Because the body has the highest density.
Hence the energy needs ample time (years) to ping-pong and work its magic on our tissues. I learned this from my teacher Perri Chase.
So when I realized that I'd subconsciously tried to keep my twin brother alive by embodying his masculinity while rejecting my womanhood, I didn't instantly transform.
And back then I had no clue about how to work with energy at all.
I had to learn by myself how to observe all my patterns: self-sabotage, self-defeat, negative self-talk, not wanting to exist at all, feelings of hopelessness and loneliness.
When do they emerge? What activates them to appear? What do they feel like physically? How do they influence my behavior? What mental stories do they create about myself? How does my ego (or whatever other force) profit from me engaging with them?
This is confronting.
This is not fun.
And my ego and mind absolutely hooked into the story layer because I had no idea what that even meant back then. I did fantasize while grieving my brother, picturing us together, reunited as two parts separated by life and death.
I so badly yearned to break that barrier. To connect with him in a metaphysical way.
And in a way I did.
I went deep into the grief—just feeling, not letting my mind spin a visualization—and opened into the pain of irretrievable loss. Of being the survivor. Of denying my social nature. Of separating myself from life in a subconscious attempt at impersonating my dead twin.
A whole year of grief.
And at the bottom of that grief was love beyond my mind's understanding.
That paragraph will sound cliche to your mind until you experience it yourself.
The love availabe to us if we have the courage to feel every drop of pain is inexplicable. It's so deep. It's always there, always connecting me to Source.
Do you know how meaningless other people's insults, doubts and judgments become when you have access to that internal fountain of love?
Why would I care about people's projections when I have a source of energy and radiance inside my body?
Eventually, those pockets of grief had emptied and made space to delve even deeper.
I know there's still a lot inside me. A lot of it isn't mine at all, but belongs to my grandparents. Some I might be unable to integrate in this life time. That bone-marrow kind of pain which I've always felt might put me in a catatonic state if I ever reach it. I don't know.
And there's no goal to have it all figured out either.
There's only adding energy into my body with dance, yoga, and SXBMB™. Opening from the inside. Releasing whatever comes up.
To return to the earrings:
With these three blockages emerging into my conscious awareness, I questioned my resistance to earrings.
Was my body really a "No" or was this just another layer of masculinization I could dissolve?
By then, I'd expanded my capacity to hold discomfort and pain enough to handle the fact that my earlobes would be damaged in the process. And my ego seriously yearned for earrings. I enjoyed allowing myself all these feminine luxuries, the flashy outfits and accessories. I also found big, emerald earrings online that I really wanted to wear.
So I got my ears pierced.
I did the thing my childhood self had been deeply terrified of and horrified by.
Well, guess what.
They got infected not even a week after and had to be removed.
Despite taking impeccable care of hygiene and following the rules like I was supposed to.
Despite my ego really wanting earrings to feel pretty and extravagant.
My body went, "No fucking way."
I developed a tiny cyst in one earlobe, actually. It's gone now because I gently massaged the tissue every day, with a lot of acceptance.
Honestly? I'll probably get them pierced again in the future. My ego wants to test this.
Mostly, it still really wants those emerald earrings.
And I accept that egoic part of myself as well. I'm not going to shame it.
What did I learn from this?
That an unresolved thread in your life can be connected to a complexity beyond your conscious understanding. That you can spend years sifting through and releasing stuck energy, expand your body, transform on so many levels. . .
And the thread itself can still be anchored in truth.
It was true that my body's a "No" to piercings. My child self wasn't on the wrong track. She knew.
It was also true that rejecting my femininity wasn't true at all. And I needed to integrate those rejected parts.
But when my ego overrode my body's innate knowing because it wanted something for itself, that's when I got physically hurt.
See the intricacy?
You'll never know where the energy might take you. Just like in this article, where I weaved several unrelated yet vital threads into the core topic.
Be patient. Be committed. Follow the threads.
Life is a puzzle. A game.
It's when our egos want to take the wheel that we must pay special attention.
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