The twinge in my right ankle began on Thursday. By Friday I could feel it twinge with each step, yet I kept going. On Saturday the pain was worse, the ankle began to swell and I needed to ice it every few hours. Yet, here I was going up and down the basement stairs bringing up heavy bins of holiday decorations for my house. As the pain grew, so did my questioning, “:what the heck did I do to cause my tendinitis to flare.” This hadn’t happened in quite a long time!
I recently learned a lot about Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) or Tapping. This is a way to move dense emotional energy out of our bodies and it works on physical pain as well. I began to tap so I could alleviate the pain and swelling, I had a football game to go to the next day! As I started tapping, the words coming from me were to alleviate the physical pain, focusing on the swelling and throbbing to lessen the pain from an 8 to something less. With each round though, I noticed that words coming up started to dip into emotions.
As I began the third round, I found myself beginning to understand what was truly happening with my emotions and my body. I found myself saying that my foundation had been rocked as we put our childhood home on the market to sell. It was then that it all hit me. The house went on the market on Thursday, the first twinge day. This represents, for me, losing the only family I have ever had. The deep, loving connection of the family I grew up in, the family that I love more than I ever realized. The family I miss more than I ever can say. The childhood I enjoyed, reveled in the connection.
Now it made sense to me. The root chakra, which is the base of the spine and includes your extremities, is where all of this emotion was sitting. My fears of losing this house and thus losing that family were front and center as I tapped. I realized that I was reacting to that fear through my body. My body was holding all of that emotion for me, keeping me in place, not able to move forward.
As I tapped, I began to bring myself to a new found feeling around this change. That a new family could find the deep love and connection that we had as a family and that our home deserved that. It had served us as a family well, and it was time for a new family to experience the best block you could grow up on with a home you could grow into beautifully.
It took until Monday for my ankle to really feel completely better. I also felt the lightening of the emotional pressure, realizing that I was ready to let go of the house, knowing the family was in my heart. The house was the physical representation of the only family I have ever really had. The only family I was truly connected to and a family that always had my back. Growing up with my Aunt and Uncle and cousins 3 houses away made it an even bigger family; as I said once, it was 5 children raised by 4 adults.
This is the heaviness I was carrying, thinking that by losing the house, I lost the family. That family doesn’t exist per se anymore, with my parents and one brother gone, but the family exists in my heart. It still is the only family I have ever felt completely safe in, completely loved no matter what I did.
Selling the house doesn’t change that , and I always knew that, however emotionally, I was stuck. I was struggling to let go. Going through the tapping at this time allowed me to change that story; to understand that I was allowing someone new to love the street, the park, the playground, the property and the house.
I have found that when you allow yourself to feel what you need to feel and understand it, you can move through it and change the story around it. It is the feeling it that many of by-pass. Feeling to healing is the only way to really release the energy.
The old house is selling and the ankle is fine, as is my heart. I am ready to have someone new love our old house, and I am ready to hold my family in my heart; knowing that I was and always will be loved by that family.