How to Rebuild Gently

Give yourself space to figure out how you want to show up

Can I be honest with you?

These last two years have really done a number on my self-confidence.

I notice it in the way I show up in a room, unsure where to look, where to place my hands. Unsure where my place is. In the way I’m reluctant to make some decisions, particularly ones that require some kind of commitment from me, like long-form creative projects and larger events. It’s so easy for me to second-guess myself, especially with the little things.

It’s funny, because objectively I am so much more grounded and self-assured than I’ve ever been before. The time I spent in isolation allowed me to cultivate a solid relationship with myself that I am carrying forwards into this next chapter, and I’m incredibly grateful for that — it just seems I haven’t quite figured out how to apply this solidity to much of external life as of yet.

This weekend, my mother put on her annual Spring Shows for her studio — we train students in dance and the circus arts, and for the first time in almost three years we were able to perform in-person for a full audience. I say ‘we’ but I didn’t perform this time. I haven’t performed since February of 2020, just before the pandemic began.

It was strange to be in the presence of so many people without masks on. Strange, and somewhat surreal. You could almost imagine the pandemic had never happened, that the world had never gone on pause and this was just another one of the Spring Shows our studio has put on for the past twenty-nine years. I watched in a kind of distant fascination as girls threw their arms around each other and hugged backstage, laughing and dancing freely.

Admittedly, my experience of the pandemic was a little more extreme than it was for many of them. I lived in an intense isolation for about two years, after my closest friends left the city I was living in. I went an entire year where I didn’t physically touch a single person — I remember I was out on a walk one day and I was shocked when a dog tapped her nose to the bare skin of the back of my hand. It was the most contact I’d had in months.

In some ways, this time was good, because it allowed me to truly get in tune with my own energy field, but of course that doesn’t mean it wasn’t hard. My Oma passed away during that time, and there was no one there to hug me. I had to grieve largely on my own.

So to be thrust back into the world of human interaction has been a little overwhelming, to say the least.

But it has also helped me understand some things about myself more clearly.

Highly sensitive people

From a very young age, I’ve been incredibly sensitive, picking up on things most people wouldn’t. My fellow writer friend, Bingz, put this beautifully in her piece, Being Gentle With My Comfort Zone.

“As a highly sensitive and empathic person, I need to feel energetically safe in my daily life, so that I can feel safe in stretching beyond my comfort zone each day. There are many things in my daily life that can feel harsh to me but hardly affect the vast majority who are not as sensitive.” — Bingz Huang

As a highly sensitive person, I feel things to a depth that it would be hard for some people to understand. I sense the pull of the moon, for example, and instinctively read the energy of a room any time I’m in the presence of other people. It’s like the amount of information my system is actively processing at any given moment is just more. I see the subtle energy patterns that occur in a conversation. I feel when something big is about to happen in the collective, when the collective level of fear and anxiety has spiked and people are struggling.

All of this is amplified when I am physically in the presence of other people, often to the point where it can be hard for me to discern my own thoughts from those around me.

This is why the isolation of the pandemic was, in many ways, incredibly healing. For the first time in my life, there was little external stimulus to crowd out my own feelings. I began to be able to assert and meet my own needs — for rest, for quiet, for stillness. I got to choose what my body would do on any given day, something that was foreign to me as a high-level athlete. If I was too tired or my joints were too sore, I could simply choose to be gentle with my movement or not do anything at all — and it was okay.

It’s somewhat ironic, but during my period of isolation, I began to feel safe in my body in a way that I haven’t for many years, maybe ever.

Because I wasn’t spending so much time bombarded by other peoples’ desires, thoughts, and feelings, there was less for me to be overwhelmed by. Speaking to people via FaceTime, it was easier for me to assert boundaries and stay in my body, stay with myself. I cherish those learnings.

Give yourself the space to figure out how you want to show up

I think it will take me a while, still, to integrate and figure out my place in this world outside the safety of my home.

Backstage at the shows this weekend, I was merely there to support and to watch — I’ve never taken this role before. I’ve always been performing, the one on stage, or teaching, coaching, guiding younger girls. This time I stood back and held space.

It was strange because I felt like I wasn’t ‘doing’ enough. But that’s the thing about energy work — most of the time we don’t see it. I know that my presence in that room made a difference, simply because of the way I show up, and maybe that was enough. My mother was grateful I was there, and those who knew me from before seemed happy to see me. I was glad to be there, too, even if I felt out of place.

I also think I felt strange because I changed so much during the pandemic — I am a significantly different person than I was even two years ago, let alone who I was when I first left. I don’t have the same desires, and I don’t know how to fit all the different pieces of myself into one coherent human. How do you explain who you are to people who have only been there for part the journey?

I don’t know.

I don’t know a lot of things these days, and I’m learning to be okay with that, too.

What I do know is that what we’ve just lived through, what we are continuing to live through as we watch society unravel and uproot itself — all of this is significant. Our experience of this time is significant, and our feelings about it are completely valid, even when they don’t make sense.

I will continue to wake up and recommit to caring for myself through this process every day, to standing up for my values and honouring my desire to live in alignment with my heart and well-being.

Mantra: My experience of this moment is valid. My presence is significant. I am enough.

As a poet, writer, and intuitive guide, Maia Thom works with words to create spaces for people to breathe and come home to themselves. In 2020, she published her first anthology, Kitchen Table Talks: Simple Reminders + Thoughts on Life. You can find her on Instagram as @maia.thom where she shares poetry, art, and practical wisdom to offer daily moments of calm.