While understanding by way of left-brain processing can be helpful and supportive, it is right-brain immersion in fields of safety which fosters reorganization.
The body will reorganize when it feels safe.
Inside the body the lost one travels, taking up temporary residence in our muscles, cells, organs, and breath. Scattered pieces of soul gather in our eyes, shoulders, and bellies, and the secret places within our hearts.
They’ve become frozen and crystallized there. We feel their longing to come Home by way of the variety of symptoms we experience.
If we’re unable to access them, to feel what they feel and to tend to their tears, they will make their way deeper, into the underworld and the somatic unconscious.
To put a name to the terror and the grief, to the primitive agonies as Winnicott referred to them, is vital when it comes to the felt experience of integration.
From time to time, they will peek their little head, their little heart out into the field of consciousness, as if to say, “Is it safe yet?” “Can I return home?” “Can I play again?”
In the slowness of the morning, in the quiet at night, in the dreamtime, and all through the day if we listen carefully, we might hear them.
As the veil parts just a bit, we may discover that it’s a lot more creative, more intelligent, more (bitter)sweet and achy and majestic than we ever expected.
