Our view of the world is shaped by our lives and our experiences and by midlife we have often had quite a journey. Our early life experiences and everything leading up to today, influences whether the world and the people in it feel safe.

For those of us whose safety was inconsistent or hardly existent in childhood, life may have always been experienced like an unsafe world to a frightened puppy peeping out from under the bed. Constantly watching and waiting to see if it is safe to come out to eat and to play. It is an exhausting way to live and can become normalised because we have never known life any other way.

A life lived like this can feel unsafe, braced and small, with wings clipped and relationships hard to maintain. Lack of safety can make most relationships feel threatening, and we can lose touch with our own instincts because we are wired for survival and not social bonding, rest and relaxation or to meet our basic needs.

As overwhelming as this can seem there’s hope, because we can change. Yes change will take time but it’s achievable, in time. Defences, stuck protective states and behaviours don’t change overnight, but given the right conditions, and safe and trusted support, the bracing, the vigilance, the difficulty resting and connecting don’t have to be permanent.

We can change

Neuroscience has given us a word for this ability to change, neuroplasticity, the brain’s lifelong capacity to reorganise, to form new pathways, to change in response to new experiences. The evidence is unambiguous on this, and we are not set and fixed from birth. We can reorganise around new safety, new relationships, new ways of being, at any age, from any starting point. What was learned can, slowly and with the right conditions, begin to change into something new.

So, we can change, and for nervous systems to change we need repetition of safety, less really is more and change happens with the smallest of movements, that happen again and again. One step at a time.

We can let go

Our nervous system is a thing of awe because despite everything, when we start to feel safe enough, we can begin to let go. It’s hard to describe, and words may not do it justice, but this moment may arrive like a whisper. You might experience having more space to think, to feel more or have more choice. This letting go brings less need for perfection and performing and more capacity for pausing, noticing and sensing.

Letting go needs room, and the time to be recognised and changes integrated.

Letting go arrives once we have sensed safety, and invited it in.

We can fly

Once safety is found, those once clipped wings can regrow flight feathers, and we can prepare to fly.

This can feel like a sense of expansion, of life out there, just waiting. A sense of something in us unfolding, very slowly, and the beginning of something closer to curiosity, than constant fear. This is a time for turning the page, with respect for our story held in those pages but knowing the story continues, and a new chapter awaits.

This is the moment of self-welcoming and for trusting instinct and gut again. For choosing gentle connection, and finding, carefully, where our edges are.

Safety is the foundation that a life well lived grows from. I wish you well and if I can help you find safety, you know where I am.

Jayne