Energetic Memories: Returning Home as Your Authentic Self for the Holidays
Article Published for The Reinvention Series Collection — Written by Charlotte Jade Askew
Photo by Kateryna Hliznitsova
Inhabiting our genuine expression during the holidays (while balancing connection with friends and family who have witnessed many iterations of us) is a dynamic, and sometimes challenging, adventure. This article explores the process of compassionately getting to know the multifaceted nature of self while harnessing our ability to meet deeper parts of ourselves as we spend time with people we have known for a long time.
Welcome to The Reinvention Series.
The holidays can often mean that, for many of us, we’re traveling back to where we grew up or to the people we grew up with. (When I say returning home throughout the remainder of this article, that is what I mean — being with the people and places that have known the many iterations of our soul thus far.)
For some, it is a nostalgic return. For others, it is a state of energetic confusion. A ritual that can be both longed for and dreaded in equal measure.
Photo By Getty Images
Here is what we’re covering in this article:
1. My inauguaral return home and how I acknowledge the intricately woven patterns and somatic memories of my childhood
2. Appreciating the iterations of our soul and our dynamic process of evolution
3. Understanding energetic memories — reconciling the version of us people used to know with the version of us that exists now
4. Establishing new habits and patterns (and the challenge with “falling back” into old neurological and energetic grooves)
5. Giving people a chance to get to know who we are now
6. Spilling the tea on distinguishing safety from familiarity
7. Holistic authenticity — seeing the phenomenal outcome of proper reclamation and integration work
8. Redesigning our connections
9. Communicating and setting standards for how we are treated
10. Determining where we source our value from and clearing seeing what holds our relationships together
11. Intimately knowing our needs
12. Interpreting power and allowing curiosity to become our bestie
13. Compassionate embodiment and the inner return
Photo by Melody Zimmerman
My inaugural return home:
acknowledging the intricately woven somatic imprints.
For years, I battled with my inaugural return home. I moved away at nineteen, crossing the continent of Australia to live on the opposite side, and I have not lived in my hometown or state since. I am not the nineteen-year-old that left, neither in body nor mind, but both my body and mind remember that physical expression of myself. Both hold intricately woven patterns, somatic memories, of my childhood.
Photo by Toa Heftiba
The iterations of our soul:
knowing the multifaceted expressions of self.
As we age, we evolve, and, from one vantage point, many physical versions of our soul are expressed throughout our lifetime. Minute evolutions in the ‘beingness’ of our authentic selves. And sometimes, it can be painful to return to the previous versions. To be reminded of the way we used to be. The way we used to let others be with us.
Returning to your childhood home or town (and the people who raised you) is often an experience of remembering and relearning. A process of knowing the multifaceted self through evolved eyes. In many ways, this is not only seeing the whole self but understanding, at depth, the wholeness of self. An amalgamation (and sometimes reclamation) of who you are and who you have been.
Photo by Lucija Ros
Energetic memories:
reconciling the version they knew with the version we are now.
The difficulty with returning home, or being with those who have known us at length, is usually found in what I call our “energetic memories.” These are the memories we feel rather than explicitly understand or remember. People and places carry memories stored both in our psyche and the energetic field — in addition to the way our own energetic field is always intermingling with the fields around us.
From this place, we can find ourselves brushing up against distant parts of ourselves, reminded of the journey we’ve been on, and still walk.
People often unconsciously impose their memories and perceptions of us as expectations. They remember us how we were rather than how we are, and – depending on how much time we’ve spent with them in this new iteration of ourselves – there can be an energetic and physical struggle to reconcile the version they knew with the version they know (or are getting to know).
Photo by Mathilde Langevin
Our habits and patterns are memories within:
falling back into old neurological and energetic patterns.
It is easy to fall into old patterns; as the ruts in a dirt road tug at the wheels of a vehicle, we feel ourselves dragged into the well-worn habits of our past, a suck and drag, slipping back into the way we were. The memories of who we have been. There is a familiar pull to speak the same way, to make the same quips, to accept the same treatment from family and old friends. To ride outside of those tracks takes work.
For years, returning home felt like unpicking myself at the seams. It was as if I’d walk off the plane and turn back years. I’d catch myself saying things I no longer agreed with. Laughing at things I didn’t find funny. Blending back into my family in exactly the way I’d left them (and that isn’t their fault). I don’t blame them for the chameleon I became when I was with them.
They could not know how I had changed; I wasn’t showing them.
Photo by Mike Von
It all stems from the lens of who we are:
understanding expectations and energetic grooves.
We often expect ourselves from the world. The way we see and understand the world comes in through the lens of who we are, and part of that lens is the way we interact with those around us, particularly the members of our family. My family expected me to be the way I’d always been with them. And why wouldn’t they? I hadn’t yet given them an experience of anything different. When I went home, I melded back into the teenager I’d been. I fell into the energetic grooves of the memories that the place and people held. It was easy to be that way again. Familiar in a way that felt comfortable despite the contradictions to the self I had evolved into.
**To do a deep dive into this topic of transforming our Self-Concept, visit our recent piece packed with effective journal prompts on The Body-Led Method for Fully Inhabiting Your Creative CEO Identity. (Different writer, same intense passion for creating a phenomenal and enriching life.)
Photo by Kateryna Hliznitsova
Orphaning the self:
redefining the context of safety, and distinguishing it from familiarity.
It can feel safe to relinquish our boundaries. Of course, it can. Often, it’s what we’ve been used to, but this is where we have the opportunity to distinguish safety from familiarity. The feeling of safety, in this instance, is an illusion. It’s what’s comfortable rather than what’s safe that we’re feeling.
We cannot orphan the new self to reclaim the old, in the same way we cannot orphan the old to become the new. That’s not safety, it’s abandonment.
the real work during the holiday season.
The work is in claiming all iterations of the self and integrating into a whole, and this is often brought to the forefront during the holiday season. In the return home, we are faced with ourselves in all the ways we’ve been known and must find a way to know ourselves anew – possibly an exhausting prospect when we’ve already gone through so much growth, but the payoff is sweeter than we might even imagine.
Photo by Mathilde Langevin
The payoff of integration work:
the principle of continuity and wholeness.
To be able to return and hold space for who you were and who you are is the beginning of a powerful integration. Holistic authenticity. A chance to show up in the world as the most intentional version of yourself. The greatest expression of your soul in that moment in time – as it is in each passing moment that we evolve.
Photo by Lia Bekyan
Redesigning your connections:
how, though, when the tug of energetic memories is so strong, can we integrate without losing our present self to the past?
The answer is embedded in self-trust and our capacity to honour ourselves in boundaries.
**For a deep dive into boundaries, see this article’s partner article: A Gentle Holiday Guidebook for Managing Expectations (Here’s How to Set Exquisite Boundaries).
Because of the memories they hold, people will expect you to show up in their life in a certain way, and they are used to you allowing them to also show up in your life in a certain way.
Redesigning these boundaries can be a galling process for you and them, but as the birthing process is painful, so is this. To create something new often requires a measure of pain.
Photo by Mathilde Langevin
Inner authority, communication, and establishing consequences:
the journey from a pattern that drains you to an energizing and evolving one.
When you set a boundary with someone who has been served by the way you have previously shown up, they are likely to see that boundary as a kind of punishment. You may notice some people aren’t concerned with how you feel or the reasons why you want to set the boundary. People with this style of communication may tend to focus solely on their own expectations and how the boundary negatively affects them.
What the boundary truly means is that they’re no longer able to act in your life without consequence, and sometimes that means their response becomes an attack on who you are. They might say things like: ‘You don’t love me,’ ‘What’s wrong with you,’ ‘Stop overreacting.’ The intention behind these statements is usually emotional manipulation with the desire to have you continue to show up in a way that serves them.
We do not control this response. Other people get to decide their behaviour. We do not have control over how they choose to engage with the world or us, but we do have authority over how we are treated based on the decisions we make about who has access to us.
Photo by Matt Hardy
Setting the standard is the ultimate testament:
shifting the question from ‘Why do they act like that?’ to ‘Why am I allowing them to treat me like that?’
The most powerful lesson you might ever learn is that you get to decide how valuable you are, and you teach others what you’re worth with the boundaries you hold. This is the ultimate truth of loving yourself. Honouring your boundaries is how you set the standard for what you’re going to accept in your life. People get to be who they are and act how they choose, and our power lies not in changing them but in deciding to what extent we will receive them in our lives.
When you prioritize your values, value who you are, and get clear about your needs, you might find some relationships change, become distant, or drift away. Sometimes, even with family members, our emotional safety requires a measure of distance. It's important to remember that this change might be because the glue that secured that relationship was your abandonment of yourself.
Photo by Mathilde Langevin
Baseline requirement — knowing your needs:
the juxtaposition.
Before you travel home, I encourage you to take some time to flesh out your boundaries. Chances are you might already know which family members will challenge you and in what ways. Make a list. Sit with yourself and establish your needs. Consciously decide before you’re there in that moment that you are not willing to compromise on the essence of who you are. Give yourself permission to show up in the ways that you want to, even if that is in juxtaposition to what others expect of you. Start to understand what it is that you need in those relationships to feel valued and safe.
Know that standing in your truth does not guarantee that you will be respected. Try to shift your focus from the other person and their behaviour, to how you choose to respond and receive them in your life. That is the place where your power lies.
Photo by Ethan Haddox
Understanding power:
allowing curiosity to become your bestie.
The Buddha once said something to the effect of: if a person gives a gift, and the gift is not received or accepted, to whom does that gift belong?
The answer is the giver.
If someone is angry with you (offensive, rude, or negative in some way) and you choose not to accept the behaviour or allow their energy into your field, to whom does that anger/energy belong?
Them.
When you react to someone or some place, you alter your energy in response to theirs, which allows a disruption in your energetic field. You are allowing what is happening inside of them (or what is attached to that place) to change how you feel inside. You have (and can take) control over your energy in the same way you take control of your boundaries by honouring yourself. When you feel affected by someone else or the place you’re in, instead of responding or reacting emotionally right away, get curious with yourself. Ask some probing questions – what are you telling yourself about what this feeling means? Why is this disrupting your energy? What parts are painful and why?
Rather than focusing on the person or the place, focus on why what is happening is bothering you. This shift in awareness will make room for the process of integration. Acceptance of all your parts. The aspects of you that feel challenged or triggered ARE the birthplace of a whole sense of self.
Photo by Clem Onojeghuo
Compassionate embodiment:
the inner return — releasing the expectation that others will be, think, respond, and communicate like you.
Returning home can be a process of deep re-knowing and integration if you allow it to be, and I encourage you to adopt a compassionate presence and stance of embodiment — toward yourself and those whom you return to.
We each are on a growth journey, and no two of those journeys are the same. Try not to make the mistake of expecting yourself from others. They are walking their own path, and you must walk yours. Try to communicate your boundaries with confidence and assertion, but not without compassion. You can teach people who you are and how you’ve grown with gentleness. Afterall, the way home is ultimately an inner return.
Article Written by Charlotte Jade Askew, In-House Writer at Casey Jacque
Charlotte is a Writer, Play Therapist, and Energetic Psychology Coach living in rural Texas. Born and raised on the rugged West Australian Coastline, she is a holistic practitioner, working with the conscious and subconscious mind to cocreate transformative, mindbody healing. Her affinity for being out-of-doors rather than in, means it’s likely that when she’s not with clients or writing, you’ll find her with her horses or barefoot, sipping organic coffee.
Let’s Connect! Instagram: @inner_chatter
