Are You Really Integrating?
You aren't truly *integrating* unless you're taking the aligned-actions to do the deep, dark work to consciously and intentionally look at ALL the shadow (and gold) there is to be seen and reclaimed in your wounds.
~ Nicole Barton
ARE YOU REALLY "INTEGRATING"?!
I have lost count of the times I hear women saying they are "integrating" - when largely (whilst they have well-meaning intentions), they are often floating around after their healing waiting for the integration to happen by itself.
TRUTH:
You aren't truly *integrating* unless you're taking the aligned-actions to do the deep, dark work to consciously and intentionally look at ALL the shadow (and gold) there is to be seen and reclaimed in your wounds.
Unless you're coming *face-to-face* with the messy, ugly-feeling truth of your wounded witch - and actively cultivating deep self love in all of it, it isn't integration.
UNLESS WE'VE GONE THROUGH SOLVE ET COAGULA - or the 'dissolve and coagulate as an integrated whole' process of true alchemical science and art.
And 99% of the healing and self help industries aren't doing that. They tend to skip the 'dissolve'. I'll tell you why.
Today I had a womb healing. Most magical women that have come from the 'woo lite' approach (which isn't intrinsically 'lite', it's just how it's worked with) will go to healers for similar things, largely with a focus on the 'light'. And that's truly beautiful and needed (as is all 'woo lite' - I'm by no means making it wrong).
The difference between true integration (the 'woo deep', if you like) and what most women describe as integration is that women in the "old paradigm" (waiting to be fixed by others) will have their healing (usually focusing on fixing something about themselves) and then they will go home, thinking they've been healed by the healer, and feeling all they have to do is drink some water and rest after the treatment. There's no conscious dissolving there, even if there is an energetic, emotional or physical healing release of some kind (and that is all an important part of our medicine).
What I've learned through embodied experience, though, is that the healing itself is only the very first step.
The real work of integration starts *after* - in taking what came up, and being in deep intimacy with it, until we've seen all that's needed to be seen. Working with the material that surfaced for our liberation - sobbing our hearts out if we want/need to (I'd highly recommend it ) - but most importantly, illuminating where the fragmented pieces of our soul have been scattered, and loving them back to WHOLENESS.
AKA going honestly into the darkness and loving ourselves in our wounds - until we remember who we truly ARE.
It's hard to do that when we aren't aware of the shadows that are unconsciously creating for us - especially those around claiming our personal power to take full responsibility to heal *ourselves* in this way (which can often be the ones stopping our choosing of the alchemy).
This is why that's the first thing I teach women.
It's the very reason that true, alchemical SELF-HEALING is the very first (and most important) step towards discovering the true spiritual gifts your soul was born here to serve as a heart-led Feminine healing leader for others.
Because if we don't know our personal power to heal ourselves (and we haven't journeyed consciously and deeply into our own wounds) then that's what we need - to learn to integrate (love ourselves home) first. We can't serve the Collective fully without that.
To wrap up my story, that's what I've created space for this evening. The deep, dark work, following my healing.
That means I've prioritised my needs, lit candles, journalled, asked to be met tenderly by my Love - and I've LISTENED to my body.
I've created space to listen to my womb and what she wanted me to know. To discover the wounded parts of me she was showing me wanted some love.
*And* I won't be sharing the details of that yet.
Because the other piece is: no one is ever served by hearing your unintegrated stuff - no one is served by my sharing of what's coming up mid-alchemy. Our healing is our healing for ourselves, first and foremost. We have to take our own medicine first, before we splurge it out there. It is deeply sacred work.
And that's not to say you have to have 'fully healed' before you share your medicine, either - there will come a time when you've integrated enough to share your voice and your story as medicine. But it's a devotion I make that I'll integrate my stuff well enough for it to be the powerful medicine it truly can be - before I'll share.
It takes a huge degree of sovereignty to own our responsibility to heal ourselves. And to not rush to dose our Archetypal medicine (our story) before it can be shared cleanly from an INTEGRATED place. From wholeness. From truth.
From INTEGRITY.
You can *feel* a healer who is doing that from a healer who isn't.
And I'm very blessed to have an amazing womb healer who can work with me in this co-creation.
Until you've healed yourself and you can share what gold you have mined in the process of alchemy - both powerfully and vulnerably - your voice just won't have the same impact.
And impact is often what my women long for most.
So, the real question is, if you're here to be a Medicine Witch, are you truly integrating - or are you waiting to be healed?
PS I may share more on my womb healing when I'm less solve and more coagula
if you've any questions, send me an email.
Nicole x
