The Vulnerability Series Part 2 – Risking Rejection

         Root chakra 

Belonging – feeling unsafe to belong.  Better to not risk belonging because belonging equals the potential for being hurt and rejected. So to not allow myself to belong in any group, tribe or circle means no more rejection or hurt.  And in doing so, cutting off my connection to the abundance and support that the whole can give to me.  In essence I have already been rejected by my pushing away any chance of belonging to a tribe. So why not allow myself to feel safe to belong, and so in this belonging feel the support of the whole. I am risking my wholeness by pushing people away. So better to embrace belonging and risk rejection, for rejection is merely taking place inside my own self anyway.

A little while later I discovered a group on MeetUp.com run by an intuitive healer and medium called Wayne Lee. I had been wanting to go for a while, but did not know how I could get there as it was out of my area. As I did not have a car it meant getting public transport and I wasn’t sure what I would do at the other end as his home was in an area not accessible by buses so it involved a long walk in the dark of winter. I kept persevering and made a request on MeetUp asking if anyone was passing by my area and a lovely lady contacted me and so my joining his spiritual development group began.

In the beginning it was scary, but exciting because Wayne has a way of challenging people to connect with spirit in ways they never thought possible. I certainly did not think in the first couple of weeks I would be picking up spirit messages for others. I was excited and felt keen to explore more. As the weeks went on I noticed something inside myself, as the group grew I began to shrink back, apart from this fear of speaking in front of groups, I watched as people excelled and evolved with their connections to spirit, their confidence grew and their ability to verbalise it was much easier than mine. The comparison junkie had taken up resident in my head, but I kept on going.

A couple of weeks ago I shared some fears with the group and felt very embarrassed and ashamed for being seen to be so vulnerable. I wrote about my experience here, but last week I felt myself disappear into Wayne’s wall paint. I saw and heard how others were growing and how some would go on to work with spirit and I sat and I shrank. I received more great messages from spirit from both Wayne and others, which gave me some comfort, but it did not remove the feeling of disappearing into the wall.

After speaking with Wayne about my root chakra (see here for more info on what chakras are), he mentioned that he had picked up my feeling of it being unsafe to be me most of my life and this was indeed true, but something else was happening too. This afternoon while reading an article somebody else had written about an under-active root chakra here, I lay in bed repeating some of the words that she said had helped her and I realised what had happened in the group. I had not allowed myself to belong.

Most of my life I have felt this deep sense of not belonging, the only time I felt a sense of belonging was when I first learned Reiki and was part of a group called the Mystic Gardens, but after I met Mike my relationship with him upset a good friend of mine and after that I slowly became more of a recluse and on my own more than ever before. As some of you know, friendships in my life have not come easy. I have had a habit of attracting friends who had such busy lives they were not able or did not want to make time to see me, so I saw them if I was lucky once every 6 weeks, but generally it was every 2 to 6 months. So I never felt a sense of belonging anywhere.

I felt I belonged in my family when my father was alive, yet when he passed on to the world of spirit I felt alone. It wasn’t until more recently that my relationship with my mother began to improve so that I felt a little more belonging there, but it takes work.

As I lay in bed this afternoon I realised that with Wayne’s group I was afraid to risk rejection and to experience the hurt of my past, where friends, for as long as I can remember, rejected me for somebody else, and I tended to end up without any friends of my own, no special friends anyhow. I remember always being on the outside at school, the outside of groups of girls, and everyone was paired up into twos and I was the hanger-on. So a big defence was built up inside of me because of all these feelings of rejection, and when I went to Wayne’s group that defence was up. I expected to be rejected so I never risked believing that I could belong there. I was indeed feeling like an outsider again looking in.

When I look throughout my life, I see myself looking in, and there is such a deep feeling of not belonging that this is going to be a process of unravelling old pain so I can feel safe again to allow myself to belong.

But at least the process and journey have begun. And all of this by looking into my root chakra. And discovering it is under-active.

Kelly Martin

Kelly Martin, author of ‘When Everyone Shines But You’ is a dedicated writer and blogger who fearlessly explores life’s deepest questions. Faced with a decade of profound anxiety and grief following the loss of her father and her best friend Michael, Kelly embarked on a transformative journey guided by mindfulness, and she hasn’t looked back since. Through her insightful writing, engaging podcasts, and inspiring You Tube channel Kelly empowers others to unearth the hidden treasures within their pain, embracing the profound truth that they are ‘enough’ exactly as they are.

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