Touching My Own Ground

On thawing, forgiveness, and unarmored presence

There are moments when life slows us without asking.
A winter storm.
Snow and ice that keeps us inside.
Silence imposed not as punishment, but as condition.

It was in one of those moments that something long frozen in me began to thaw.

Not dramatically.
Not all at once.
But honestly.

I realized I was grieving something I hadn’t fully named before. A way of listening I once had. A depth of perception that felt immediate, embodied, alive. For years after a life-altering rupture in 2019, I thought that capacity was gone. I believed I had lost it, or that it belonged to a former version of myself that I haven’t been able to return to. I have truly been bereaved about her.

What I didn’t understand then was that nothing had been lost.
It had been protected.

I was feeling vulnerable while also feeling helpless and stuck in the winter storm. This vulnerability allowed my own memories of feeling vulnerable from past life experiences to surface for recognition and forgiveness. As the thaw began, forgiveness surfaced first. Not as a concept or obligation, but instinctively. Ho’oponopono. My body reached for it before my mind could explain why. Old memories rose quietly, not to accuse or overwhelm me, but to be seen and released. I could feel that I was ready to move onward without carrying all of it anymore.

And then something unexpected happened.

I saw myself squatting close to the frozen ground outside my home, one hand resting gently on the snow. Not pressing. Not trying to melt it. Just touching it. Understanding it.

Frozen ground.
Frozen experience.

I recognized myself in that posture. It was the same way Indigenous trackers read the land. Close to the earth. Balanced. Attentive. Reading pattern rather than forcing meaning. The realization that followed changed everything:

I had forgotten to touch my own ground.

For much of my life, I had been oriented outward. Deeply attuned to others. So open that I could read disturbance, direction, and story in the lives around me. I mistook this attunement for responsibility. The permeability that I loved about myself became my detriment. I forgot that perception without self-orientation comes at a cost.

When I finally saw myself squatting over my own timeline, something integrated. I wasn’t hovering above my life or trapped inside it. I was with it. In relationship. Seeing my reflection in it. Recognizing continuity rather than fracture.

This was not about changing the past.
It was about reclaiming agency in the present.

I began to see the people in my life, whom I once believed had done things to me, in a new way. Not as villains or saviors, but as contributors to my refinement. Not because harm didn’t occur, but because I no longer needed to organize my identity around injury.

That’s when the word naive fell away.

What replaced it was something truer. More empowering!

I had lived with unarmored presence.

Unarmored presence is not foolishness.
It is openness before experience teaches calibration.
It is connection offered before boundaries are fully learned.

Forgetting to touch your own ground isn’t a moral error or a flaw.
It’s what happens when care moves outward faster than self-orientation can keep up.

Self-forgiveness became possible the moment I understood this. Not forgiveness that excuses harm, but forgiveness that releases the belief that I should have known how to do something I had never been required to do before. Orientation is learned through experience. Sometimes through painful experience.

What’s most important is this: I would still choose openness and connection every time.

Not because I haven’t learned.
But because I have.

The difference now is grounding. Placement. Consent. I can remain open without abandoning myself. I can listen deeply without losing my footing. I can be in relationship with life without dissolving into it.

This thaw hasn’t been a dramatic awakening. It’s been quieter than that. More embodied. More real. A return not to who I was, but to who I am now, carrying everything I’ve learned.

I’m not rebuilding anything.
I’m reopening a room that already exists.
The furniture is different now, but the walls know me.

And I am finally touching my own ground.

For a moment, I thought what I needed was to be placed on someone’s massage table.
To receive intuitive energy.
To let someone else resolve what I was feeling inside. And that is ok. I will know when I need to ask for a session on someone’s table.

That assumption surprised me when I noticed it. Not because there is anything wrong with bodywork or intuitive support (it has been an integral part of my journey), but because it revealed how deeply conditioned we are to believe that resolution comes from being positioned, worked on, adjusted.

As if coherence arrives only when something is done to us.

What became clear instead was this: what I needed wasn’t intervention. It was orientation.

I didn’t need energy added.
I didn’t need anything removed.
I didn’t need someone to see me more clearly than I could see myself.

I needed accurate mirroring.
Steady presence.
Enough safety to stay with my own experience until it could complete itself.

The moment I recognized this, the entire structure loosened. There was no deprivation. Only clarity. A quiet understanding that some forms of care don’t arrive through technique, but through relationship with one’s own ground.

This doesn’t negate the value of receiving support from others. It refines it. It allows choice instead of reflex. Discernment instead of default.

For those of us who have lived with unarmored presence, this distinction matters. We are not broken. We are not unfinished. We are not waiting to be fixed.

Sometimes, we are simply ready to remember ourselves without being placed anywhere at all.

I don’t know exactly what this return will ask of me yet.
I only know that it no longer feels like striving, fixing, or becoming someone else. Or more importantly, making myself wrong.

It feels like staying.

Staying with my breath.
Staying with my ground.
Staying with the part of me that knows how to listen without leaving myself behind.

If you find yourself somewhere in these words, I don’t believe it’s accidental. Not because the story is special, but because recognition happens quietly, when we’re ready. No effort required. No role to assume.

You don’t have to rebuild your life to return to yourself.
You don’t have to be placed anywhere to be met.
You don’t have to armor your heart to stand on solid ground.

Sometimes, all that’s asked is that you pause long enough to touch what’s already holding you.

That’s where I am now.
And for the first time in a long while, it feels like home.

At home,

DeAn’Na

Touching my own ground. A return without rebuilding.