Edge Dwellers

"If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much space".  I used to love that saying but didn't really know why.  Now I do.  I am a proud Edge Dweller learning how to also live in main stream civilization without losing my "edge".

When I use the term Edge Dweller it brings up visuals of the beautiful bird life, and plant life that not only survives but thrives on the highest cliff faces in remote parts of the world that are inaccessible to most human beings, or Mainstreamers as I like to respectfully call them.

Ah, the quiet, the solitude, the sacred peace that is found in these dangerously beautiful edges of the universe.

As a recovering drug addict, alcoholic and survivor of sexual and domestic violence as a little girl, I found great refuge and relief in mastering the survival skills to become an Edge Dweller. I emotionally ran away from mainstream life to live on my own private cliff face where no-one could reach me. 

It saved my life.

Addicts, alcoholics and survivors of heart trauma, often become, in my observations, emotional Edge Dwellers.  We find emotional safety in the places that Mainstreamers would only visit from time to time, but retreat, wisely as soon as they see the dangers in sustaining this lifestyle to their physical and mental health.

Mainstreamers are those who already have installed within their behavioural programming the capacity to moderate, self care and live a balanced life most of the time.  Edge Dwellers' don't share these skills.  They often don't come from emotional environments where elders have this information to pass on.  Alternatively they may well have loving and supportive elders, but somewhere in their history has been an emotional trauma that they are nursing that is so painful their capacity to learn how to live is impaired.  They are stuck in shame, pain and survival mode and long to escape from the human race and Mainstreamers as they see them as the cause of their wound.

I didn't really understand this about myself until I attended a workshop in Sydney back in 2007 that was being held for clinicians and academics.  I had conducted some workshops for the hospital staff that was hosting this event so they invited me and a colleague to attend this two day experience.   The workshop was called Family Constellations.  If you have never heard of Bert Hellinger or Gabriele te Hovel and their work around the Family Constellation approach, I encourage you to Google them or even get a hold of their book "Acknowledging What Is". Their work takes, in my view, a fascinating and humble therapeutic stance and their approach helps the participants or patients make contact with the deepest levels of family engagement and disengagement.

I had participated in over 10 years of working with a personal therapist by 2007 when I attended this workshop, but found that the Family Constellation experience helped me see for the first time in my life where and why, I situated myself within the family unit and how that has extended out into where I situate myself socially as an adult in life.

I clustered the members of my family all together and then placed myself as far away as I could from them all in the room.  And felt relief in doing so.  I wanted nothing to do with the cluster. I wanted out.  And as a small child I was suicidal and tried running into traffic and poisoning myself so I could escape this mainstream living experience.

As a teen I also attempted suicide because I hadn't yet mastered how to survive as an exclsuive Edge Dweller.  I was often getting called in from the Mainstreamers to join them, and so I did from time to time, briefly.  And after only a short time dating a Mainstream boy or hanging with a group Mainstream girls, I wanted to run.  To escape them all, I wanted nothing to do with clusters and clicks and couples.  I much preferred and felt safer on my own.

Alcohol they say is the great remover to a recovering  alcoholic who has lost everything.  What starts out as being a solution for the alcoholic turns on us and becomes the problem in later years.  But for me as a troubled teen it was my friend before I discovered drugs in later years.  It removed me and my fragile and wounded heart from the clutches of Mainstreamers who I then saw as a major chore to deal with.  I did not like people, crowds and company.  But if I added alcohol to the mix, I could appear normal and physically, intellectually and sexually integrate with Mainstreamers, but in my heart I was not there I was emotinally absent as my heart was safe living on the edge of my cliff face, and none of them could reach me no matter how hard they tried.  And by the end of my drinking and drugging, I was left frozen on the edge and was unable to help myself.  This is when Mother Nature and Father Time took charge.

Coming in from the edge and coming out of the cold and thawing my heart out so it can enjoy the warmth of human heart contact has been a gradual process.  Sometimes it is two steps forward and three steps back ... back to the edge so I can catch my breath, calm myself and recharge.

Without drugs and alcohol, I had to learn new ways to self sooth and disengage from the rat race without disconnecting my heart.  The art of meditation, writing and praying to Mother Nature and Father Time are the new skills I use.  I no longer hide on the edge with drugs and alcohol, but absolutely understand those that do.

I still go to my safe place but it is no longer just a shelf on a cliff face, it is more like the palace in the picture I have chosen to accompany this blog above.  I still enjoy the wonder and exhilirating beauty of Mother Nature, but I can do that tucked up in a warm bed, looking out of my hearts palace that I have been able to build with the help of safe elders and skilled Mainstreamers.

My work as I will explain to the clinical staff I will be addressing in Darwin tomorrow and on Friday, is to support and massage hope, to the best of my ability to my fellow Edge Dwellers.  Too many of us die, and fall off of our narrow ledges, physically maiming ourselves,  that once efficiently supported us as smaller children.   Once we become fully grown adults, it becomes a struggle to remain still, quiet and hidden on a small ledge..

For many Edge Dwellers, myself included, when we are hiding and locked in fear, we see therapists and clinicians as Mainstreamers, that tribe that we never actually wanted to connect with, or really knew how to on the odd time we met a mainstreamer that felt warm and safe.  We feel different, wrong, misunderstood, mistrusting and alien from all Mainstreamers.

I sat with a client the other day in the waiting room of a male therapist's office.  I have been holding this beautiful young woman's hand as she survived as an Edge Dweller for around four years now.  Just recently she has been losing her balance and has felt ready to make a move off of her once safe ledge. Her wounding was done brutally by male elders all throughout her life.  She, like I, would require a safe male elder as the emotional antibiotic to cure her of her wounds.  As a fellow Edge Dweller, I explained I could only ever take her so far on this recovery journey, and offer her a limited amount of comfort and support.  I have spent the past four years reminding her that when she felt safe and ready I would be there to hold her hand and introduce her to a safe male therapist so she can continue her healing journey at a deeper level, and eventually integrate at her pace with safe Mainstreamers.

Until us Edge Dwellers feel safe and supported we will not emotionally move.  For those of us that have been forced to do way too many things against our will that were distressing in our lives, we must move slowly at our own pace, and on our own terms.  As she sat in her first session with a safe male therapist, she was shaking.

"I feel like a deer caught in the headlights" she said as she reached for my hand.  Just sitting with her was a privilege.  What a brave act of courage it took her to trust a Mainstream male elder, when all of her past history is full of trauma and abuse at the hands of male elders.

"The headlights are from a vehicle of support, that can transport you to a safer place" I said to her as gently as I could as her terror was palpable and her lifestyle on the ledge was no longer a safe place for her to stay anymore.

I observed myself on the weekend as I sat at a rowing regatta Mr. Delicious (my husband) was rowing in.  I watched with great interest these rowing teams all work together lifting the boats, assembling and unassembling them.  They all seemed to be laughing and genuinely enjoying the camaraderie.

I understand the warmth of human comerarderie but I don't find that connection with many Mainstream people.  Some yes, but not many.  I find my hearts true tribe is with the Edge Dwellers.  I respect, admire and appreciate Mainstreamers, as I am married to one.  I visit his world often.  He shows me around and takes my hand and has educated me a great deal on our travels on how the other half live.  I am amazed and amused and often in awe.

I was truly in awe as I watched all of these rowers enjoying this teamwork.  I was so relieved I didn't have to be part of it.  I could think of nothing worse.  When some of his well meaning fellow rowers ask me "So we can't interest you in joining us" one of my heart mother Beautiful Barbara's responses comes to my mind but I don't say it aloud, I just think it to myself and that is "I would rather stick pins in my eyes".

I just say instead, "No thanks, it's not my thing, I just enjoy watching".

Mr. Delicious says he has learned a great deal about my world as an Edge Dweller and it has helped him understand others in his life and his past, that he now understands as also being Edge Dwellers.   Introverted Edge Dwelling behaviour makes sense to him now, and he respects it and is no longer confused by it.

I have often said, that I feel like I belong with the people who feel like they don't belong.    As a formerly exclusive Edge Dweller, I am now privileged to be able to experience the best of both worlds.  I can join the Mainstreamers and observe and appreciate their rituals and bonding behaviours.  But my native heart lives with the Edge Dwellers.

I am so very grateful to my fellow Edge Dwellers and compassionate Mainstreamers when you email me or offer your comments on the blog site to let me know how you are, and how you feel.

For those of you still living on the edge, please remember, when and if you are ever ready to come in from the cold rest assured you won't lose your beautiful sacred safe place.  It will always be there for you to retreat to, but you will able to come and go as you please, and actually extend your once cramped and small ledge into a wonderful home (like the palace pictured above), where you can actually invite VIP guests who have earned your trust and respect, to share the wonderful hearts retreat.

I am flying up to Darwin tomorrow so my Tuesday and Thursday blogs will move to Wednesday and Friday blogs next week for those subscribers that have it automatically arrive in your inbox, as I don't return to Bris Vegas and my work desk until Wednesday next week.

I would like to leave you with some Word Vitamins from one of my favourite authors as I have read, and re-read and tattooed his written wisdom with multicoloured highlighter pens.  His books are some of my most treasured.  These words echo the warmth I found in remembering I have always belonged with Mother Nature and Father Time once I started to practice daily mediation during my early years of recovery.  I no longer feel alone, when I am alone and now I feel most of the time, like I belong on this planet, and I deserve all the gifts and blessings that every other human being does as my birthright.

I look forward to connecting with you here again next week if you have time to drop by, until then....

"Perhaps one of the greatest rewards of meditation and prayer is the sense of belonging that comes to us."    Bill W.