It’s Time to Thaw Again (and That’s Okay)
Oil and acrylic on canvas. 20 × 16 inches. 2025.
Dearest Doodle Soupsters,
A thin layer of ice. Muting my emotions even just a bit. Just enough. To take a break from all the feeling.
But now, it’s melting. I feel the floes crackle and sliver away. My body aches and burns. Why is that? When you thaw from frigidity, that it burns?
This past year, I’ve been out and about more. I emerged from my cocoon. Which is what I’ve been wanting to do for so long, right? In the thick of flashbacks, in the depths of grief, in moments of such intensity, there was a part of me, a big part of me, that just wanted to be normal, to feel better already, to do things.
Yet, I think that even with being able to work more, socialize more, etc., I’ve felt uncomfortable with letting myself feel my emotions.
This week, I realized that yes, maybe I have put up some walls, iced out some parts of me, turned to worrying, checking this or that, as a way to numb and sidestep the ache. But this time around, the ice is thin and underneath, well, I’ve explored those depths.
When I first starting healing, when I finally found the space to work through my memories, to let myself remember, acknowledge my PTSD symptoms, my internal experience, it was like thawing layers and layers and layers and layers and layers and layers of rock solid freeeeeezing ice.
This isn’t the same. And this is what progress looks like in my life.
Maybe instead of thinking of it as “putting up walls,” this was me broadening my world beyond my safe zone, leading me to come face to face with the walls that are already there. To let myself confront the barriers erected in my mind and brick by brick, take them down. To build something new. Something that isn’t just about enduring trauma. Something that allows me to protect myself as I am today and what my life is now, but also lets in joy, risk, disappointment, frustration, anger, sadness, knowing I can bear it.
I’m trying to build a life that’s about more than survival. And it’s terrifying. I feel scared all the time. And I’m trying to let myself acknowledge that fear even as I do the things that scare me. As I drop my guard, speak freely with a friend. As I go for the opportunities and goals I want to pursue, even as I know that’ll mean rejection and disappointment. Yet, I can handle that. It’s how that vulnerability reminds me of my past that can feel like too much. I’m learning how to separate it out, how to let myself be reminded of how I felt, let myself feel what I feel now too, while knowing this is the way forward.
“Where I stood (black hole, the abyss, tangled in a web/their webs/neural pathways/constellations/that age-old ache)”
Mixed media on canvas. 20 x 16 inches. 2025.
A little over a year ago, I shared a Chicken Doodle Soup edition called “TBH: Trying to Be Honest With and About PTSD” when I wrote —
I check the door over and over and over again … is it locked? Is it locked? Is it locked?
I check the stove … did I forget to turn it off?
I’m out and I check my bag … did I lose my keys? Did I forget something?
Fear has a funny way of manifesting itself in the tangible even if the tangible manifestations are besides the point.
I don’t check because I’m really scared that I forgot to lock the door or turn off the stove or because I actually think I lost my keys. I check because I’m trying to make myself feel safe. I’m trying to feel a sense of control in a world where I was powerless when I needed power.
I think another reason for checking or worrying about things that I know intellectually are often useless and counterproductive to worry about is to sidestep my pain. To subconsciously “pick” anxiety over feeling my grief. (I put pick in air quotes because it doesn’t feel exactly like a choice, but it is a choice to notice, to step by step, moment by moment, try to let myself feel and be in my body.) And I think that’s just where I was at. And (often) where I’m still at.
A part of me wanted to run away from all these truths. To refuse to accept that I’m still in pain because I don’t want to be. I experience so much joy and fulfillment too. Yet over and over again, I realize that the more I try to numb my grief or avoid it, the more murky that joy and fulfillment feels. I start to feel so mixed up and confused and blocked. And that’s okay too. That is me sorting through all these reactions going off in my brain and body, noticing them, bit by bit finding another way …
I’ve been working on a redesign for the Chicken Doodle Soup website (coming soon guys!) and as I do, I’ve been reuploading the archive of past editions to my new site. Reading past editions … oof, I’ve felt vulnerable and like geez ugh (it can be hard reading past work without cringing a bit!) but also pride in all the work I’ve been putting in year after year, to heal and to connect with you all, to share what I’ve been learning and reflecting on as I go.
I’d like to end this edition with something I wrote almost exactly 3 years ago in my doodle soup titled “Time to Thaw” …
What to sing,
When I cannot seem to
Mutter a word of
This feeling?
Frozen, aching,
Burning, breaking,
Falling apart to
Come back together.
My dead leaves
Fall and gather at my feet.
Crunch, crunch -
Old thoughts, sweet illusion
Cannot be. The idea
That I could simply blame myself and the
Reality would drift away.
The truth remained
adrift, yes, but within myself.
Subconscious returns to consciousness,
Known somewhere deep, now brought to the surface of these icy waters,
Thawing and ready for spring.
Inside of my frozen parts, there was this deep sadness and grief waiting to be felt when the thaw came. After all, a disappearing act is still an illusion. I cloaked my pain. I looked away as far as I could. And still, the pain could not disappear because the pain was not an illusion. The pain was real. The pain is real.
I feel it now - it feels like my chest is being cut wide open and my head is splitting apart and opening up from within. It feels deeply tragic and sad and somber and melancholy and with a sense of connection too, the feeling of being linked with some of the bravest, kindest souls who've ever walked this Earth.
It feels like destiny and bittersweet magic and duality and like autumn leaves turning colors and falling to the ground and remembering the longest winter ever and being a flower sprouting from the Earth and a butterfly dancing in the wind and dying and then becoming a caterpillar all over again and it feels like withstanding the peak heat of summer all at once. I feel connected to the core of the sun and the surface of the moon and every element on Earth. There is no fog. No blocking the truth. No disconnection from what's so real. Just pain and resting with it.
Thawing and feeling my fear and my pain and letting that be real and finding compassion for myself, telling myself it’s okay, it’s okay, feel, it won’t destroy you,
Nicole Sylvia Javorsky