This Is What You Do When They Keep Talking Long After You’ve Left

Tell me how I’m supposed to feel,

you seem to want to have something to say about it anyway.

Gaslighting will go on forever if you allow it.

Sometimes it’ll go on even if you don’t allow it.

What do you do then?

What do you do if people just won’t stop

and you’ve already taken yourself out of their space

but it still goes on?

You need to build emotional fortitude.

When it’s a narcissistic assault and the people are insane enough to keep going,

then you must build emotional fortitude.

You sink down into your root chakra.

You focus on your feet and your legs and your hips.

You pull your energy down to that area of your body and you ease into it.

Because if you don’t, you’re just detaching from your body again.

Your spirit is trying to leave

because it’s so afraid

or it’s so angry

or it’s so freaked out.

Sink down into your body again.

Focus on that lower portion from your second chakra down.

This is where your true safety resides.

It doesn’t reside in your outside world.

It resides in your root chakra,

in your bubbling springs,

and in your second chakra.

These are the chakras of belonging to this Earth Community,

of belonging to yourself,

and of creation and creativity.

Baby making creation,

and creation of your own reality.

You can’t control what others choose to believe.

You can’t control what others choose to do.

You can’t control what others choose to take part in.

But you can control your own grounded power.

You can control where, why, and when you focus on your root chakra,

because every time you do,

you’re giving yourself permission to exist.

A gaslighter doesn’t want you to have permission to exist—

not without them, anyway.

But when you drop into your body again,

and you feel that connection to Mother Earth,

you will also feel a peace,

a presence,

a big, loud, nurturing assurance from her

that you’re supposed to be here right now at this time.

You’re supposed to be the person that you are

right now

at this time.

And if you give that over to someone else,

you will be just another human who failed to create its weave in the larger tapestry.

So many sections are already missing.

So many people have already buried their voice.

Try to stand up and speak your voice out clear and strong.

The only way that you can do that

without reiterating a bunch of drama from other people

lies in your root chakra.

The work isn’t to be louder.

The work is to be clear.

Rooted truth doesn’t beg to be believed.

It simply becomes undeniable.

-Janice M. Burke

Image by Ethan Wong from Unsplash