Somatic experience

Quads (thighs) — movement, forward direction, and personal drive.

Somatically, they often hold freeze, hesitation, or fear of stepping forward—especially when moving felt unsafe or conflicted.

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I didn’t run.

That’s the first truth that came back to me, not as a thought, but as a sensation in my body. Heavy. Anchored. Stuck.

I stayed.

As a child, while voices rose and collided like storms inside the house, I made a decision that no child should ever have to make. I stayed between them. Not physically always, but energetically, right there in the middle of it all. Watching. Listening. Bracing.

Because somewhere deep inside me, there was a knowing that felt like life or death.

If I leave, something terrible might happen.

If I don’t hold this together, one of them might die.

And the fear had a shape.

It looked like my dad.

He was stronger. Louder. More physically imposing. My body read him as the greater threat. I feared he could kill my mum. That was the story my nervous system wrote, over and over again. Even if I didn’t have proof, my body didn’t need it, it prepared anyway.

But I also feared something else.

I feared that if I stayed in between them… I might be the one who gets hurt.

I might be the one who dies.

And still… I stayed.

I became the voice that tried to soften the chaos.

“It’s not true.”

“He didn’t mean it.”

“She didn’t mean it.”

“Please stop.”

“We love each other.”

A child, trying to translate pain into peace. Trying to alchemise violence into love.

And when that didn’t work, I would go to bed… and pray. Quietly. Desperately. Asking God, asking the angels, asking anything that might be listening to make it stop.

But it didn’t stop.

It got worse.

And so my body adapted.

Not by running.

Not by fighting.

By freezing.

My legs, my quads, became the embodiment of that decision.

They held me in place. They learned: don’t move, it’s safer here.

Don’t go outside. Don’t go play. Don’t leave the scene.

Stay. Monitor. Survive.

While my siblings went out and lived their childhood… I stayed behind, holding a reality that was far too heavy for my small body.

That freeze didn’t disappear with time.

It lived on, in tension, in fatigue, in that quiet sense of not fully stepping forward in life.

Until today.

Today, I didn’t analyse it. I didn’t try to fix it.

I felt it.

The tightness in my quads.

The grip in the back of my neck.

The knot in my belly, my solar plexus, always preparing, always anticipating the next explosion.

And instead of pushing it away, I let it rise.

I stayed present as the sensations intensified.

I spoke to myself as the child I was.

And something shifted.

Not dramatically. Not all at once.

But honestly.

The tension began to melt.

My quads softened, not just physically, but energetically.

There was warmth. Blood flow. Space.

Movement.

For the first time, it didn’t feel like my legs were holding me back.

It felt like they were ready to carry me.

And in that moment, a deeper truth landed:

I forgive myself for staying.

I didn’t know.

I didn’t have the capacity to choose differently.

I thought I was protecting life.

There is no blame here anymore.

Not for them.

Not for me.

Because now I can see more clearly.

My dad had the power to do damage.

My mum had the power to create it.

Both were moving through their own shadows, unseen, unprocessed, alive in the space between them.

And me?

I absorbed what I could understand. I blocked what I couldn’t.

I carried fragments of both.

But today… I release it.

The fear.

The tension.

The suppression.

The patterns that no longer belong to me.

I let my body open, slowly, safely, to the world around me.

To the air touching my skin.

To the light entering my eyes.

To the ground beneath my feet.

To the quiet fire of life moving through me again.

My body is no longer just a shield.

It is my vessel.

My channel.

My guide.

And I am learning that I can choose how to inhabit it.

I can protect when needed.

Soften when safe.

Move when called.

My path was never taken from me.

I just paused on it.

And now…

Step by step…

I walk it again.

This is my account of my.womatic experience today, nearly 40 years after this started to stay stuck in my body!

Robbie

Love and Light