This is based on my 3 Part podcast series, including -
Part 2 - The foundations of weaving a web of support, which includes personal sovereignty, access to your values and the ability to move from your desires.
Part 3 – How to hire support & how to lean into the support already available to you

Listen to the podcast episode instead of reading here!

Welcome to Part 1 of Weaving Your Web of Support.

I was sitting in a tea ceremony last month when a wave of tenderness came over me. Sip by sip, all the faces of the people who have supported me to heal and thrive in the last year flashed behind my eyes.

I shared about it and named my people here on Insta, which prompted such a beautiful, and somewhat tender conversion in my DM’s.

More than 60% of you who participated in my poll in my story said you don’t feel you have the support your soul desires.

When asked what kind of support you want to receive in 2022, it was quality friendship that took the lead above business support, therapy, health care and partnership.

Some of the answers that came in said:

“Deep friendships that support my need to be known and taken care of.”

“Devoted friendship.”

“Authentic adult relationships.”

“Seeking out those who can *actually* hold my full essence.”

“Consistent conscious friendships and community.”

“People to hold space without automatically trying to fix/offer suggestions.”

“Freedom to show all parts of myself to others without critique.”

“I’m just incredibly lonely.”

A few people even messaged me privately to let me know how triggering it is to witness someone be so supported in an age of loneliness, and how it’s revealing to them their deeper desire for real, nourishing relationships.

The truth is, my life is incredibly supported and my community is robust, but it’s not because I accidentally stumbled into friendship or inherited incredible relating skills. It’s actually quite the contrary.

My life is so supported because of the very lack of relational skill, community and support drove me to create a new experience after hitting a rock bottom of abandonment and subsequent relational/emotional/mental health crisis in my mid-20’s.

A deeply supported life doesn’t just happen upon us in our hyper-individualistic culture, it must be by design.

No one is going to come and give us the friendships and community we desire. It’s up to us to bring forward these desires and learn how to live them together.

Wholeness with ourselves requires we do the work of integration to be supported within ourselves, and often in that journey, healing from personal fragmentation, we become further exiled from our families and community. And!! We can make our way home, not only to ourselves, but to the support, friendships, love and communities we most need.

Which is why I’m so thrilled to be sharing Weaving a Web of Support, a 3-part series. Over the next 3 blogs, I’m going to be sharing:

PART 1- my own story in this episode of how I designed a life of support, having gone from exiled, unsupported and isolated to a robust web of support.
PART 2- In part 2 I’ll be sharing the foundations of weaving a web of support, which includes personal sovereignty, access to your values and the ability to move from your desires.
PART 3- In part 3 I’ll be sharing about how to identify where you need support, when to invest in professional support such as a coach, therapist or guide, what to look for in you local and online communities and what it really takes to build depth relationships.

SO LET’S DIVE IN… MY STORY.

Being without support and alone is one of my deepest fears.

My wound of unbelonging has driven much of my life.

I am deeply relationally oriented. So much so that I’ve abandoned my own truth to belong in spaces that didn’t want me once I showed my difference. Lesson learned - time and time again, unfortunately.

I spent much of my 20’s healing from childhood abuse and then having been indoctrinated into a high-control group, and navigating the subsequent relational challenges that ensued after. This experience has offered me so much perspective on the ways we perpetuate fragmentation within ourselves, codependency, ineffective relational strategies and systems rooted in the hierarchy of worthiness not only in the macro (like government and inside corporations) but also within ourselves and within our closest relationships.

The fragmentation and self-abandonment we experience only mirrors the fragmentation from the earth and from one another we are all experiencing.

Turns out the phrase “As above, so below. As within, so without” very much applies to the ways we relate to ourselves (or not), one another (or not), feel isolated (or not) give and receive support (or not).

In my mid-20’s my truth became louder than my need to belong. As I started healing, going to trauma therapy and integrating parts of myself I’d abandoned, I found myself leaving left a tight-knit evangelical community.

Asking questions, advocating for LGBTQIA rights and naming injustices to Black, Indiginous and people of color and the feminine were shamed and silenced.

Those I once considered my chosen family and had spent years gathering multiple times a week in ceremony, sharing my deepest, most sacred and spiritual life with rejected me and my new “demonic” lifestyle as a queer woman, coach and question-asker.

I had to re-build community from the ground-up.

The problem: I didn’t know how to create relationships that were not based on:

1- shared beliefs

2- shared enemies

3- manufactured by over-vulnerability and over-eager small group leaders whose literal job was to “make” me feel included

4- contempt and codependency (because culty communication styles often violate boundaries and perpetuate savior dynamics).

Not only had my entire support system been stripped from me, I started realizing I didn’t know how to have healthy relationships. I had very little relational skills, and a gaping hole of relational needs.

The truth is, I barely knew myself, and I didn’t have clear mirrors to help me see myself– to reference my recent conversation with Dr. Hillary Mcbride in Ep 77.

It was around this time I found my first trauma therapist (who gave me free sliding scale prices as long as I drove the 3 hour trip to get to his office) and hired my first coach (who also gave me a generous price given I was still waitressing at multiple jobs to make ends meet).

The trauma of having been in a cult, being distant from my biological family and being so betrayed by my community left me in a very disorganized, isolated and lonely place.

I didn’t trust people, but I needed them.

I didn’t feel safe in groups, but I’m an extrovert.

I didn’t have the support of a community, but had a Soul-level need to give and serve.

I felt like I was in a catch 22. I’d been leading small groups, sacred circles, teaching at church and mentoring women 1-1. I was even starting to coach, but none of this felt “safe” anymore.

I had to learn to get my relational needs met, slowly and over time.

Looking back I’m super proud of how I honored my relational capacity. I didn’t have the capacity to be fully seen, known, supported and held - even though this was my deepest desire. If I’d have thrown myself into situations where there was deep intimacy, it would have triggered me back into shutdown (and did).

I took it slow, titrating my way into safe connection:

To get my need for shared expansive embodied experience (like in a worship service) I began going to group fitness classes.
To get my need for learning in community met, (like weekly small groups and sermons) I started going to and hosting small events on non-spiritual topics like 1 Million Cups, and my previous local start-up and podcast, The Bravery Board.
To get my need for like-minded people to see, celebrate and share my art with, I started posting my work online and developing a creative community there.
To get my need for intergenerational mentorship met, which once was found in the church, I hired coaches who were ahead of me in skill or in my field.
To get my need for learning to relate in healthier, non-codependent ways, I found a therapist who was able to work on sliding scale with me.

Truth be told, intimacy with a small group of friends came later… years later.

It wasn’t until 3 years ago, when I’d built my business to a robust place, had a booming online community, was thriving in my fitness and had proof that I was able to maintain long-term healthy relationships and let go of friends whose behaviors were toxic for me that I really started looking to get my spiritual needs met in person again.

I went to a 2-day in-person yoga retreat with the specific intention to be more intentional in my in-person community and find “my people.”

That retreat happened to be led by 2 of my now best-friends and ex-partner. Going to that event, and subsequently asking for their phone numbers, following on social media, paying to go to the events at their yoga studios, and showing up consistently over time, is what formed our current monthly moon circle.

And to be honest, it took a good 18 months to feel a sense of security within that group of people.

Although some may want to rush this process, I see this slow progression of relational support as a sign of health!

I didn’t hijack connection through old tactics like over-sharing, love-bombing or anxiously communicating. I didn’t exclude myself from connection by declining invites, or failing to follow through on my commitments. I didn’t rush back into contexts that were familiar to the ones who harmed me - I allowed myself to be supported in ways that my nervous system could handle, and build outward in concentric circles.

I showed up, over time.

I put in the relational work to build trust, showed consistency, asked for my needs to be met and showed up to receive with reciprocity. HUGE IMPROVEMENT!!!!

This is not a 2-year fast tracked way I “hacked” myself to being supported. This was an 8 year journey.

So if the topic of feeling supported feels activating, pings up a longinging inside of you -triggers jealousy, dissatisfaction, or the tenderness that comes from longing for something you’re not currently experiencing, please know this 8-year journey was one I not only fought for, but made an absolute priority.

This exact 8 year journey, and what I did to cultivate my own web of support - from personal safety in my body to clarifying the kind of people I want in my inner circle, to navigating when to hire support in your healing, life and business is coming in the next 2 blog posts! Find the next part here.

Goodness is coming for you,

xo, Madison