The Process of Cleaving
Roots and Truth
An Introduction
I’m learning. I’m applying what I learn. Feelings are coming, I’m learning how to feel.
It’s raw. it’s human. It’s beautiful and painful, embarrassing and it’s graced with an all encompassing embrace.
I am learning and today, this is how I feel.
Key words and Understanding
For the first time in a while, I am hopeful that I can be relieved from some of my suffering and chronic pain. I’m really working through some difficult things (for me) right now.
I’ve been cutting things out that don’t feel good to me. Through this process I’m remembering a scripture passage in Genesis, that reads:
The next verse talks about nakedness, and availability of a feeling, that doesn’t accompany shame. 1
To be one without shame, what a victory! Probably won’t happen, because I’m a member of humanity…but it’s something worth pursuing– but how?
As I am questioning these two verses of script, and processing how they apply to me, I’ve recorded some of my story in the following article.
Years ago, my husband and I received a message that we would refer to, from that time on. We heard it from a mentor, and as he taught, it resonated with both of us. He asked us to think of the word “Cleave”. (Remember the passage in Genesis?) Then he pointed out the irony between the meaning. The word cleave has multiple meanings.
Definition number one opposes the second and third definition. But if you read all three definitions closely you can apply them to the thought pattern of cleaving to a partner. The first encourages to lean into loyalty. The second and third encourage division after an analysis of internal thought patterns, family system patterns and cultural expressions.
Genesis 2:24 encourages leaving, then cleaving, or adhering do a partnership as they become “one”. Not only in relationship, but “one” in flesh. Continuing on, the next verse states:
Putting this verse into context:
In the teachings in Genesis, Adam and Eve (the first of God’s children here on earth according to many faith traditions) were still in the presence of God, living with God, with a human body. They were pure. They were innocent and did not have growth through their human experience yet.
A thought that I have had while reading this is: if Adam and Eve had no shame in their bodies, and they were living with God, does that mean if I grow closer to God, that my shame can slowly be removed too?
To link the two ideas:
If I feel less shame. If I feel more pleased with who I am, as a human being with a body, can that impact how I cling to my spouse as well?
This is the part of my story where I started questioning social and family systems. I was leaning into an idea that God is in the details and he knows how to care for me. As I have been walking away from many cultural ideas, I have found that logic and spiritual insight have been guiding me.
This spiritual belonging (allowing God to be inside of me and aligned with me) feels like a connection I am desiring. (I share more of that story of connection in this blog post: Healing From My Birth Trauma Experience.)
More of My Story
I was one year postpartum with Weston, my second child, when Curtis (my husband) brought to my attention the work of Anthony William. If you aren’t familiar with Anthony William (The Medical Medium), he is a spiritual teacher that primarily focuses on educating a vast amount of chronically ill people on spirituality, dieting and supplementing to advance the healing of many medical conditions.
I found resonance to what he was teaching around liver problems.
(You can read more about my extreme blood sugar issues, my thyroid dis-ease, and my body deteriorating in the middle of this post: The Beginning of My Health Journey)
After reading Anthony William’s work, I changed my diet again. (I had been eating a strict Paleo Diet the previous year.) I changed with hope that my body could release the harmful disease creating my illness so I could start feeling better. With the guidance from the book Medical Medium: Secrets Behind Chronic and Mystery Illness and How to Finally Heal, I started eating mostly raw fruits and vegetables.
I think it is important to note, that without any physical strength and stamina, plus living in a body that was constantly in pain, I was in a desperate place. I was willing to give up just about anything to receive resonance in my body again.
Remember the word, cleave: to cut and separate? At this time I had to cut out old ideas.
- I cut out old ideas from my previous study of nutrition.
- I cut out food that resembled food that I had previously eaten.
- I cut out extra activities, outside of my house.
I stayed home where I felt safe. In order to do so, I started cutting out many of my extended family as well. I didn’t want them to see a burned-out, and in pain, angry sister that I had become.
Here is the beauty from my experimental season.
When the body is being fueled primarily by water, vitamins and minerals it resembles returning to a purer state of living—a spiritual idea of entering back into to the Garden of Eden (noting there was no processed or even cooked food in the origional garden.) I had removed so many things that I personally used to eat, then I added into my diet a constant stream of nutrients.
And the results were Godlike.
I can tell you, having done this type of immersion, that the effect food has on our mental health is real!
When the body receives that right fuel, the neurons throughout the body communicate and resonate with connection. (Through this cleanse, I probably consumed more vitamins and minerals in one month than I ever had before.) Minerals fuel the neurons and the neurons are conductors for communication!
Through eating this way, I discovered my mind was clear and free. I was able to feel into emotions that I had never put a name to before.
With such a concentrated mineral load, I was thinking clearly again. Not all thoughts were pleasant though. This was “cleaving” time as well. My body wanted to be removed from some of the emotional weight I was carrying.
After I set an intention to heal physically, and after many planning sessions with my husband, I ate a raw diet for 28 days. A WHOLE FOUR WEEKS. Yes, it was a food plan that Anthony William had introduced to me. I wanted to see how my body would respond—ultimately I wanted to heal! As I ate raw foods, I became my own personal lab rat through an individual human experiment.
I had loads of contrasting information before I entered this experiment. I had been to medical specialists. “Inflammation” was the only answer I had received. After multiple dead ends and after having blood test returned and additional investigative tests with no answers to the underlying issue, I tried the immersive diet route.
Additionally, I was taking a thyroid medication to treat my under-active thyroid. To read more about the beginning of the story, reference this is the post.
Answers Received
After 28 days of only inviting in raw fruits and vegetables, I started introducing baked sweet potato into my diet. Then I started eating baked potatoes. In the weeks to follow, I ate a slice of natural sliced turkey everyday. And I slowly started adding other foods back in.
But, I had been stretched. It had challenged my body in ways that resulted in constriction (tightening as a result from the stress). That is when the tendonitis in my hips started ruling my life.
The struggle to walk was real! Emotional pain was also a stressor. After this experience, I started to receive answers through spiritual thought. For the first time ever, I felt that the pain in my body was linked to a disconnection with my spirit. I started listening, and I started to understand that the pain was trying to teach me something.
What Was I Needing to Adhere To?
As I was struggling with my illness I was getting to know my neighbor across the street from me. She had a Ph. D. in psychology. She refers to herself as “student of human behavior”. With 45+ years of experience this really is her specialty!
One day, just after I had finished my 28 days of raw eating, I passed this same neighbor, Bena, on the street. I stopped and talked to her for a few minutes. She could see how thin I was, and she wanted to help.
Bena has a bold, unhindered way with the way she speaks. That day I remember her telling me that I had an image issue. I thought she was alluding to an eating disorder. This didn’t make sense to me!?! AND, she was stating the obvious–I knew I was way too thin!
I denied it, dismissed it, and walked away.
About an hour later, the spiritual answer came.
I was out in the back yard squatting as I pulled a few weeds. Our family was growing a small garden, and as I was checking on its growth and pulling weeds, I heard the whisper.
“You have an image issue because you don’t know who you are. You don’t know the intimacy and closeness that you are allowed to have within your body. This love that you were never taught to explore. You are a stranger in your own body.”
Even writing this now, I feel the truth in what I received that day.
With my limited experience of living in a connected-alive body, I felt a desire for purity. Not in a prudish way–my culture had already created that identity inside of me. But, I wanted the purity of what God desires for me. The purity of Adam and Eve. That closeness to God–that is void of shame.
The load hit me. This was far beyond an image issue.
The KEY word that I had received was INTIMACY.
I needed (in so many ways) to connect with my story. I needed connection within my own body.
My Body Didn’t Know Closeness
In so many ways my body was calling to me to start to cleave.
Through an analogy, I see the scenario in my past, as a perfect strawberry shortcake stack of violation layered together by getting married young, with out knowing my body. Then conceiving when I didn’t expect to have a baby so soon, in my mid-twenties. Topped with a big dollop of thick whipped cream birth trauma that created so much heaviness inside of me.
That was a heavy piece of cake placed in front of me—and I had a load work to do! I was definitely served up a situation in which I would have to learn to cleave. (Using both definitions–scroll up and read the definition of “cleave” again!)
Some actionable steps needed to be in place as I started consuming these extremely delicate-large bites of cloudy change.
Spiritual Overload
It is important to note that when this event initially happened, I started journaling about it.
I started recalling my story. Through writing I explored my own observations while things were raw and fresh. I believe I learned a lot more from the experience as I wrote.
Pouring my story out on a pad of paper is how I moved forward with my healing during those months that followed my spiritual awakening after I completed my 28 day raw cleanse.
Louise Hay’s work was given to me by a mentor in this same year. Louise does a great job at explaining the body’s connection to emotion and respecting the thoughts that show up through our personal pain.
I was being taught through listening to her talks (that were originally recorded on cassette tapes but now can be found on YouTube) I read through some of her books. She’s big into positive affirmations. As I applied what I was learning, I repeated to myself time and time again:
“I am a sexual being. I am comfortable being in my own body. I have creativity beyond what I know.”
As I was learning the concept of intimacy these were the best words that I found in my vocabulary.
I was saying these things to change belief, and slowly begging to believe some of the truths.
I started reading about physical intimacy. I asked mentors and neighbors, that I could tell were comfortable with the relationship within their body.
But I still remember hiding whatever book I was reading about sex, intimacy and love making, when my husband walked in.
I don’t know why shame was so evident. It was so far up in my face I could have given it a name, and stuffed my mouth full with it! Even with the knowledge that I was gaining, I still didn’t know what to do with these feelings.
Giving These Feelings a Name…
The definition of “intimacy” begged me to ask more questions.
- Do I know myself, well enough, to give my body the care it needs?
- Do I live with my creativity shining through?
- Do I know how to internally speak to myself in kind, loving, calming ways?
- Do I know how to move my body so it can work through feelings and move me to a space that feels safe?
Through my study, I now recognize that intimacy in not as much about sexuality, but more about personal awareness and knowingly–not ignoring, what feelings and physical actions are teaching. 4
Hiding the books from my husband was a physical reactions because of the conditioning that I had received around the subject of intimacy. My reaction was similar to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3:10
“And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.” 5 They hid, as their awareness of their nakedness started to be framed as shame.
Months later, as I went through my HUGE learning curve, I sporadically started speaking to my husband about my feelings.
Because of his upbringing, I don’t think he could relate to what I was saying all of the time. This was hard for me too, because I was opening up and sharing, but sometimes I felt like the language I was using wasn’t received.
I also knew that it would take time. I invited him to read a few books with me. We did a lot of reading together, but everything changed and became real when he was asked to work from home full-time in the spring of 2020.
Continue reading! How AAA Helped Me Connect to My Body
Resources
A course that I have taken that addresses the “cleaving” concept from a psychological and spiritual standpoint. I would recommend exploring this if this blog post resonated with you.
The Allender Center Marriage Online Course
Sources
- Shame: a painful emotion caused by consciousness of guilt, shortcoming, or impropriety. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shame; Genesis 2:25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.[↩]
- https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cleave[↩]
- Jamie Nokelby Photo[↩]
- Jennifer Finlason-Fife further explains this concept: “There’s a lot of people having a lot of sex that aren’t at all integrated with their sexuality. So having sex and being integrated are two different things, although, there are probably limits in how much you can learn to love about your sexuality if you’re not in a partnered experience.” Finlayson-fife, Jennifer, Developing Sexual Wholeness, Restore: A Faith Matters Gathering, October 7, 2022, Salt Lake City, UT, interview[↩]
- https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Genesis-Chapter-3/[↩]
