For me, the space before change often arrives through connection.

It begins as a sensation in my chest—like a touch. A warmth. As if something at the center of me has been lit and is slowly expanding. I don’t think my way into this feeling, and I didn’t always recognize it for what it was. It arrives on its own. And when it does, I know I’m connected.

For much of my life, I was told that connection should be felt elsewhere—in the gut, in instinct, in resolve. I tried to follow that guidance, but it never quite matched what my body was telling me. Over time, I began to trust what I was actually feeling. Learning about the heart as a center of resonance helped put language to it, but the knowing came first. My body recognized the truth before I understood it.

Earlier in my life, trust was disrupted in ways that made it harder to stay connected to myself. Sensitivity—once something natural—became something I learned to question. Over time, this affected how I read my own signals, especially those that came from the heart. When what is felt isn’t believed or mirrored, perception can turn inward on itself, and the body learns to brace.

Relearning how to trust what I feel has been less about understanding and more about safety. My sense of safety has changed over time—from something external and basic, like having a roof overhead, to something more internal: being inside myself and feeling comfortable there. Connection returns when the body senses it’s allowed to be here—to feel warmth, expansion, resonance—without being corrected or dismissed. That internal safety is what makes perception trustworthy again.

When my chest feels full and radiant, my breathing deepens without effort. There’s a sense of ease in simply being present. Pain and discomfort recede. The moment becomes inhabitable. I’m no longer trying to get through the day—I’m inside it.

I notice this most clearly during ordinary moments, like driving. The landscape where I live now is quieter than the city I left a few years ago. Northern Minnesota is full of water and life—lakes, rivers, trees, long stretches of sky. There’s room to breathe here, not because things are sparse, but because they’re generous.

Sometimes, when I see large birds overhead—ravens, vultures, bald eagles—I roll down the window and howl. It’s instinctive, like a call of recognition. I’m not quite comfortable doing this with other people in the car yet, though my canine companion seems unfazed and long accustomed to it.

Something in that act opens a door in me.

When I do, a buzzing moves through my body. It feels like vibration, like frequency—alive and responsive. This buzz is very different from the heaviness of freeze. Freeze feels dense and weighted, as if everything in me is gathering and hardening. The buzz, by contrast, feels harmonious, as if my internal particles are moving together rather than against one another—lifting me into a different way of being present, where the moment feels easier to inhabit.

In that state, sensation becomes dominant and the mind loosens its grip. Rumination fades into the background. I feel safe. Free. A part of something larger and alive. Joy becomes accessible again—not as an idea, but as a lived experience. It’s a reminder of what’s possible when perception widens and the body knows it doesn’t have to brace.

This space doesn’t arrive in only one way. Sometimes it shows up through quiet—through stillness, listening, or moments of connection that soften the body enough for sensation to come forward. Other times, it becomes noticeable through more pronounced shifts in perception, when awareness widens suddenly and the body feels reorganized around a new center.

I didn’t always know how to recognize this state on my own.

At times, cannabis has been part of this process for me—not as a solution or an escape, but as one context in which perception softened and the body felt safe enough to register what was already there. In those moments, the familiar buzzing would return, making the space before change easier to recognize. I feel grateful for what this made visible; without it, it may have taken me much longer to notice these states on my own. What matters to me isn’t the method. The space exists with or without it.

Over time, these moments began to leave a trace.

Over time, I’ve come to see these moments in two ways. When I’m inside them, they feel like destinations—whole, complete, enough in themselves. It’s only later, when I’m no longer there, that I recognize them as reference points. They show me what regulation can feel like, even if returning to it isn’t yet automatic. Sometimes I have to remember it first. Sometimes I have to realize where I am before I can orient toward where I’ve been.

Change often begins before we recognize it as change.

Series: Learning to Trust What I Sense