In moments of overwhelm – when we’re unable to access the internal resources or relational support to process what we’re experiencing – fragmented shards of emotion and pieces of soul are stored outside conscious awareness in soma and shadow holding areas, where they remain available for metabolization at a future time.Though out of conscious awareness, this material continues to color our perception and polish our heart with its energies and fragrances. In its unilluminated form, it affects our capacity to feel, play, imagine and dream.Prior to the ages of 4 or 5, we’re not able to repress that which is potentially shattering and have no choice but to experience it directly, or sequester it deep in the underworld, by way of those more archaic defenses of dissociation and splitting.The lost ones who carry the material for us long to release this burden and return home. Sometimes we hear or sense them around us; they appear in our dreams, fantasies, and unexpected moods and physical symptoms.At times they even appear as natural phenomena – the sun, moon, wilted flower, or star – even as our lovers, friends, and (real-life) children.An alchemical, cellular healing would then require that we send our awareness and devotion into the neural-soul network which is holding the shattered one, containing its unlived life, and infuse that network with qualities that weren’t available at the time of the fragmentation – empathy, warmth, centering, and companionship.Where, instead of disintegration, there is reintegration. Instead of dissociation, re-association. Instead of a necessary dis-embodiment, re-embodiment. A re-imagining where imagination was once foreclosed. A relinking of psyche-soma.At the root of this wounding is the absence of a companion to make the journey with us, the Friend that we long for to bear witness as the shards disassemble and then come back together.The nature of who and what this “Friend” is must be discovered in the fire of our own direct experience.May you discover and come to know this Friend, living with it as an inner partner, in its infinite forms and expressions in your life. Though it can seem otherwise, the Friend may be nearer than we think.