together in the body tonight

Johnny-Jack wrote: We always felt this was the key, total acceptance, genuine appreciation, and unconditional love. I think it's what we never experienced in our life, or it wasn't safe enough to hold on to, but somehow we were able to connect to it.

I am so happy for you!

We're getting used to everyone being out, aware, not inside. The babies haven't known what to make of it. Adam usually comes to sleep but last night he seemed out of sorts, panicky, worried about something. To amuse him I put one small teddy bear on the back of his wolf stuffed animal but that only made him wail. He cried for a long time and no one knew what the emotion was about. He couldn't tell us. He would look at the stuffed animals again and burst out crying, so we soon realized that his protector, the elusive wolfdog, who has always hidden and only come out when triggered, wasn't with us. He wasn't out with us and we didn't know where he was. Someone pointed out we must have left him inside.

Before we had a chance to figure out what we should do, Jack was gone, no longer blended with us. We could hear him say he was going inside to find the dog. The experience was that "inside" was now itself elusive. I know I looked for it and felt it was gone it. After a while we realized Jack had found a portal to it and had entered. We sensed it was dangerous because it felt like inside, where we all used to go, was shrinking as we sat there. It was going away for good. It felt like he might get stuck there with the wolfdog and nobody knew what to do. So we waited.

Suddenly the wolfdog was "flung" into the body, a full takeover with all of us pushed aside. There was insane contorting of the body but it wasn't a flashback, it was Ashár in the body, biting, fierce, but trying to do something. His mouth was doing some of the strangest things. After a while we realized he was trying to talk. The abuse he suffered was horrible, daily ritualized torture, and he up to now has believed he is an animal and can only bite in defense. After perhaps 10-15 minutes of intense body movement and tension, the wolfdog couldn't manage more than a few creaky sounds so Adam took over, happy. The wolfdog hadn't been able to speak yet but he was now with us and so was Jack.

I kept feeling that this whole experience must be some metaphor for something else. An inside shrinking, threatening to leave two of our alters inside, cut off perhaps for good? It's dramatic but it isn't rational, it's a construct. But last night, it felt like it was literally happening in realtime. All of us experienced the fear. We feel like inside is probably gone now because there's no one there to keep it open.

Jack has lamented still being so young, able to do all our errands and things but unable to handle taking on a job if we left this one. He tries to read aloud about DID, but he just can't handle the complex thinking. He's often said he feels useless, just some kid who lived decades ago but is now an anachronism who nobody in the world remembers. My words and concepts for what he's felt. But I've told him someday he would prove his value to the body and there would be no doubt of that. I think last night he did that.

I guess I continue to mention these events in case someone else at some point goes through similar changes. This is new territory, just like discovering the DID and the abuse it hid. I keep wishing there were a roadmap.

You are making great progress! I am excited for you!