Spiritual Awakening

We’ve all been in that thunderstorm whether it was a breakup, a death or some form of traumatic experience. The sort of experience that really makes you step back and reevaluate the path that you’re on, that forces you to do the inner work, that puts that mirror up in front of you so you can truly see who you are. Some of us will lean into that space to view the parts of ourselves that we have been too scared to look at, to ask the questions that we are petrified to hear the answers to and sit with the demons and pain that we have been burying since we were children. Now this experience is not for the faint hearted. This path is one of the most heart breaking, soul crushing experiences that you will ever go through and some of us will dip our toe into those waters and realise just how murky those dark, turbulent waters are. At which point, we remove ourselves from that seat in front of the mirror and run for the hills. The pain of the reflection, the look in those eyes staring back at you with a smudged window showing all the hidden stories to your soul. I have been in both positions. I have dipped my toe into those murky waters many times over the past 10 years and it's only been the past year that I have really sat in that chair with all parts of myself and given each version of me the space to be heard and seen with unconditional love. I have been to hell and back many times in my 40 years, but the past year of my healing journey has been the most heartbreaking and most uplifting era of my life.

I have spent years and thousands of pounds on my healing journey. I was trying to fix myself, erase the past and force a time frame of healing on myself as the pain I had gone through was so unbearable. I wanted it deleted from my mind forever. There is not much that I haven’t gone through, and I so desperately wanted it all to be just a nightmare that was going to wake up from. After years of talking therapy to ‘fix’ and understand from a logical point all the traumas I had gone through, I was in a space where I could talk about most of it openly but then I started to look at the effects that it had on my body. This is something that had never even occurred to me. I started researching about feminine and masculine energy and I realised that I had been heavily operating in my masculine energy. I wasn’t feeling, I was thinking my way through my traumas. I always had a need to do, take action, chase, be fiercely independent, never asked for help, unable to receive any help or much else for that matter. I had learnt through experiences and the relationships that I had had with men and masculine energies in the past, that I had to be my own protector. My feminine energy was in a wounded and hurt space. On the outside, I looked feminine in appearance with my hair, make up and clothes but there was always an undertone of masculinity there. In certain arenas (e.g my work place) I would find myself being far more authoritative at times, even standing in a masculine way. I felt tight and rigid in my body all the time. I would go for countless deep tissue massages to relieve the pain in my body, numerous appointments for acupuncture but the pain and tightness would always return. I knew stress was a huge factor to this as my shoulders and neck would completely seize up often leaving me in tears. Little did I realise that I was pushing down unresolved emotions onto a huge pile that was already in the burial ground of my body.

Over time, I read more and more about stored trauma and how to release it. I would spend days journaling, crying myself to sleep, screaming into pillows, attacking my workout punching bag, all just to release the emotions that I had buried. There were times that I would cry, and I could not tell you why I was crying. It was like the deep-rooted pain and suffering that I had avoided for most of my life was all flowing out of me. I was finally listening to what my body needed, and I had no idea how to do that as it was a completely new concept to me. I remember reading about the feminine energy just ‘being’ and my therapist invited me to just do nothing. I could not get my head around it at all. What the hell does that involve, was the constant question I was asking myself. My logical, masculine part of my brain needed a solution and steps on this ‘just being’.

I was afraid at this ‘just being’. I was good with being on my own and I didn’t feel the need to be around other people all the time. I could be in my own company, but my own company was constant in overthinking mode. The only time this mind racing would stop was when I was in nature or by the sea so I would find myself booking holidays and running away on my own to just clear my head. It was finally time to sit with all the pain and suffering that I had been avoiding my whole life.

After searching for answers online, I came across a whole world that I didn’t even know existed. Spiritual awakenings. I had been to reiki healers over the years that cleared my energy and helped me feel normal for a while until I went back to old patterns and programming that would constantly engulf me in the ghosts of my past. I was trying to heal from my past but not fully learning the lessons from it. It was like each situation and encounter I had, was showing me a repeated pattern from my past but as I was not fully facing myself, my past and all that lied in between, I was repeating many patterns over and over again. Everything I found about spiritual awakenings made so much sense to me and explained every detail of what I was going through. I had been fascinated with crystals, psychics, chakras and all that was connected to this side of life but I had never been able to fully connect with it. I had started on this path of my spiritual awakening and there was no turning back. I read somewhere that this experience is like wearing rose tinted glasses. Once you take them off and see the word for what it truly is, you can never put them back on again and you can never force someone else to take theirs off. How true was that!! I had started on a path that I could not turn around to go back and I did not want to. I had numerous dark nights of the soul which felt like my whole inner world was being ripped out of my body. I was sick, I was drained, I would cry for hours, I could barely move, my head was engulfed with all the memories of my past that I did not want to face. I was always too unbearable to. I couldn’t meditate, I couldn’t go to my GP to explain all this and the only people that had even a whisper of an idea of what I was going through were the small handful of spiritual people that I had met along the way. Some understood parts whilst others had not been to that part of their soul yet. I sat with ALL my demons. The demons that had been inflicted on me, the demons that I had hidden from myself and from the world, the shadow parts of me that I was ashamed of, the darker sides of me that I was fearful of facing as they represented the most horrific times of my life. All I wanted to know and celebrate over the years was the happier parts of life, the light, the joy which is something that we all strive for as we are just too scared and ashamed of those ‘negative’ and darker emotions. Rage, anger, manipulation, pain, sorrow and all the other emotions penned as being unacceptable in society . We all have a darker side. We all have shadows that we either will never admit to anyone, or we will never face ourselves. None of us are perfect but many of us strive to be. That mask of perfection protects us as it never shows our scared, vulnerable side as we have learnt that this part of us shows weakness and at some point, that part was hurt along the way. Weakness is our strength, vulnerability is a gift, but we also need to have boundaries to protect these parts of ourselves. I was a people pleaser, considered myself an empath and I had little to no boundaries to protect myself. This combination has to be the most dangerous for anyone. I had boundaries in some areas but if I cared for someone, I would put them first and ignore my own sense of protection which would constantly drain my energy and leave me depleted. Sitting with my shadows and demons, I realised that I had grown up and was surrounded by people that were draining my energy which was slowly killing me. I would burnout constantly. This healing era of my life forced me to really sit down and look at all aspect so my life. Relationships with family, friends, partners and work. What was the common theme, what role did I play in each interaction? Why was I allowing certain behaviours in my life? Why was I drawn to certain character traits? Why couldn’t I stand in my power in all aspects of my life? Here were seriously tough questions to ask myself. I journaled and wrote pages and pages of all my deepest, darkest secrets. I sat and listened to my inner child, my inner teenager, the woman in me that had suppressed all her pain and traumas, the shadows. There were parts of myself that I did not want to face, and I felt the pain of each and every chapter of my life. I can tell you, it was the worst pain I had ever felt. I thought I was dying at one point, and I even considered having myself sectioned. After analysing all the aspects and relationships in my life, I finally realised that I could now only count on 1 hand the healthier relationships that were in my life. I had to say goodbye to a one list of people. This included my immediate family, outer family members, friends, work, habits, how I viewed myself, how I viewed the world around me, how I viewed my past experiences, how I viewed my present and how I was going to move forward in life. I realised that I had to make some major changes and I did.

I had spent years ‘re parenting’ myself as my therapists called it and I was about to embark on a whole new school of thought for myself. I had hoped and prayed for a healthier, happier way of living since as long as I could remember. Not only was I doing this for myself, but I was doing this for my future generations. The generational programming passed down within my family, as do we all, had to stop with me. No more guilt, no more shame, no more people pleasing, no more lack of boundaries, no more carrying not only my traumas but the trauma of my parents and their parents before them. I had no intention of passing any of it on. I have researched about healthy boundaries, how to stand in my power, how to have a voice and not be afraid to fully use it in all areas of my life, I have read so much on feminine and masculine energy, goddess work, healing journey books and countless other ways of healing and resolving the parts of me that needed to be heard and seen in a heathy way.

I finally know what it is like to just be. I had felt so unsafe in my own body my whole life and at the rate I was going, I was destined to live a short life. I was constantly in pain. My mind knew I was safe now from all the experiences I had been through, but my body had not caught up. The feeling of safety in my body is something that I have yearned for since I started this process. I have realised that healing is like a rollercoaster. It is a never needing ride of ups and downs, flips upsided down, spun around but when that ride is at the top overlooking the beautiful view below, it is so worth it. I know that I will constantly learn more and more about myself as I continue down this road and as much as it has been the most painful time in my life, I wouldn’t to change it for anything. I have learned to love myself, I have learned to listen to my body for the first time, I have found moments of pure, stillness in a space of peace, I have learned what it feels like to feel safe within my body, I am learning to listen to my intuition and my inner voice, I am learning to appreciate and love all sides of myself including my darker sides as these are the most beautiful of them all, I am learning to choose myself first, I am learning to follow my bliss and passions.

If anyone is or has experienced any of this, know that you are not alone and the journey of healing is worth every thorn in your side, every hot coal you step on and every thunderstorm you enter through. I am learning to appreciate the waves of this experience, its hard at times but I know that it is all temporary and this too shall pass. The illusions that we project onto the world around us and onto ourselves, do not matter at the end of this rodeo called life. One day I’ll be a little old lady, sitting in my rocking chair, watching my grand children play in the garden and I’ll be able to look back at it all and say yes, I did all I wanted to do and yes, I loved every part of my journey that led me to be here now.