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Shining Through the Darkness

By SoulzbyCarmela

By Carmela FuocoPublished 2 years ago 15 min read
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Shining through the Darkness

Shining through the Darkness

by SoulzbyCarmela

Today I really wanted to give up on writing this chapter. Like, how the fuck am I meant to write about my traumas, and how I got to where I am in life, when I’ve never really opened up about my childhood? The fact is, I know people would never believe me. Why? Because today I have a great loving relationship with my abuser, and I don’t mean in romantic way – he’s a family member who destroyed my life for a very long time, who will remain anonymous throughout this story. However, given the horror my abuser put me through, I can’t even believe that we have a relationship that’s a working progress – trust has to be earned once it’s been broken.

So my abuser was in my home, which meant I had no choice but to deal with the trauma that was to come.

The smacking started when I was two. Now we all know that two-year-olds are little trouble terrors, but that’s because they’re learning about the world. But in my household, it wasn’t allowed. On the outside, we looked like a normal, loving family. We did lots of drives and events with family and friends, but behind closed doors, it was another story.

I don’t know why I was the only one in the whole family to get the smacks, which eventuated in beatings. Maybe it was because I was female – they threw that in my face. ‘You must be PMSing,’ and ‘that’s why you’re so emotional’. Or saying it’s my own fault that I might get pregnant, and that I could never have a boyfriend. Or was it because of who I was as a person? Did I tick them off for being too annoying? Maybe I looked at them the wrong way?

God forbid I was being a horror of a child.

But then the horror became mine. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t getting smacked or verbally abused – called fat, useless, a mistake, ungrateful. Beatings came with a belt, spoon or shoe, or his favourite weapon, the stick. This stick was about one-and-a-half-metres long and made of hardwood as thick as a wooden Broome stick Or as big as a 50 cent coin. When that came out, it meant business. The bruises I copped from that stick would last for days. The brain wave of calling the police didn’t last long – he said he’d kill me. If I told anyone, he’d kill me. He put such fear into me, but I couldn’t imagine living my life without him, so I had to do everything he said.

It was non-sexual abuse – that may have happened, but I don’t recall – but he would show me his genitals front and back??, he would always tell me about his sex life with my mum or lack of, tell me dirty jokes and occasionally he would show me his porn collection, at the time I didn’t know what to think about it his family so it must have been normal boy I was wrong.

As soon as I heard the key in the front door, all my instincts went into survival mode, knowing what was to come. My flight and fight boundaries would shoot up like brick walls, locked tightly with chains and locks, all my defence mechanism would come out to play all I could think was I need to survive, survival was my only friend. As a child I didn’t know any better and yet I still hoped he’d maybe had a good day – which would happen on occasion. Those days were good as we could just laugh and be a normal family. If he was in a bad mood, anything small thing would trigger him to start yelling at me, telling me how horrible a person I was, just because I may have coughed. What a terrible person I was to do anything that he didn’t approve of blaming me for everyone’s mistakes except for his own, so I deserved to be hit.

I remember two of worst beatings of my life. The first was when I was eighteen. He attached me with a china plate, and I still have no idea how he did it, but he managed to crack open part of my scalp. I was bleeding all over the place but, as always, too afraid to go to the police or the hospital. Instead, my boyfriend at the time cleaned me up and bandaged my head until it healed.

The second beating was when I was twenty-five. For the first time in my life, I hit back. It was tense. He was choking me after cutting my throat, and I thought I was going to die, so I finally pushed back and fought for my life. I was so proud of myself.

I don’t know why I was always afraid to fight back or leave the situation earlier. I guess I was so afraid of being killed, the only choice was to stay. And I was only a child. I didn’t know any better. This is what I tell myself now.

Eventually I did get out, and in time, I would become my own person and give myself permission to take my power back. I know I have the right to be a human on this earth, on my own terms, but that was yet to happen.

But for now, my addictions took over: drugs, alcohol, using sex to get love. I lived for years with an unhealthy mind and body, misusing my body and my soul. I was nothing. I had nothing. I didn’t see my light until I was at the lowest point of my life. Then, I was done with being a slave to my abuser, to a world of hatred and haunting, of sleepless nights with no friends, no lover. I had finally had enough.

I prayed to God. I needed a sign. I needed help to find my purpose, to grow and expand into an amazing lightworker, shadow mentor, goddess. I didn’t want to be my family’s punching bag anymore, and I was determined to the day I died to heal myself and our family dynamic. I would become the person I wanted to be. I would find my purpose and help humanity wake up. I would find the guts to face my fears and turn them into my riches, to take my shadow soul journey and open my eyes to the earth’s eyes. My life had hit rock bottom and now was the time to start climbing out, to grab it by the balls and start healing. I would build a better place. And to do this, I needed to start with myself.

I was first introduced to meditation at the age of sixteen. Being a teenager, I was more into boys and drinking, so I didn’t take it seriously. But I was curious to get closer to God, and I wanted answers as to why I was born into such a destructive life. It wasn’t until I was about twenty-eight that my true spiritual journey began.

Now I started to take it more seriously. I went to weekly meditation classes, watched YouTube videos and made a ritual of meditation at least once a day. I also loved reading books about spirituality such as The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle (my favourite book) and The Alchemist by Paul Coelho. I felt better about myself, and I could feel the presence of God and the strength of gaining my power back. Nothing was going to stop me. I was becoming a powerful, independent woman who would prove to the world I wasn’t the horrible monster my family brainwashed me into believing. I was Carmela and I could be and do whatever I wanted. Watch out world! Here I come.

But nothing worth having comes easy. If I thought the physical beatings had hurt, the soul journey was worse. You might think it was all rainbows and unicorns, but it was hard and painful, full of suffering and despair. There were nights I begged God to kill me, just so I didn’t have to feel the pain anymore. I didn’t have any tears left to shed.

I know this sounds horrible, but stay with me

So, during this time of learning what meditation and spirituality were about, I still wasn’t convinced to dip into it completely. It was too hard to be forgiving of my family or my abuser. It was like a never-ending nightmare.

That is why I’d turned to drugs – they made me feel like I was invincible, like I was energy, like I was God the almighty myself. I thought drugs were all I needed to escape from who I was. Taking drugs and misusing my body sexually, just to feel love for a moment, was a big part of my spiritual journey. The drugs got me closer to God. They opened my mind to frequencies and energies you could never imagine.

Of course, drug abuse is harmful to your health and body, so when I blacked out for two weeks and had no idea how I got home, how I ate, or even went to the toilet, I was totally out of it. But I needed to go through that to wake me up, make me realise I needed to look at myself from a different angle. And it worked. I found something better than drugs – I found a healthier way of life through the sound of healing music, through tarot cards, reiki, vibrational healing, energy healing, holistic therapy. The list went on. The more I learned about spirit, the less I needed the outside world to validate me. And I realised I needed to love myself, my body, my temple. That’s all I needed.

Accepting, allowing and letting go are the three key things needed when starting on your spiritual awaking journey, and the hardest part of loving yourself. It’s a very lonely time, and the journey is always about self-discovery. So no matter how many people help you, guide you or mentor you on your journey, if you are not willing to do the work yourself and learn the lessons on your own, you’ll never wake up or move on in life. You’ll always feel stuck, spinning around in an endless circle, then fall and make yourself sick.

All your life, you’re going to experience ups and downs. Heck, even to this day, it’s hard for me. It’s an ongoing battle, but I’ve learned not to rely on others to validate me. The more you practice this, the clearer your mind will be, and you will know what true self-love is: loving yourself. All parts of you. The good, the bad, the ugly and the fantastic.

What a fucked-up scary journey it was, but the more I learned about the shadow and what it represented to me, the more determined I became to grow in my life. This took me many years of searching different modalities, starting different healings, meeting interesting gurus and teachers on the way. Learning and growing my psychic abilities, learning the ability to rewire my thoughts and cellular energy through self-healing.

Becoming a nature shaman was the greatest gift I received. It opened my third eye – something I could never have imagined. Now I can see beyond this world. I can tap into and channel energies that can’t be seen with the human eye. At first, I thought I was crazy, that this was a fantasy in my head, that it wasn’t possible to be healed or to see beyond this universe, to experience other frequencies, to be able to talk with and see the afterlife, to work with archangels, to walk through the shadow world and the light world and talk to spirit. It’s all beyond my wildest dreams, and I now get to work with amazing clients who trust me with their soul journey when they’re stuck and need some guidance on, or understanding of, what they’re going through. Not only does it light my heart, but it’s also amazing to see them shine and grow into the person they want to be on this earth, and to learn what their purpose is. It’s so amazing to be on the other side, embracing life and loving yourself with no barriers to just being you.

I travelled this journey on my own from day one. It sucked every second, but I learned that what I wanted from others, I could give to myself. If I wanted loyaler friends, then I should be fussier with who I invited in my world, stand my ground, and speak up when I was getting hurt or taken advantage of. I needed to be firm with my family, to not rely on others to give me love. We are all capable of giving ourselves the love we deserve and want, dressing for ourselves and enjoying it, going for that dream job. What do we have to lose? It may not happen the first time or the tenth time, but never give up, because one day you will succeed.

It’s okay to question everything – God, your body, your life, the universe – and to seek help. It doesn’t matter how much you need. If you need help, guidance and understanding, reach out. That is why we are here, why these women are writing this book – for you to read. It’s time to shine. It’s time for you to see your light, then understand and love the dark. I wish I’d had someone like me – someone who wasn’t afraid of the dark – to give it to me straight back then, so that I didn’t have to waste years of my life trying to figure it out myself. Someone with the willingness to help and mentor me through my dark night of the soul, so I could understand what I was going through. However, I am truly grateful to all my healers, mentors and psychic readers who did enter my journey, I wouldn’t be here if they weren’t a part of my life. They gave me the tools to face my fears. So thank you.

Everything in life has a yin and yang. Everything you attract or make happen in your life will always have a so-called ‘bad’ side – the shadow, the lessons that need to be learned before you can enjoy the good juicy parts of your journey. It’s not an easy job to go within yourself and find all these ugly dark parts you never knew you had. All you do is question you morals, your values, what you believe in, how you grew up, what you’ve been conditioned by. You wonder if you’re the exact clone of your parents. Do you like yourself? Would you hang out with yourself if you were a friend? The list goes on and on.

And if you feel disgusted, angry and sad, and if the answer is a big NO to whether you like yourself, or whether you would ever hang out with someone like yourself, then how the hell are others going to love you? How are you going to love yourself, for who you are, when you don’t even know who the hell you are, and when others can’t handle you anymore and start leaving you, when you have no family or friends left. For me, this was rock bottom. The outside world was rejecting me, and I was rejecting myself. No wonder I didn’t want to be a part of this world anymore.

It’s normal to experience a number of rock bottoms along the way to spiritual enlightenment, as you can see from my life story. This doesn’t mean we’re broken. We’re only human, but we do have a soul, and we live in a spiritual world that wants to see us learn the lessons of this world. If we weren’t just human sometimes, we wouldn’t grow.

We need to wake up and really see this world for what it is. Yes, humans have destroyed this world, but humans are capable of regrowing – we’re a species that has survived for millions of years. This starts with us, with you – we can’t change the world by ourselves, but together we can, and all we need to do is start the healing process from within. It’s up to us to make the first step, to believe in our own strength and to love ourselves.

If you’re over yourself and your life, you have two choices: take the easy road and stay where you are or take the hard but worthwhile road and journey forward to an amazing life. Imagine not stressing over the small shit anymore, shit that once felt so big. Imagine having the freedom to be who you really are.

I wouldn’t have believed in a million years that I would have a successful business supporting my clients, walking side by side with them, sharing truths, tools and guidance through their awakening journey. It makes my heart sing and fills me with love to see my clients, my friends, my family, my follow soul mates I met on the way, growing on their spiritual journey. It’s an amazing feeling I can’t express. The acceptance of life, letting go of expectations, feels so freeing inside, and for me, internal freedom and peace is the most beautiful gift. The preciousness of your soul, your health, your mind, your life on this planet, on this frequency, are beyond words I can say.

Yes, this journey is painful. Yes, it might feel like your whole body is falling apart. Yes, there will be sorrow. Yes, there will be a death of the old you, the old soul that was trapped in what you thought life was or should be. But if you choose yourself and commit one hundred per cent to self-love and really wanting to live life your own way, then I guarantee one thing on this journey: you will never regret it. I can’t wait to see your journey of waking up to your purpose and love.

I have to say, before now, I had no interest in writing my story or sharing it. I’ve written about it for my studies, or to help my friends and clients, but I never thought I would be writing about my traumas in a book. It’s a dream come true, and I hope this will help others to speak up sooner than later, without fear, and to fight for their human rights on this earth.

Love always.

SoulzbyCarmela

healing
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