Healing Never Stops

After a relatively strong 2023 where I felt like I healed a lot, I thought 2024 was going to be amazing as I embarked on a new year of continuing the upwards trajectory to becoming more healed. I was ready to embrace more of my light!

Yep, it would seem the universe had that exact plan… Except, what nobody warned me was the upward trajectory of healing is a bloody tough, long, dark winding road. With sharp bends and jagged cliff edges, consuming shadows and darkness…

2024, one of the toughest years yet…

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January started well. I had a goal to quit my job in March, not really knowing what my plan would be but knowing I needed a change. Then I got a new boss… Someone who backed me 100%, who I felt trusted me implicitly, with an equal dose of challenge. We could disagree and have heated debates, whilst having respect for our differences. Inspired and aligned, we set off on a journey to trigger the start huge cultural change.

Then he left. And it quickly became the year I hit burn out.

I was faced with an organisation that left me in a position of being a key person dependency. Facing a barrage of stakeholders, most struggling to deal with ambiguity and bombarding me with questions they didn’t really need to answer to. Cognitive overload kicked in as I frantically jumped from topic to topic, conversations spanning most organisational departments… ?

I fought hard to change things for the collective and in the process, neglected myself… Working 12-hour days and weekends, I starved myself of joy, not prioritising my basic needs – eating and exercise, nor doing the things that filled my cup… I decided enough was enough and in May, I gave my resignation.

With a 3 month notice period, I committed to working extremely hard to get to the 11 June, to ensure their biggest launch of a change to ways of working was a success. Come 13 June, I hit a wall. Incredibly exhausted and on the brink of a breakdown, I was emotionally depleted and exhausted to the bone.

I was lucky. Lucky enough to be given garden leave. And thank God I was because I needed to recover. There is no way I would have been able to continue working at that pace, and have been in a good enough place to start looking for a new job… Never mind show up for interviews in the right frame of mind…

Garden leave was a blessing.

I questioned why I had allowed myself to get into a place where my career nearly crippled my mind, body and spirit. I learned about the cost that comes from leading a life from a place of survival, attachment and need. Every decision I made, was made for everyone and everything else but myself. I learned that it is never ok to put anything above my health. My health really is my wealth.

This had to happen though, it was all part of leading me to what I did next...

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I can only describe the next decision as being something I was divinely guided towards, how the timing aligned perfectly with everything that I’d struggled through from the decisions I had made, and to where I was at this moment in time in this thing called ‘life’.

I took a leap of faith to travel to a retreat in Europe to dive into an alternative therapy practice that would end up being the most profound, insightful and life-changing experience in my adult life so far…

My intention for writing this, is that hopefully it might help someone else.

The below describes the accounts of my experience, some of which might not make a whole lot of sense…

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Session 1 – Uncovering my biggest (unfounded) fear

Sat in a room with 16 other people, there’s a chap called Pin sat beside me experiencing body contortions. He looks like he’s having an extremely difficult time, struggling way more than me – having some kind of somatic release.

The thing is, I’m sat in this environment feeling incredibly alone and isolated, I feel like I need help. I’m panicking, hyper-vigilant and wondering why I’m here – feeling like I’ve made a really big mistake. I feel incredibly uncomfortable and I’m starting to feel suicidal. I feel like I need to escape and there is no way out. I really need to talk to one of the guides but with Pin sat next to me, I start to tell myself that I can’t ask for help because he’s really struggling, and he needs help more than I do.

I just sit there in my own pain, struggling to ask for help, struggling to express my needs because I felt like me asking for my needs to be met would be so selfish of me when there is someone more in need. I consider that if I’m to stay stuck with these emotions, feeling disconnected, alone and isolated – I would kill myself.

At the exact moment, I think about my dear friend Laura who took her life a year earlier. I’m hit by the deepest wave of compassion I have ever felt, I feel it in the core of my being. How alone she must have felt, how disconnected and frightened she must have been. My heart breaks for her, I sob for her.

The compassion breaks me from this feeling of having no way out, moving me from panic and despair to compassion and love. Reminding me that our emotions are impermanent, reminding me we never stay in one state for too long.

My reflections from this first day were initially that my biggest fear was in feeling disconnected, isolated and alone. Yet, WOW, as I write this 5 months later, it is more than that...

The fear is about the feelings of selfishness I associate with having needs! The fear is about how alone, disconnected and isolated I feel from not expressing them, something I have avoided doing my whole life!

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Session 2 – My greatest love

I entered day 2 feel super apprehensive. Session 1 was intense, overwhelming and challenging to say the least. I was not looking forward to this… I questioned whether I wanted to do Session 2, could I cope? What is likely to come up for me this time?

I took the plunge, diving into the unknown and surrendering to whatever I needed to experience… It was beautiful, the most beautiful experience I’ve ever had.

I felt this overwhelming love, love for myself. My whole body vibrating, like a cat purring, my heart bursting open with love – covering my entire chest! I have never felt a love like it in my entire life, and I gave that to myself!

I met my inner child, a playful, joyful little girl – one I’d never met before. She was cute, happy and innocent. Music sounded different, more peaceful and calming. Water she drank replenished her soul as she sent it to the parts of her body that she felt needed it the most.

She danced, not caring what she looked like or who was watching. She was just beautifully authentic. She had this incredible level of empathy, a kind soul and a deep care for herself and everyone around her. In these moments, she made choices for her, choosing what she liked and making this experience her own.

That girl has been hiding behind the fears of what life gave her that told her the world wasn’t safe to just ‘be’. She’s still afraid, she’s still learning how to make herself feel safe enough to show herself to the world.

That girl is me.

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Session 3 – Stuck in the darkness…

After session 2, I’m raring to go for session 3. Excited to be able to experience the same beautiful, deep love I’d experienced in the previous session.

Bang!

It was not what I expected. Immediately I’m overcome with this darkness, this overwhelming sadness, despair and anguish. A lot came up about my childhood, I felt sick, I wanted to be sick but I couldn’t. I felt stuck, stuck in this all consuming darkness.

My body was exhausted, I wanted to lay down, to sleep. Every time I tried to lay down, it felt like the blackness was swallowing me up, no light, just darkness and despair.

I was stuck, I had this feeling stuck inside my body at the bottom of my stomach that I just wanted rid of. I wanted it out. I felt nausea but no matter how much I tried, I could not get rid of this feeling. I felt completely confused, trapped and unable to move on from all these overwhelming and all consuming feelings.

I was in and out of the room, panicked about how to get out of this situation, of this feeling. Over a 6-hour period, I sat on the floor with different guides who just held me, supported me. I’ve never needed that support as much as I did that day, I felt completely broken, lost. I said to Sophie (one of the guides), ‘I can’t do this’, all she had to do with give me this look at said ‘you’ve fucking got this girl’. I will never forget that look, it is exactly what I needed in that moment.

6 hours I sat in this darkness until I reminded myself to drink water, to send it to where I was stuck. After drinking so much water, I finally threw up. And when I did, it was black and gritty, I knew it had been sat in my body for some 30 odd years. It was disgusting.

I immediately felt lighter, relief. I was still incredibly overwhelmed but I felt more free. What I’d been too afraid to accept, I was finally forced to accept and deal with in those 6 hours.

And it was the biggest release of my entire life…

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I came back changed.

What nobody warns you enough about though is the emptiness in the middle. The bit where you’re no longer who you were and you’re not quite sure who you’re becoming. The shedding of what needs to be released, without the immediate transformational blossoming into that beautiful butterfly...

What nobody ever tells you is it never stops. Healing never stops!

This year has been a constant fight. One that has been more about fighting internal battles and patterns I couldn’t even wrap my head around, confusion I just couldn’t make sense of.

I’ve identified patterns in my relationships before, but never really understood the underlying issues. This time, I’ve had profound insights that have smacked my right in the face, knocking me off my feet. So blindingly obvious now that they can no longer be ignored. Sometimes I don’t catch myself soon enough. I get triggered and I react, then I have to learn. I have to sit and understand what the hell just happened and why.

35 years and I’ve only just identified what my actual needs are. I had struggled so long with this question… Thinking ‘food, water, shelter?’, what the hell else do I need?! Some really simple stuff actually, but stuff I’ve never had, the things I've never given myself! And now I realise, so bloody important. Consistency for one. Clarity. Emotional safety. Patience.

All of these, I’ve been ignoring in myself. Entering situations, wanting someone else to give me what I’ve been neglecting in myself. Accepting things that kept me trapped in cycle of childhood trauma.

I am not responsible for my trauma, but I’m responsible for dealing with my triggers and for breaking the patterns. I am responsible for not triggering other people. I have to take accountability to meet my own needs, to catch myself when I’m triggered, to self-sooth and regulate my own emotions. I’m responsible for unpicking all that I have learned, stripping myself back to the pure heart that resides in my chest. Loving from a place of love, not loving from attachment and fear of abandonment.

I’ve come to learn that I’m not meant to heal the shadows, I’m to accept them and love them. There is no light without the darkness. I’m meant to sit with my raw emotions, to ask myself to not let the feelings overwhelm me. Instead I can invite them forward so I can recognise why they show up and reassure myself that I’m ok now, I’m safe now.

My self-awareness is deeper than it has ever been and I have integrated a lot but I still have more to do… I feel like I’m only just starting to learn who I am, unpicking all the layers of fear-based protection, of living in survival. I’m peeling back the layers to find the beautiful, playful girl that’s been hiding all these years…

Thank you for to those who showed up in both chaos and peace. People are our greatest mirrors, reflecting back our unhealed parts. The bits about ourselves that we reject, the parts we neglect. Each person in my life, I’m eternally grateful for because you were definitely sent to teach me something new.

Protecting myself at all costs is now my number one priority. This does not mean closing my heart, in fact the complete opposite. It means loving myself tenderly enough to put my own needs first, developing the strongest relationship with myself and having the healthiest boundaries I can ever have because that girl inside of me deserves the God damn world.

The greatest gift we are given is the gift of self-discovery, the gift of learning to be ourselves. Self-Love will always be the strongest medicine.

I Am. No descriptors and no identity. I just ‘Am’.

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