Sometimes life is messy

Life is sometimes messy.

Sometimes things don’t go to plan. We feel confused, shocked, disorientated.

WTF just happened?

The wilderness of our humanity is what just happened - places within ourselves that are hidden away, that we haven’t acknowledged, seen, felt, turned towards and loved.

These places are calling for our attention.

The messier it is, the more these places are calling for our love, requesting that we no longer put our backs to what has been hidden amongst the woods.

Life is sometimes messy.

When my life has been messy my saving grace is the deep, deep knowing that love is omnipresent.

Love will never turn her back on us.

Love is always weaving her hand to have us remember who I am, who you are, who we are.

And what I’ve been becoming aware of as I have been facing into the wilderness of my own humanity is that kindness doesn’t always come wrapped in gentle package.

It would be nice if that were the case, but sometimes nice is impotent.

Sometimes kindness is fierce, and needs to be.

There have been several times from June last year and then in December that kindness had to slap me in the face in order for me to face inwards and shock me out of my denial.

There were behaviours rooted in powerlessness, beliefs rooted in judgment that I’d not seen, and therefore not taken responsibility for.

Whilst this remained unseen, my circumstances had the power over me, and thus my circumstances were set on a repeat cycle.

I thought I was taking action to rectify these unwanted realities, but action without awareness did not create any freedom.

I remember sitting on the last day of a retreat that I was called to attend, and I had a panic attack for no conscious reason. My life was going well. There was nothing major for me to resolve, well at least that’s what I thought. I felt sick, my breathing was all over the place and I felt so incredibly disorientated. It was highly, highly uncomfortable.

WTF was happening? The wilderness of my humanity was what was happening.

Love had me by the balls and there was no way that I could look away.

Someone said to me, ‘Gisele you were so brave to go there’ but honestly, I had no choice. The uncontrollable nature of what was happening within my body would not let me turn away.

And so with the incredible support of my retreat leaders and peers, I turned towards what I had buried for years. Deep wells of hurt and zero compassion for myself. Up until that time, I had blocked it all out. And what dumbfounded me as I began to unravel was that I would never have defined myself as someone who had suffered ‘trauma’. Who me? Yes me.

It was probably one of the most uncomfortable moments of my life sitting in that chair, unravelling.

But there was a part of me who knew that love was here.

But this time love was being fucking fierce.

Love would no longer allow me to sit in powerlessness and judgment.

Why?

Because love and nothing short of love is the choice I’ve made this lifetime.

And so love grabbed me by the balls that day, on the ‘last’ day of retreat when I thought we were just doing something lovely like ‘wrapping up’.

I thank Penny Patterson and Jason Snaddon for holding me so brilliantly that day.

As the months unfolded after that day on that chair, I could see why love waved her fierce hand.

What I had judged was now freed.

I had a much, much bigger capacity for compassion where others would still remain in their attachment to the stories they were telling themselves.

That depth of compassion became my balm and not only for myself but for others. It created connection; a connection that would have been absent had I not been slapped.

And in fact, I feel incredibly honoured that I can hold this depth of compassion, this ability to see through the eyes of love when others can only see the absence of it. It feels like one of life's most precious gifts.

And.....

Sometimes life can get messy again.

Sometimes I still have to dig deep into the wilderness of my own humanity.

But what I know for sure is that love always has our backs, and sometimes when things are really messy especially in relationship, love asks us to walk through the wilderness of our humanity together so that we can return home again, together.