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Every event has brought me here
The past week has been a challenge for me. Triggering events from start to finish. The last time I felt like this I was on the verge of a breakdown. That breakdown was avoided by paying attention to the signs and finally heeding the advice given to me for years and years: meditate.
When I did just a 5 minute meditation everything changed. You can read all about it here (and then stay for the guided meditations). I was able to transform a breakdown into a breakthrough.
Gawd, that sounds cheesy.
The truth is I was able to exert some amount of control over my life. I allowed my heart let go of some of its fears. I felt some of the natural insecurity subside. And everything started to become so…open.
I’ve done a lot of thinking recently about the walls I’ve built up around myself. The lack of dating. The refusal to engage flirtatiously with someone. The counter-intuitive pulling away if someone accidentally gets too close. But that refusal to dream big is far beyond just relationships and potentials. It’s how I’ve chosen to see my calling. How I’ve perceived my own personal power. How I’ve advanced my own dreams. I temper everything so either I don’t disappoint anyone or so I don’t have to experience disappointment either.
In this journey over the past 6 months, I feel like that openness has expanded beyond what I’ve ever achieved before. I can see and feel so much. And in so doing I’m starting to draw people toward me again. By reclaiming my passion, I’m able to give voice to a power within that has been cocooned away healing its wounds over the past few years.
I’m not a stranger to trauma. I’ve had more than my fair share over the past few years. It’s not fair and it’s not right. But the worst of it was in 2012. While there were a few noteably amazing things that happened that year, it overall was a devastating year. It was the last time I was able
to trust anyone or anything. Because even though I passed the bar that year, I was being torn apart by grief. Grief for an abusive brother (yes, you can grieve abusive people too).
Retraumatization showed up in so many forms compounded with heavier forms of secondary trauma thrown in. It had an impact of everything–from insomnia to flashbacks, to uncontrollable crying, to an inability to have sex at all. I really couldn’t function at all after the bar exam. To the point that i even injured my knees and ankles and have trouble walking for months. My body was reflecting my inner world.
This journey to where I am right now started when I was at my lowest then. When I thought I would never feel again, a few days before my birthday I had a dream that allowed me to believe that I would recover. That my soul would come back to life. It was so visceral and so real that 4 years later I can still feel the presence and subject of that dream in my everyday life.
So, let’s call that presence “The Druid”. Let’s say this presence has been growing in my awareness since that dream. Wild and controlled. He is an image from another dream years ago. He a priest of nature and me a priestess of love. Committed partners but both with the freedom to honor the organic connection that is created between people.
So since that day 6 months ago, it’s like this Druid spirit has been growing in influence in my life. I’ve been growing more weary of making my life conform to anyone else’s standards. I’m willing to honor consciously discussed agreements for my partners, but no longer willing to hide behind the walls. The Druid spirit calls me from behind my walls. He calls me to build myself back up again.
Every event that has happened to me has been for this: to find a path to rebuild and renew myself. Every obstacle in my path has been to get me closer to my true self, to find control over my surroundings, over my destiny. Everything as been to gain insight into who I really am–without the chamelon skin and delayed wishes.
It’s felt…big…all this time. But I have been impatient for results. And after having one of the hardest weeks on the job I’ve ever had, I took some clear time for myself. And honestly it has been about savoring the sweet joy of being present in the moment. To sit on the back porch at night feeling the breeze around me. To allow the sensations of life to permeate my life on a deeper level. To be completely emotionally open and honest with Warrior. All of these have been acts of radical self-love. A level I never thought I would achieve.
The lesson here is: Fear not for your path, my friends. Listen to the whispers in your heart, follow the light offered to you. Those whisper, that light and your trust– They will lead you home.
Sunrise
I awoke from a nightmare early this morning. Yes, yes…it was just a dream, but you know how those images stay with you? How the emotions stirred up in a dream haunt and disturb you in your waking life? This isn’t the first time I have had this dream…but it was the first time I tracked it to its source. It is sunrise, I am awake. And I am grateful.
Having slept poorly for the past few weeks I couldn’t imagine anything worse than having to wake up at 5:30 in the morning screaming and crying. I’ve woken up in part because my dreams have me work even harder than I have to in real life. Chasing down leads, following evidence, questioning my every move. It’s exhausting. And this morning I finally came face-to-face with the entity causing all this turmoil in my nightmares, the client I had been “serving” …a very cunning, old and yet wise giant spider. A Queen of Deception set on ensnaring me in her trap.
I am arachnophobic. So let that sit for a moment. And one of my greatest fears is being trapped.
I saw her through a slit in a wall after taking all her advice, after chasing down every lead. And there she was. In all her grotesque beauty. Disturbed and scared I woke up screaming “Never Again!” And in the dark before the dawn, I finally understand it.
In my waking life, just like in my sleeping life, I have been chasing down task after task. But like in my dreams, I have been doing these things, not to serve my higher self, but instead to serve my fears. These tasks, these duties, these actions have not brought me to higher awareness or achievement, but have only served to reinforce the lowest of myself: my fears.
And my response, just like in my moments where I awoke screaming is the same: never again. Never again will I pursue the “safe” path in order to assuage and protect my fears. Never again will I second-guess my motives, my actions, my very life or lifestyle choices to serve and defend the basest of ideas. Never again.
Fear is the antithesis of love. Once it enters into a relationship it stands in opposition of love…questioning it, distrusting it, suspecting it, doubting it. But I don’t want to be known as a woman of fear. I want to be known as a woman of love. I want it to flow out of every corner of my being. It is what I want to give to my clients, my projects, my family, my enemies. I want Love to prevail. Not fear.
All this chasing. All this turmoil had a purpose. And I will take it…
The dawn indeed is quite beautiful.
