Well, it's been a hot minute since I've written anything fresh here. While I would love to sprinkle glittery joy all over this piece of writing and take the time to smooth any rough edges that might offend someone and/or give another person any reason to gift me with another label to disqualify anything I say, yeah, that's just not me anymore. Positivity is great. Hope is great. Encouragement is great. Uplifting others is great. There is a time and place for all of that, but there is also a time and a place to sink to the bottom and rediscover a vulnerability that propels you to act in accordance with your genuine self in response to the current situation you are facing.
I'm a wordy writer, I know. I wish I was a simpler writer, but life and my thoughts are truly complex and intermingled in depth that is not easily expressed with simple thoughts.
So here we go!
Today is Christmas 2023. This marks the 10 year anniversary of the hardest and most profound experience I have ever lived through. To set the stage, I was a newly single mom of four little kids. That is hard enough on its own, but just a couple months prior I was a fully functional stay at home, homeschooling mom, working on a degree one evening and every Saturday each month, running a photography studio out of my garage to pay for my education, and believe it or not, I was thriving with a 97.2% grade in my accounting class, and managing everything else (maybe not perfectly, but adequately).
My husband (at the time) and I were separated and living apart within our home. Obviously not ideal, but it was what it was. Life be like that sometimes. Let's all take a breath right now. We are human in a messy world. That's ok. It's expected that none of us are perfect. Breath again. It's okay. I'm okay, we're all (potentially) ok. That Christmas, however, I was not.
Petitioning for a divorce, isolated, misunderstood, battling through what I know now as extreme PTSD from a life of unprocessed trauma and grief, and sinking further and further into a depressive episode. That Christmas, no, it was not sparkly or pleasant. I was trying my hardest to stand up and get through the things I knew I was capable of but my mind was like, "Ummm... how's that working for you? We have some things to address here first." With no guidance or support and with my stubborn refusal to address my pain, I got lost in the darkness.
That's how it happened. That's where I lost all ability to care for myself. In the days following that Christmas I gave all the strength that I had to my children. I woke them up, I fed them, I sent the ones in school off to school and in the time that I was alone, I slept on the couch until my children returned. I greeted them and fed them and got them ready for bed when it was time. And with their basic needs taken care of, I would collapse back on the couch. At some point in time, my mind completely broke, I stopped eating, I stopped sleeping, I stopped being able to distinguish between my thoughts created from a failing mind and the reality around me. As hard as it is to say, fortunately the kids' dad gained enough insight into the situation and did what he could to intervene.
There was a long period of blur and things probably better left unsaid, but I remember being confronted by a doctor in a room of the mental health wing of a hospital. He gave me a clear warning regarding my condition because I was refusing any sort of medical intervention. "You need to sleep. If you don't sleep, you will die. The medication we are trying to give you will help you sleep." I refused one more time but later walked myself to the nurses station and requested my prescribed medication.
In the contemplative time I had between the doctor's visit and the time that I took my first step to recovery, my mind tirelessly battled itself. I had been involved in the religious domain of Christianity since the time I was a teenager and I found myself living through an inner experience of turbulent spiritual thoughts.
Five years ago, I recorded them as follows:
There was a moment in my life when every drop of my being was suspended in time. Nothingness was around me for as far as I could see. The only form that I could make out was myself and the light around me, which gradually faded into black. I was utterly alone with my thoughts, and my thoughts were terrifying.
In the moments leading up to that point, I had been shaken to my core when the coverings that blanketed my life were suddenly removed. Security, stability, joy, peace, and rest were gone. There was nothing that I could do to bring them back to me. I was left with only one thing--a gaping wound. That wound for me, boiled down to just one word, was mistrust.
Until that day, I had never really understood how foundational trust is for living. I never really saw just how much blind trust we have each and everyday--that the world will keep on spinning and functioning just as we have always known. There is consistency in nature, and we walk by unspoken beliefs that are created from our perception that guides us through our lives. We trust our perceptions to be real and the world around us to function as we’ve always known. That dark moment wasn’t about the world around me though. It was only about my fear-trenched mind and the absence of any goodness that I had ever known.
I didn’t know what was beyond the darkness all around me. Every second in that space was filled with confusion and terror. Thoughts flooded in and challenged my perception about everything I had ever known. My mind was a battlefield and I had no control. I could not see reality through the war inside my head, and I questioned everything. Everything. And in that darkness I had to make a choice.
And so, I closed my eyes and let go. I released every thought into the void around me, and as my mind began to go quiet, I found myself speaking three words that brought back every good thing that I had lost. I told myself, “God is real.” And the sound of war returned as I spoke to myself again, “God is real.” The warring continued, and I became more determined to say those three words. Over and over, I repeated them. Each time, my mind fought against me.
Is he really?
God is real.
Are you sure?
God is real.
You don’t deserve him.
God is real.
But he’s left you.
God is real.
You are confused.
God is real.
You’re not safe.
God is real.
He won’t bless you.
God is real.
You can’t reach him.
God is real.
You’re unprotected.
God is real.
You have lost.
God is real.
He can’t be trusted.
God is real.
You’re really hurting.
God is real.
He can’t love you.
God is real.
You’re so afraid.
In the darkness, my mind battled itself and I knew that I was losing, but those three words kept repeating. Then a glimmer of hope sprouted, “God is real and... he is good.” Nothing else mattered. I couldn’t see anything else besides those two things. Whatever thought entered my mind was quickly quieted by the thought of God’s overwhelming goodness. His goodness that exists despite a single thing that I could ever do or produce on my own--good or bad. His goodness despite whatever the world may be and whether or not I could see and understand. I knew that whatever accusation was thrown at me, whatever judgement was made against me, whatever consequence I had to face, whatever existed outside my nothingness, whoever I truly was, it didn't matter in light of who God is. All my fear fell away as my trust in God’s goodness returned. I knew that He was just, and although I could not make heads or tails of anything else, that was all that matter.
In that moment, I surrendered and recovery began.
The light began flooding back in. Everything grew bright and I was overwhelmed by a sudden sense of weightlessness. Again, I was suspended in time and space, but this time the void was filled with peace. And as the light grew brighter, I opened my eyes and the darkness was gone. It was daylight. I could see a bed and four walls around me. There was a large window and curtains. I understood that I was in a hospital room and I needed nothing else other than to take the medicine that my doctor had prescribed so that I could get better, and go home, and see my family.
Recovery wasn't easy. It was a damn hard struggle. It required me to firstly acknowledge that what I had been doing for 31 years of my life to cope with hardship was no longer working. I had to give up my concern regarding the opinions of those around who could easily judge without any insight into the real experiences of my life. I had to let my faith in many religious beliefs and structures shatter. I had to wake up to the reality that my deep since of empathy for others was masking my own suffering. I had to let many unconscious beliefs about myself, the world, and others rise to the surface and question their validity. I had to learn how to lean in and harvest my own intuition. I had to learn how to trust my perception of the world around me based off reconstructing my confidence in my ability to witness truth in the circumstances around me. I had to nurture emotional intelligence in myself for myself and speak my story to others. I had to learn what it means to be a safe person and choose my audience wisely. I had to face many hard things about traumatizing life experiences that I had and own how those things distorted my own thoughts and actions towards myself and others. I learned to think critically. I learned how to have a voice. I learned how to have an opinion. I learned to be weak. I learned to be human. I learned how to really be me and live an authentic life according to my own values, goals, and needs. I had to put my healing and growth above every single thing I was up against. With four children, that was hard. Ultimately, though, the work I was doing on myself was done in blind faith that it would have a lasting impact on the health of my children whether that was seen in the moment or not.
As I faced myself and buckled down to transform my life into an avenue of healing and strength for myself, my family, and those around me, many, many years later I finally found my strength. Now that it is here, it will never be taken from me again. Because it is here, I can offer my strength to others and meet them where they are at if they are in a place to receive help in anyway. And most importantly, because I've had the privilege to give myself space and time to heal, I can hold space for those struggling for a tiny gasp of air. I'm not afraid to know my limitations and offer aid in anyway that I can.
Since I know that trauma comes in many shapes and forms, I don't need to stand as judge and qualify a person's experiences. Most likely, if you're human (you are, aren't you?) then you know hardship to some degree. And because you do, I bet you have unchecked thoughts effecting your life with or without your conscious understanding. I know I still do. Your ability to reason with other points of view and experiences, I am sure, is to some extent hindered by your own need for survival. We all have the same basic needs in life.
So this Christmas, I sit here and look back with gratitude that ten years ago I was shattered to my core. It was a living hell. I was truly lost and needed to fight with every ounce of my being to work towards health and healing, but in the end I was given opportunity to find true and lasting peace within my soul by meeting myself face to face. I had to face the highs and lows, the good and bad, the beautiful and ugly and sit there until I learned self love and radical acceptance. That humble propellent is what drives me today.
And every time I meet with a disruption of my peace, I can pause and work through what is lying underneath, examine the roots of any chaos and decide how to clear the way. More often than not, it is a small part of me still sitting beneath the rubble, trying to be heard. So I stop and I listen, I handle myself with care and in that space I sort out my feelings until I can make a path towards peace again. I have learned the powerful art of advocacy for myself and others who are in that hard space of fighting for a right to take up space and exist.
I had a whole other direction I wanted to take with this piece of writing today, but here we are, and the rest I will tackle another day.
This is not a holly jolly Christmas for myself this year and for many others, but I am still committed to observing the freedom that many of us have to take up space and exist. I'm grateful for each and every person fighting for that freedom to be delivered to all people living under oppression. I think this year, it's clearer than it's ever been that the human race still has a long ways to go. I humbly acknowledge that we may never get there in my lifetime but on this tenth anniversary of the beginning of my emergence, I am more fully committed to health and healing, embracing my strength and fighting with all that I am to aid a world (and myself) in need of care.
Thank you, freedom fighters and peacemakers!
Ahhhh... my kids just arrived so it's family time :)
Comments
Post a Comment