Below are the original statements I bought into, the false believes and underneath in italics, the new reality and perception that is my current truth:
I’m bad, the problem, it’s my fault, I have to be responsible for everything. I deserve it Seeing how I’ve carried all the unresolved baggage in family/culture/religion (and as woman) I have no skin, my boundaries are non-existent, anything can come in even if uninvited Nothing has permission unless I say so...my body is my own......'my dragon's fire fucking burns anyone who violates my boundaries' (these boundaries of steel that are the marker for those with the most self compassion) I’m a woman, second rate citizen, here to serve men, not have needs (inner patriarch) To give up this martyrdom, enslavement and prostitution that has gone on for millennia - standing for return of sacred feminine to save Mother Earth, nature, the human species that has been split Head, intelligence, control, omnipotence Body has the wisdom, this intuitive and implicit wisdom ('body holds the score' book by Bessel Von Kolk) Outside authority knows it all, they have the answers and way for me Realisation how many are deluded, psychotic, living in dark ages and often evil (like big Pharma and Monsanto), they do not have my best interests…..staying with my own spiritual truth and wisdom, knowing I am my own saviour Separation, doing it solo, needing no-one, individual power, competition/power games, co-dependency Conscious Relationship as fuel for growth. Inclusion, diversity, equality, mutuality, resonant community, no-one is separate or above/below. Shaman’s way. Surrendering to more space….the sacred, allowing in GRACE, this higher power and divine wisdom to guide and support. Sacred marriage - intimate and authentic relating with commitment to evolving Fill up the day with over-doing, never ending lists, too many people and their stories, scattered and over stimulated.......because emptiness feels dangerous and, scary. Abandonment, inability to self soothe, no way to create Emptiness, new possibilities from space and embodied 'not knowing' - the Goddess to enter, hold, self care. Containment and boundaries. Writing as a lifeline…creative gifts. Sacred relationships carefully chosen Living in black and white polarities, standing on one foot, I’m right, they are wrong, I’m sorted and healed as finish line Seeing greys….knowing opposites in myself, learning to self love, accepting all of it (all the paradox), being compassionate and therefore including more of humanity without judgment. Straddling opposites, dancing with power and vulnerability. Shadow work to avoid hurting self and others as responsibility grows with more awareness Job Titles that crucify me like killer inner critic, scapegoat, victim, saviour/rescuer..... Reclaiming disowned and blind selves. Having primary selves grow up to do real, soul jobs ie critic becomes discerning judge, scapegoat becomes whistleblower, victim becomes compassionate advocate and rescuer becomes emissary/light worker/wounded healer for others….selves like the witness who came out to see bigger picture Surviving awful experiences, trauma and challenges - life is unfair, I’m at the mercy of whatever happens, imploded trauma, nothing will change, it’s misery, hopeless and doomed. I am powerless. Understanding nature of trauma which is huge for everyone but misunderstood. Bringing suffering back from exile, reclaiming the sacred feminine. Recognising this as initiation, the forging of resilience, wisdom, humility, compassion - this alchemic truth of 'holy brokenness', in order to awaken and do life work. Being in Service, this the real destination. Heart opening. Being moulded…post traumatic injury to post traumatic growth. Helping others by sharing journey, holding a lantern in their darkness. Standing as light-bearer, owning this light, recognising power as huge responsibility. You are fundamentally evil, sinned and are beyond redemption. Needing priest or holy person to transcend Connecting to self as sacred and part of God/Goddess. No middle man is needed, separation is over, all is forgiven. Coming back to the body - going down to the womb, to Spiritual Embodiment. Sacred Marriage within myself. There is no good/bad, it is all energy wanting to come home to the light…..to love it all is key.
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Until she was 39 years old, she was totally programmed, conditioned, adapted to serve others with no connection to herself whatsoever. She knew nothing different. She didn’t see this as a power game or as slavery that takes place in families and globally, everywhere on the planet. She was compliant, totally asleep, easily manipulated having given her power away from the beginning. Energetically it was an absolute ‘take over’. She was anaesthetised with no sense of self. She did not know anger and she had cried perhaps once in ten years. At age 60, after 20 years with mystery illness and journeying to the Underworld, she now understands the victim, prostitute, saboteur, servant and slave archetypes. She knows what it is to be objectified, to have no rights, to be a belonging but not to belong. She knows very well, the masks of primary selves (ways of coping) that cover these hopeless, unworthy, un-redeemable parts such as the good girl, pleaser, super achiever, perfectionist, heroine, care-taker, the activist, the revolutionary…… all with the hidden and unconscious sentence really saying “If I do enough for you, if I’m good enough, if I change the world and save you, will I matter, can you be there for me, will you love me then?”.
She knows what it’s like to push herself to be perfect, to feel she cannot have flaws, to believe there is some place where she will be sorted and healed. A place where illness and pain doesn’t exist, this exhaustive and illusory path that is not realistic or viable but which drives her always forward. She knows what it’s like to feel she has to be perfect to justify her existence, to feel that she matters and has something to offer. She knows the devastation of falling back to feeling suicidal and wanting out, identifying herself as a total failure and not giving herself permission to be vulnerable, sick or needing help. She knows how she can push herself to an early grave, this inner slave driver who is brutal and unrelenting. She knows the nectar of what it’s like to receive a different perception that ‘perfect women are not real and real women are not perfect’, to realise that we are here to keep rising, again and again or be like the rocket that went to the moon and yet was 98% off course. She knows how important it is to give herself permission to rest and play, this balance and deservedness being the hardest thing of all in her life. She knows how damaging it can be when she still chooses inappropriate people whether friends, suppliers or healers, who cannot hear or see her, where she defaults to over trusting, where she somehow takes on their projections…how new it is for her to stop this, see the signs, step away and say no. She knows the confusion and double bind terror of not recognising the danger signals, not knowing who or what to trust, feeling this lack of safety with herself and life. This implosion and paralysis, the inability to stand and fight as freezing takes over. She knows what it’s like, the terror of not trusting herself or the choices she would make and of having to relearn this skill because her boundaries and sense of self was shattered so early on. So with this hard earned wisdom, she finally knows the joy of making good decisions trusting her body’s implicit wisdom and seeing how the universe responds to her strong and clear energy, this manifestation process, that finally is happening. This return to the sacred feminine that flows in her veins and is unstoppable. Breaking out from these chains, the vows and promises she has made………she knows how others are challenged as she changes and refuses to follow their dictate whether in family, work or society. She knows the scapegoat well, what it is to be the problem, to take on all the responsibility that others cannot or will not own. She knows the dark night’s of the soul when all light has gone out and there is nothing to hold onto, no programme that makes any sense. She knows what it is to be excommunicated from family and society and to loathe and hate her body in the same brutal way. To not fit anymore, to have spoken the unforgivable truth that they cannot accept, the sins of the fathers, this no-man’s land of standing totally on your own with no external reference points. She knows how nature, animals, writing, prayer and a few special souls changed her for ever, were her life line during these long years in the wilderness. She learnt how to self soothe, to return to her body and hold her wounds, these tiny forbidden and banished inner children who needed love and healthy parenting. She knows about magic, miracles and the power of grace that comes in many disguises, how it has always kept her going in ways that are still incomprehensible. She is finally beginning to know how her sacred connection sustains her above all else, is always there and will never leave. She knows how the adversary challenges so often ended up to be the brutal grace that woke her up even if it was kicking and screaming. The mystery illness that doctors didn’t have a clue about, that caused her to crash and forced her to be with herself as she couldn’t do anything else…..years of this torture……coming back to her body with all it’s memories and terrifying symptoms, all its repressed rage and imploded grief. All the trauma that she was marinated in, that dis-regulated her nervous system causing her to live disassociated, out of her body, unable to return, literally shocked out of her skin. She knows what it means to be 'beside herself' with fear, to have that much abject terror making it impossible to sit still and not distract herself in some way. She knows the joy of releasing this stuck energy and reclaiming her life force so that she could find who she was…her soul’s calling, her sovereignty, her mission and the reason she incarnated. She was not born to be a slave and object for others but she needed to know this programme in order to understand the dynamic playing out everywhere on our planet. This was the initiation so that she would know it first hand, feel this betrayal in every cell of her body. She knows how these betrayals broke her heart but also helped her to see where it had been broken before, to heal these original wounds perpetrated by those who were supposed to care for her. She knows that despite everything, her heart has never been destroyed….the cracks are where the light gets in as Leonard Cohen said in his beautiful song, it’s the fuel for our greatest gifts to come forth. She knows from her long journey to the Underworld, that the alchemic, soul’s journey is about being forged, it’s an initiation that is designed to bring forth resilience, endurance, courage, strength, compassion, wisdom, humility and grace in order that we are prepared for our real life purpose. She is ready for this now. She knows the value of doing years of work on herself, the enforced periods of rest due to illness where she grew and opened up psycho-spiritually, releasing self limiting beliefs and negative energies coming from all dimensions but mostly as a result of her inner programming. She knows the universe takes us at our own estimate which now makes sense, how it is entirely impersonal so that we ultimately can choose our way. She knows the ancestors are calling on the telephone needing her/our attention, desperate for healing and honouring. She knows how at some level she chose to heal her ancestral line inter-generationally, first to see where unresolved demonic energies were bringing her down due to her low vibrations and lack of boundaries and then for the whole family system. She knows that ultimately it’s all energy and vibration, the parasites in all dimensions sucking her life force and literally ‘under her skin’ as she continues to clear chronic neurological Lyme and mould illness. She knows about her inability to say no, the mirror of her immune system that had no protection and no power to fight back, the instinct injury that was deep in her body from early abuse. She knows what it means to release trauma and heal the gaping hole that addictions used to fill, she’s done the work, it’s not for the faint-hearted and yet returning to the body is her ongoing priority....to come fully 'home'. She also knows how easily she can disassociate as a default, to go out of her body and how lost she feels when this happens like walking around as a zombie on the wrong planet. Sharing emotional truth, even when totally broken or fired up with rage, helps her come home as she dares to express whatever is happening. This is emotional alchemy. She wishes to bless those brave, precious souls who can sit with this part of her, allow all of her, because then post traumatic injury moves to post traumatic growth. Magic and miracles take place in this mutuality and shared humanity. This is the ‘Welcoming Home to the Tribe’ that she offers others, this missing piece of connecting to the family and community, and of knowing that the 'war of childhood' is finally over, as Karla McLaren speaks of, in the full healing of trauma. After years stripping back layers to find herself, she finally knows she can influence her own reality….every choice has powerful consequences, how to stay close to the sacred, praying for guidance and support. She’s not sorted or fixed, her light is as a result of her wounds. They will never go, that’s not what it’s about. She still self abandons, over-extends falls in the hole and gets over-identified with old ways and patterns of behaviour, that’s inevitable. But she has extensive resources as a result of straddling many extreme places, she’s dug deep and more importantly knows how to rise , each and every time more resilient and wise. She knows that breaking through the pain of the wound, accepting it all instead of resisting it, she can miraculously find herself held by the Goddess, held by HER in a sense of oneness and expansion. She’s a resilient survivor, she can bear the unbearable and in this surrender ironically lies the bliss that is intimately close to the pain as Kahil Gibran so beautifully describes. They are bedfellows, the joy and the suffering. Mostly, she knows how to look after her inner children and stay connected rather than splitting off. And, these days, she is usually able to shift her vibration so that light/love replaces fear and confusion……healing inter-generational unresolved trauma (seven generations before and after)……..choosing supportive, intimate and nourishing friends who have her back, even if only a small number…….and more importantly turning first to herself and her higher truth. She knows herself better now, her feelings, her needs and her longing which is to be of service, to share her story to be an inspiration for others, to shine a light in their darkness. Changing the job title of rescuer (this unconscious need for safety and validation) to Emissary of Light or Light worker…....being a compassionate witness and advocate for others, holding space above all, to be a spiritually embodied ambassador always checking in, this self awareness and reference being vital to avoid losing herself again. Years of self work making this possible, to face the shadow in herself as an ongoing process for life, in order to know how to heal and shift whatever arises, accepting it all as light, all as the One. She knows now how to get out of her own way, surrendering her life to a Higher Power, to the Goddess and allowing grace to offer the magic and miracles that make life worth living. She simply prays in the words of Caroline Myss ‘hover over me Lord, I’m about to do something stupid, guide and support me through this process……..give me your grace, strength and clarity to make healthy choices.......’ I’m remembering today the horse trainer who some 20 years ago, explained why one stallion was incapable of joining in with the other horses frolicking in the fields, throwing themselves into gay abandon as they rolled in the damp grass and he just stood and watched. Motionless and disconnected. I felt so upset about this horse, that I asked the trainer why he wasn’t enjoying being in the field with the other horses. She said this stallion had been broken into racing too young and programmed before it was ready, so he had forgotten his natural way. I remember my heart dropping to my stomach and my breathing stopped when she said these words, tears in my eyes as I felt such empathy with this beautiful, lost horse. This is my story and why I felt so upset. Our body is wise. We get triggered with what resonates and this helps us to uncover our own stories, even if we don’t know them at a cognitive level. Our bodies and felt sense speak to us if we listen. I’ve been that stallion, taken over and at the mercy of others, their programming and agendas. Like the stallion I felt like I was always watching life and not participating in it. I became a disembodied, anaesthetised, super woman, just as this horse became a champion stallion racer. I collected trophies for my mother and was a swimming champion from an early age, desperately trying to re-live the life she was never given. I did not grow up as a child with the divine right to BE which is essential to belong and which then leads to becoming. I was objectified and ‘taken over’. I was a belonging just like the stallion and I lost my will and way. Perfectionism killed my creativity and authenticity, since on auto-pilot, all that mattered was staying safe and getting ‘it’ right. I became an adapted clone, a walking zombie who did what she was told, totally invested in pleasing others. I saw this desperate emptiness, the gaping hole inside me, when I would go as a parent to my daughter’s school and hear how the teachers adored and couldn’t stop praising my daughter as an inspired, gifted and free child. Their response delighted and was a relief to me but it wasn’t until I would sit in the car to go home, that I would be overcome with a deep, heart wrenching pain, finding myself wailing uncontrollably for at least half an hour. I didn’t know that I yearned to have this same freedom, this spontaneity and vitality, I just felt broken hearted and beside myself with grief. Then I would pull myself together, put on a brave face and go home to tell the good news to my husband and later to praise my daughter for her results. I didn’t know what else to do. I felt like this empty child pretending to be a mother, going through the motions like I had never grown up. I said and did the right things. I was determined not to push and pressurise my daughter, to give her the space to be herself but the ancestral wounding was still not cleared. Years later I realised I had given birth to two beautiful children without even knowing I had a womb or where it was. I didn’t know I had soul rape, that I had been betrayed and used for the narcissistic agenda of others. I appeared to have everything. Our family was ‘nice’ and middle class just as Alice Miller discusses in her book ‘The Drama of a Gifted Child’. I had the nickname of ‘golden girl’, with spun gold locks to match and I never put a foot wrong. I even married a man with the surname Knight and we adored each other. I couldn’t share my confusion with anyone, it didn’t make sense back then, the programme was still intact. I felt like I was going mad when the intense feelings would flood in for no apparent reason, like during a parent’s meeting, so I quickly shoved them back down again and got on with business as normal. If I was totally focussed externally on the ‘other’, making sure they were happy, everything was fine. I didn't know I was a chronic co-dependent with no self reference. I rarely made a mistake and therefore no-one complained. On the very few occasions when my cover was exposed, like at my daughter’s school, I was suddenly floored and thrown off quilter, shot back in time. I had no footing and whilst I had the capacity to separate out and not project my own sadness explicitly on my daughter, the aching hole inside of me was never filled. I know now my daughter suffered as a result because in truth, we try to hide things but it doesn’t work. The 'mother wound' as it is now known with the teachings of Bethany Webster explains this much better than I can here. The energy is still felt, the Emperor is still wearing no clothes and even with the best of intentions, we end up passing on the same ancestral patterns down the line. However hard I tried to self improve or achieve anything, nothing filled this unconscious, gaping hole, the sense of not deserving to exist and not mattering. When things began to unravel, the crippling shame and unworthiness would take me over, I couldn’t even speak to know what my feelings were or that I had any needs. I didn’t ever belong and I had no idea that my body belonged to me or that I had rights. ROLES and MASKS Perfectionism is about roles, masks and pretences. My role was to serve and to give, this made sense. I knew the rules, they were programmed early on and woe betide if I failed to live up to them because then my internal pusher and killer critic teamed up with a vicious inner patriarch were always close by. I couldn’t afford to make a mistake. I had seen what happened with my brother’s rebellion, so I ticked off my brownie list to be sure I did what everyone wanted of me and then I could rest more easily. Years later, as I continued this way of behaving, if others were happy with how I served, whether this was my husband, parents, children or boss, then I was happy and safe. I’ve been that stallion watching the other horses and feeling the disconnection of what to do, the shame of not knowing how to play and as a human, covering it with control, orchestrating play, so it seemed like I knew the rules. In reality, I never knew the rules because since I had no self reference, they always lay outside of myself and were therefore constantly changing. Shapeshifting and adaptation was the norm and with my antennae I was a master at working out how I needed to be. And alcohol helped, it softened the edges with other people when socialising. I could be larger than life, championing, organising and networking for friends, family and at work and people later told me they were amazed at what I could achieve and manage, the dinner parties I would throw weekly on top of a full week’s work and how masterful I was at most things. The reality was that I could always handle emergency situations, this was my default mode and the reason for the statement ‘give the extra job to the busiest person’. I didn’t know how to say no, that word didn’t exist in my dictionary. My job as Conference Director was made for me, it fit like a glove, constant stress and drama of organising 200 or more guests for a perfectly laid out event somewhere in the Caribbean or Europe. The reality is that I had never cried until I was 39 and never had any anger until my forties. I was compliant and with a huge sense of inner apology covered up by perfectionism. Just like the stallion, people saw what they wanted to, we were the perfect family and apparently faultless. Culture and programming showed me how to play out an archetype energy that could endlessly over-extend but inside there was a deeply buried and desperate wretch. Back then, I didn’t know how my boundaries had been severely shattered as a tiny one. Going through the healing process with nightmares, flashbacks and body sensations of every kind is another book in itself and not for here. The truth is that I was adapted from such a young age that I never learnt what it was to be at ease in my body and with life itself. I had no connection with my breath at all, I lived outside of myself without realising it. My nervous system was dis-regulated and leaving by disassociating was part of my body’s deeply intelligent, safety mechanism. I had no idea this was a marker for trauma, checking out is just what I did, becoming immobile and freezing was deeply engrained and a way I functioned when things became overwhelming. Protective masks were all I had and they were extremely polished and strong. Underneath these, I didn’t exist and when some of these masks like my rational self were stripped away in cathartic workshops years later, (in my attempt to find the reasons why I was so chronically ill and debilitated), I was left dangerously at risk because I had no core sense of self. Immediately after this, I spent one year alone in our Devonshire house trying to manage with a different persona, as I felt like I had been stripped of a key part of me and without it I felt naked and intensely vulnerable. Our protections are there for a reason and we need to be gentle in how we unmask ourselves, so I’m grateful that these more radical treatments are recognised to be harmful and often re-traumatising as they were for me. Even though it isn’t yet widely discussed, research is showing that we all have early development trauma, as well as collective trauma passed down to us and we are all playing out a variety of roles to one degree or another. Most people are walking around with a number of main primary selves such as pleaser, achiever, good girl or rebel, skeptic and bad boy, thinking this is who they are, having no idea of the adaptation that has happened, the loss of authentic relating to themselves and others. We need to have compassion for the ways we have had to survive, these are intelligent processes that often saved our lives , even if in our adult years they no longer serve. Nevertheless, we also pay a heavy price for walking around with all these defences and covers, that block any intimacy or real heart connection. My masks were so strongly in place that to wake up, I had to crash out of the blue, at age 39 in Waitrose Supermarket, where I was suddenly paralysed and unable to pay the cashier. I believe this was a drastic, soul cry for help in the only way I knew, so I would be brought back home to myself, albeit kicking and screaming. Being stuck in bed unable to do anything was hell on earth. I couldn’t even read I was so ill, the curtains had to be closed because I was too sensitive to manage light of any kind. My nervous system was completely blown. I was carried home, my parents moved in for two years to look after my children and my world ended overnight. Every role I had was stripped away, as I found myself with a mystery illness that debilitated and destroyed everything I knew. Doctors had no cure other than anti-depressants. No-one knew about M.E. back then and those that did, believed it was all in the mind. Even my own brother as a doctor. I was on my own and worse still, apparently according to doctors at this time, I was faking was what happening. I felt like a fraud, totally confused and lost and then I was labelled as one, to add insult to injury. Going to the bathroom was my daily challenge, I couldn’t read, eat or hold my children, let alone see friends or continue my old life. This is another story in itself, years of being bedridden, a divorce and many other shocks and losses along the way, as I stripped back layers of deep conditioning and abuse to find my core self. SELF ABANDONMENT - Facing the Wretch What I know and what hurts, is that I’ve tried so hard to be a good person, to get ‘it’ right only to find myself lost and alone with a life and health in ruins. Ultimately what I see is that to survive, I controlled myself and everyone but was never able to tolerate intimacy with myself or others. I had no idea that I had complex trauma issues with a nervous system that was totally dis-regulated, making sense of so many of my digestive and other symptoms and until Dr. Gabor Mate came along, I had never heard that trauma invariably underpinned all mystery illness. I couldn’t face the distraught and damaged child within me. I kept self abandoning because I found her too repulsive and too demanding. My body was my greatest enemy and I avoided it like the plague and I had so many addictive tendencies which I could hide because they were not based on alcohol or drug abuse. I was however a workaholic and perfectionist, acting like a slave driver and consistently taking myself to an early grave. I was fine cooking lavish meals for my family and friends but any self focus and I’d resort to the quickest and easiest thing, often forgetting and not noticing what I needed. Whilst there was significant betrayal by those I should have trusted that planted the seeds, from the earliest beginning, in reality years later I see that the greatest betrayal and self abandonment is what I have done to myself as an adult. I didn’t know how to mother myself, to self care and nourish. There was no programme for this and I did to myself what was done to me, this is how we learn. I treated my body like an object and I found it an annoying waste of time when it came to the basics like self care. Trauma wasn't the buzz word it is now, it was reserved only for war veterans and rape victims, no-one understood about early development trauma (A.C.E. and attachment theory) and how this changes the brain for example. Boundaries are a pre-requisite for healthy relationships. I didn’t have any as mine were shattered from a young age. I literally didn’t have a skin and I couldn’t read the signals because I wasn’t in my body. My family was enmeshed and co-dependent, having separate feelings was not allowed so merging was the norm. We are social beings and yet like many traumatised souls, people have terrified me because I didn't know where I began and they ended. I was also so busy being perfect for most of my life, living in emergency mode, I didn't notice anything that was happening, in my attempt to be a 'good girl'. In my conference and marriage days, I would wear an imaginary t-shirt saying on the front ‘how are you doing’ and on the back ‘try harder’. This was the total focus, noticing my own feelings, needs or body sensations just didn't come into it. I was either overwhelmed by people or they would be overwhelmed by me but no-one said anything as we were all playing out our particular patterns. Containment is still my greatest challenge, finding this alignment and core within, how to hold onto my ‘stuff’ and not let it spill out onto others inappropriately and also how to say no when my limits are reached. The breath is the answer for me, staying connected with myself and therefore being able to modulate what is happening with me and any other person. This helps me stay aligned with myself when triggered and prevents me over-identifying with falling in the black hole of others projections or labelling myself as a total failure or both. Breath also helps me not be held hostage by trauma and over-arousal, the chemical cascade that blocks my ability to be present and at peace. There is some separation finally years on and now, I exist in my own right. All I had was words to protect me and now years on, it is this writing that is my creative lifeline. When I see a finished poem or piece of writing, it's like I can feel myself existing, the safety in going back to re-read it as something solid. I couldn’t feel myself without the words, speaking was the only connection and the only boundary I had. It was a way to keep people out, to stay in control and to feel like I existed. It wasn’t safe to receive and yet I needed the outside world to define me, to tell me who I was, to be the loving parent and give me validation at every turn because I was incapable of self reference and any kind of self soothing. My life was about these constant double binds, feeling between the devil and the deep blue sea, rarely able to feel any sense of safety or rest. If the outside world was unhappy with me, I had no ground to stand on. Panic would set in and I’d adapt and try harder. If the outside world was withholding or silent, I had no inner authority or safety, nothing to hold onto. Treading on eggshells was my default programme where I saw myself as always being the problem and desperately would try to make things better. Worse than this the excruciating shame would near on kill me, with punishing shame spirals that would go on for weeks on end, until I began to recognise what was happening with the help of the 12 step programme, years of counselling, incredible books and dialogues and later experiential work with inter-generational, collective trauma. HERO’S JOURNEY In desperation for freedom at some soul level, I’ve been that instinct injured bird (like my first budgerigar) that took it’s chances, it’s bid for flight, with absolute conviction and unbridled passion, only to realise fatally, that it was without safety and protection at the mercy of the outside world. Ultimately, however, we are not meant to be caged and trapped in slavery and prostitution, so some part of me was screaming to live on my own terms. Illusion and fantasy kept me safe from facing the truth, it was a necessary survival mechanism at the time but in latter years it's caused me no end of unnecessary drama and pain. Our body is supremely intelligent, we do what we can to survive and authentic parts of us become exiled and fragmented well out of sight. That’s what happened here in Italy, my soul led me here to the beauty of this isolated, olive farm but also backwards in time and deep into the underworld. It’s been the making of me in many ways but as Russell Brandt said recently, I’ve also been fighting crocodiles in a swamp, literally and metaphorically. Italy is a great teacher. A Kali teacher, the Dark Goddess that takes no prisoners and it’s only now with discernment finally in place, that I can see clearly what I’ve been up against and how valiantly in fact I have come through the initiation and out the other side. I can see the bigger picture of what has taken place. I’ve slowed down and am listening to what needs to happen. My foundations are finally in place, my feet firmly on the ground. I’m ready to receive, to move from intensity to intimacy and with awareness, wisdom and much courage, to go where the door is open. After ten months of repairing the three massive landslides here on the land, cement armoured walls finally in place, I’m also here in my body somewhat battered and bruised but with my core intact and my soul and passion still on fire. Like the mountain I’m held up, a bit messy but more fortified than before. I thought I was totally spent but that’s what it’s like when you turn to goo in the caterpillar darkness, you have no idea of what is to come. It's impossible to imagine the butterfly wings but along the way, I’ve learnt what it means to shape shift and be creative. I know the darkness well. I know the terror of ‘not knowing’ and having to surrender to the Great Unknown, to the womb of potentiality. I’m less naive, more realistic and definitely more discerning. I’m more resilient, despite all the shocks and setbacks and in this meltdown process, I forgot to see just how strong and courageous I really was. The mountain is teaching me, her repaired belly as a mirror to mine, more foundations in place and built from the bottom upwards, with lots of clear drainage to avoid future flooding. It’s a great metaphor and I am not immune to the soul message. I see the alchemy and magic of the forging process, of how we are all initiated by life circumstances and in particular by brutal grace. I know the territory. I was forced to slow down because I wouldn't listen, pushing and trying to stay in control without humility or surrender. I've walked in the moccasins and as such, I can also be an enlightened witness to others still stuck in their darkness. I’m not apologetic about spending years digesting what happened and facing the truth, instead of burying my head in the sand and continuing as if everything was normal while the Titanic was sinking or alternatively going out while my shadow stuff was still running the show. With no cure for mystery illness, often crippled and unable to walk which went on for years, this solo journey inwards was necessary. The more I uncovered, the more I saw the connection to trans-generational trauma and it was no coincidence that I found myself in large groups clearing doing shamanic ritual family constellation work. Now we see that this collective trauma is passed down such that we end up carrying symptoms and falling into what is termed a Spiritual Emergency. Secrets and lies was my family’s way and it’s what we have been doing globally, that is clearly untenable. We are all being required to clean up our individual and collective wounds that before could not be processed. Transparency and clearing the field is what I believe in because it is the only way that I have managed to heal. Now, I prefer to look at the truth in my body and in the world, exposing when the Emperor is clearly wearing no clothes. I know that I have needed a backbone in order to do this and I know that with this resilience, I’m ready to begin my true soul’s mission, provided I balance this with self care and finding my co-creative tribe. I’m done doing everything solo, this is the old programme of separation and divide that has to go. I’ve also seen that happiness without vision is empty, vision without emptiness is a recipe for burn out and having had three of these, I’m opting for vision and happiness to go together, arm in arm. I might be 61 years of age but I finally get that it’s my birthright to be happy, I am not here to suffer and survive. Each time I self abandoned too far, I had no choice but to step up and keep re-inventing myself because the alternative was unthinkable. Each time it’s always about more embodied self care and self love with gratitude as the main ingredient on the menu. That's why yoga mudras have taken off, women desperately need to rest and digest their overworked nervous systems. I see this is the only way to truly be in sacred service, we are not meant to be ill as martyrs in the process, this is the pathological co-dependency that is so rife on our planet and where women have self sacrificed at a huge price. As we move away from the church dogma, it’s time for sin and suffering as the model of humanity to give way to more positive emotions of joy and happiness. It’s true I’ve lived my life with the disastrous questions that Matt Kahn says most of us live life, which are, ‘I hope this doesn’t happen’ or ‘I hope this does happen’. I’ve controlled and tried to avoid problems only to have one shock after the other. After failing miserably and seeing that most of the best things happened when I got out of my own way and allowed grace to come in, with some trepidation I must admit, I am endeavouring to let life be, to say ‘I accept whatever happens in life, ………bring it on’. I've let go of believing there is a demonic god and that I am sinned beyond redemption, this deeply held belief that has carved it’s way down my ancestral lineage for too long and that the early Christian church deliberately propagated. The Magdalene hidden gospels confirm Jesus's real teachings that sin was simply a forgetting of our eternal nature, nothing more. My daily breathing mantra is now ‘grace surrounds me now’, as I bring to mind my beloved daemon dog, aptly named ‘Rambo’ who somehow magically arrived to protect and live with me on my isolated mountainside here in Liguria. Amazing grace has kept me going for sure, as my anchor and my north star. THE DOOR MARKED ‘HEAVEN’ I remember the question asked in the 12 step programme to newcomers which always amused me and was “ There are two doors. One is marked ‘Heaven’, the other is marked ‘Discussion on Heaven’. Which one do you open?” For years it was clear. I always wanted to go to the door marked discussion and most others in the 12 step were the same. Life had not been safe, opening the door of heaven was unknown, early attachment issues were always at the root of this. I had no reference for a space or place of safety, this healthy attachment was not met in my early development and as such it has been easier to discuss and analyse everything, rather than surrender to trust. I needed to learn how to live with my own inner authority and agenda, to regain this trust first with my body to avoid losing myself with other people. Now these teachings are being offered with wonderful teachers like Irene Lyon showing how trauma is not a medical problem but a lifestyle as when people everywhere have traumatic stress in their physiology, it comes out in conditions like fibromyalgia, auto-immune, mental illness and much else. Separation is a symptom of the collective trauma we live in as a culture. So I’ve spent years in this place, learning what it means to be truly human, working out my own rules, releasing blocked and frozen trauma, recognising the ancestral legacy and coming back to my body and felt sense. And in the process, navigating 23 years of chronic illness with what was first mis-diagnosed as Chronic Fatigue (M.E.) and then later as Chronic Neurological Lyme with fibromyalgia and arthritis. My spiritual fascist tells me I've failed. But perhaps mystery illness with trauma, has and is my particular portal for awakening and in particular for returning to self compassion. What I know without doubt, is that I will always be passionate about awakening until I die, it’s in my blood now. I want to know where I’m not awake, where I am not being real with my blind spots. I'm devoted to shadow work because staying in victim mentality is the reason we have such a dire collective shadow right now. I’m in my body with my nervous system more regulated and finally I'm living life on my terms. It’s rare for me to have trouble with my legs, I can ‘stand my ground’ now. I’m listening and staying present rather than running fast. This is radical. The body is intelligent and I know that touching into love will bring up everything that is not love itself, so I need to be strong and resilient taking it easy as I open up. I'm strengthening my body with quantum health exercises and breath to create this en-core-ment and safety. I am a mover and shaker but I want to do it with presence this time. I’m glad for the years spent discussing about heaven, I've needed to ask questions, to check out the facts, to intuit and listen to my GPS guidance system which rarely fails me now. At least now I know what heaven is not and the fact that most of the shadow issues like my entitlement and negative thinking, can be resolved by starting at home with me. I want to bring heaven here on earth and this is a spiritually embodied process, it’s not about transcending and leaving, which is a default that is second nature to me. I need to remind myself that this ’heaven on earth’ process includes me and my body, to really get this fact and as a woman, to really honour the process of rest and self care. It’s not just my body that has been defiled, ignored, suppressed and violated, it’s the body of the sacred feminine and it will take some time before we realise that our female bodies can safely be included in the overall picture. Women of my age, we are the bridge generation, we carved the way for our children, particularly our daughters to be much freer than before, but we still struggle with this whole process and need a lot of healthy, safe support to remind us when we feel alone, self hating and lost. The sisterhood has not been safe and women do not realise the extent of their inner patriarch conditioning, how we are culturally caught in an era, where is still a lot of competition and harsh judgement for stepping out of the toxic male paradigm. SPIRITUAL EMBODIMENT To be a feminine, spiritual warrior, there are no bells and whistles, no certificates for being fierce and standing one's ground or for going down to the underworld and falling apart, to learn the qualities of humility, wisdom, grace and compassion. There are no awards for integrating fierce power with tender vulnerability which I believe is the way forward now, if we are all to find our heart's way. Certainly here in Italy women truly are not welcomed for stepping up into their authority and power, I'm surprised just how backward Liguria in particular is. No-one except Brene Brown will tell you that the most self compassionate people are the ones with boundaries of steel and how hard fought this is when you are a woman. All of us, men and women, we are caught up in a matrix of slavery within a traumatised culture, with mass moral disassociation, where we are not encouraged to wake up. Healing trauma is a lifestyle to build up greater capacity and regulation, it's in the details. It’s up to us to ‘real-eyes’ what is happening on our planet and at the same time, to see our own blind and unconscious places within ourselves. We are not rewarded for healing our individual and collective trauma or for embarking on healing our shadow nor perhaps to step into our sovereignty and those closest to us in our families, will often tell us to get back to our old worlds and start being ‘normal’ again. It’s hard to step away from the crowd, to do things differently from the culture around especially when trauma is normalised and the water we are all swimming in.. It’s hard to see that the Emperor is wearing no clothes and harder still to say it out loud, so others can hear. And, there are no qualifications or overt celebrations for being spiritually embodied which is our toughest task of all, for being in touch with our emotional landscape and yet it’s the most important thing we can do for ourselves, our children and our planet right now. Spiritual bypassing has to be challenged, it’s another avoidance of dealing with vulnerability, pain and trauma. There's been far too much talk of enlightenment and much too little about en-darkenment, this coming home to living in our bodies and honouring Mother Earth and the dark womb of the sacred feminine as part of this. Unhealthy attachment issues are now seen to be the reason for poor regulation of our nervous systems and this collective trauma and lack of embodiment is widespread on our planet, though sorely under recognised. Spiritual embodiment is needed for healthy regulation in all areas of our lives, and particularly globally, whether it’s with 5G technology or over use of Glysophate pesticides, we need to come back into more balance, to learn what it means to self soothe and regulate, if we are to avoid pushing ourselves to the edge of extinction. So we need to wake up individually and globally, but also to recognise that the nervous system and body is a slower medium, it needs time to digest food, insights and new beliefs. We need to be gentle and compassionate with ourselves above all else, as we try to step into new quantum realities and change deep outmoded ways of being. Finally, I’m honouring this process and as a sensitive empath, also trying to limit being over-stimulated with downloads of information and energy that I constantly pick up. Also because with Lyme and auto-immune illnesses generally, the retro-viruses involved, are hugely stimulated by working in electro-magnetic fields (EMFs, ) so I try to avoid having Wifi in my environment as much as possible. Processing and healing ourselves, clearing collective trauma is tiring and my mind wants to race forward when my body needs more time, the way nature works in cycles, resting and restoring Herself. I can’t catch up lost years for when I was a robot. As I heal and come out of survival it's inevitable that the huge losses need to be grieved fully in order to move on. I can’t change the past or make it all better for my children who had such a sick mother for most of their growing years. I'm deeply sad that I have not had a programme to be an earth, loving mother and how I've passed on ancestral wounds despite trying my hardest to be different. I can only console myself that I did my absolute best, nothing more was possible. The children always came first and I'm grateful that the life we chose in Devon, allowed them to live freely within nature, on a beautiful estuary rowing their boats and being free which was a godsend. Now, my children are fully grown and able to care for themselves and whilst its strange, it's necessary that I change the focus from creating a healing centre, to first committing to self care and rest. The vision I have will happen but the overall timing is important and for now I've been halted for good reason. It is about RESTORATION, of my body and of the land here.. After years of work on severe abandonment issues where I couldn’t be alone and without some project to keep me busy 24/7, I’m more able to be at peace with myself, spending days on my own in inner contemplation and writing. So as I let go and surrender with no demands, and as my body strengthens more and more, trauma memories are revealing themselves, as I slow down and stop filling my life with some drama or project. Also as Irene Lyon reminded me recently, as we find ourselves more stable and resilient, ironically this is when our intrinsic knowing often surfaces another deeper layer of hidden trauma that needs to be brought back from exile and fully accepted with love, just like stripping away at layers of an onion. Healing from trauma is not a linear and straightforward path, it's often deeply painful challenging us to our limits. At an ego level, this frustrates me hugely but I see the incredible intelligence of the nervous system, in how it knows to release and complete the energy that was too overwhelming to deal with at the time. I see clearly that I need to change my negative mindset, to work much more with the quantum reality and what is truly possible for this blank canvas that is my life possibility now, so I'm invested in spiritual practices and breath work that is about changing survival emotions and mind states that have become embedded, default patterns. It's about taking charge of these habitual patterns that no longer serve, changing from an old personality that self sabotages and creating a new personal reality ('personality') by tapping into this quantum field and accessing the divine capacities and new neural pathways, science is showing us is now possible. I do have shame about not having the energy or wellbeing right now to be of great service, but just as when travelling on an aircraft, I need to put on my own lifejacket first, because three burns outs is enough, this time I have to take it seriously. The land here is my teacher in this respect, fig trees that take a year off when required, something I may have to do myself in due course, even while my inner spiritual voices scream at me to do something more. What I do know for sure, is that just like the budgerigar, I have the right to flap my wings and fly free, more able to protect and safe guard myself in the big outside world and like the stallion to enjoy and play with others as an essential ingredient to existing and belonging. Justification, this feminine preoccupation, must end because I/we don 't have to prove ourselves anymore. Perhaps like so many women, this is my soul mission, to learn about self care and self worth as top priority, resting my nervous system above all else? Happiness and joy is our birthright as John Lennon told his teacher at school, these feelings really are what constitutes a spiritual life. My longing is to serve but first I must take care of myself in a way I haven’t managed to do so before. I feel tender like a new kid on the block, unsure of the rules but this time, I’m tuning into myself, trusting my own innate wisdom. I’m ready to play authentically with others in this shared humanity, to build some intimacy and learn how to live instead of just surviving and achieving. Daring to step up into my sovereignty, to take up more space, taking the initiative, setting up groups online. I’m crying as I write this. I’m home at last, it’s been a long, exhaustive journey to this self trust, but I never gave up the fight and I kept on believing in my own fairy tale. My foundations really are in place as my mentor reminded me yesterday and referring to the metaphor of the mountain, this 'mission impossible'. Now I really understand about belonging and becoming, which Thomas Huebl says are the two basic human needs we all have. We really do have to belong to ourselves first and foremost and so many of us with the 'Economy of Love', gave up on this way of being and opted to get love and attention by being a saviour, mediator or helper too early. Saying that it is too late for me as I am 61 years of age, has been my unconscious motto for these last few years, as mystery illness and debilitating symptoms, together with menopause that aggravated Lyme hugely, got the better of me and hormone imbalances and depression set in. I got ill at 39 and suddenly I feel like I'm catapulted into being old and this has hit me so hard, like missing 20 years in between. Equally as I pass through trauma and find myself more embodied and present I am consistently feeling self compassion and an inner goodness that just feels like love. Pure and simple with me as part of it and joy/bliss states becoming more under my conscious control. The neurological symptoms have been the worst, the cytokine inflammatory flares shocking when they kick in but at least I get a deep insight into what it feels like to have mental illness, as well as physical symptoms like gut dysbiosis. I use the breathing to help me change my internal states and it really does work and digging deep in this respect has been an empowering process. I also am able to see how all these symptoms have a deep connection to trauma that is coming out of my body so if I don't resist the process, using Breathwork and other modalities I come through much more easily. My levels of compassion has soared as a result of what I have experienced and I fully know what spiritual emergency means in all its dimensions and how I can best help other sufferers as a result. After an agonising year with the landslide where the stress hit me very hard, I am feeling this new sense of belonging in my body like Barbara Marx Hubbard said, this raison d'être that is beyond child bearing and where I can serve as an 'elder'. My breath and 'felt sense' practice has been a radical game changer, It's hard to put this in words but it feels like I'm here for the first time. Like I exist and matter for all I've gone through and more importantly, that I know how to navigate the ups and downs, rather than leaving my body and bailing out. In summary, I have made a promise to carve out the word ‘demori’ which means 'I remain', on the huge rock in the front of my landslide. It does represent my survival given early developmental and collective trauma that has taken me a lifetime to uncover. It feels so significant, a statement to myself, the return to my 'guts' and for the belly of the sacred feminine, for the earth Herself. It was the word the French Cathars wrote on every tree or stone, before they were all brutally wiped out in one of the most shocking genocides by the early Christian church. Everything starts now and it’s my choice, this is the radical responsibility and YES I commit to shift into. I survived, my twin brother did not. I've faced this reality finally and let him go, grieved this aching loss which kept me in limbo between the worlds. Now I'm here. There is no-one coming. I am the change I’ve been waiting for, my own saviour, my own 'mission impossible'. My original occult healer once said to me that I would do my soul work, when I no longer cared what other people thought of me and whilst I'm still a work in progress on this, I'm a long way on from those dark, bedridden days. I know it's about soul esteem, this mystic journey and bigger picture of what I really came to do on the planet. With focussed intent and vigilant, self discipline, I am making my happiness and healing my new priority and programme, to ensure it goes hand in hand with any visioning and service I offer. I know I'm here to help spread the word and support others with individual and collective trauma, this is my sacred path now. And, since I truly cannot do this journey solo without more burn out, I am taking it seriously to change my personality and workaholism as well as finally manifesting a new family and tribe of resonant, co-creative and heart centred souls, who want to travel with me, on this deep, magical and mystery tour of awakening. |
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