Loosing the fighting battle.

"We are all alone.

We are born alone,

We die alone...she says.

The voice of her spirit guides whisper in her ear, ‘it is not so’

but she’s closed her ears to them.

Happiness taunts her from a distance.

Dancing a jig to which she doesn't know the steps.

She’s tired,

She's tired of being the happy one, the joyful one, the friendly one, the fucking nice one, the spiritual one.

What the fuck does that all mean anyway?

Her faith is dead.

She’s been to its funeral.

She’s thrown dirt on the grave and walked away.

Shall we go back in time and see if it was a slow death or a fast paced execution style demise, swift, hard and immutable.

Could it be the times she killed her baby, or it could be the time that she orphaned herself for the final time.

It could be the times that she emptied herself out for others, leaving nothing for herself and finding that this time, the well has truly run dry.

She would usually hate the morose nature of this narrative, she would usually like to be portrayed differently...better than this and more...of everything...

...instead of this pitiful and pathetic soul.

Who the fuck is she?

She doesn’t even know herself anymore.

She thought that through all the work, the toeing the line, trying to put one fucking foot in front of the other, it would bring her the happiness she longed for.

She felt cheated.

She realised she had still somehow been bargaining with God, and he, she or it, was still so silent and so unknowable and this was further confirmation of her being wholly unlovable.

She usually wore glasses to read and to write, but her fingers knew the keyboard so well that they found the keys with the ease and grace of a champion figure skater, etching brutal lines in the ice.

She pushed away any thoughts of such grandiose notoriety that resulted from her efforts, this was purely for survival.

This was being able to find something in this one day, that made it worth living, if she could feel that somehow she had made her mark and she wasn’t so invisible, or so expendable.

This pounding out of words was evidence of her.

She knew absolutely why people chose to end it, to believe that there must be more than this.

When just left with herself as the source of her own unhappiness,

it was unbearable.

“We are as happy as we make up our minds to be” they say.

Those that say this don’t know the brokenness and unendingness of the trauma healing process.

If you are going through hell, just keep going, they say.

Who the fuck are they!?

How long is the journey, is there a map? Please!

Say where the next stop is at least, so there might be some reprieve.

Is the exit to hell anywhere close yet?

She's bought a one way ticket, because she certainly don’t want to come back this way, but she fears she is lost, going round in circles, scared that she is destined to never leave.

Even recovery language provokes her…”have constant thought for others!” they say.

Don’t they know that is her problem? Don’t they know that’s what led her here? Don’t they know that somewhere in there is where she lost herself and she needs desperately to find her again.

I'll brave the flames and go in after her, I know the route, could walk it with eye's closed.

I've been there before, I know the terrain well, I can find her and lead her out.

I call for her, I reach for her, I tell her I am here and I am not going to give up on her.

I tell her she is not so damaged that no one will love her, that she is not so broken that she is irreparable, that she does not deserve to stay here in the darkness to die, that I will not let that happen.

I tell her I see the ugly but that is not all she is and that I love her anyway.

I hear her cries and reassure her that I am the one that loves her without end. I am the ears that hear her, the arms that find her crumpled heap, in foetal position, I pick her up and carry her home.

I turn her face towards the light so that she feels the warmth of it on her cheek. It penetrates and I feel her strengthen, like a plant leaning towards the sun, it infuses her.

I whisper to her that she can do this.

I set her on her feet... give her a gentle nudge forward... she walks into the light... becoming one with it.

It's not yet over.

Turning back towards the darkness, I go back in, there's a few more pieces of her to find...

We can, at times feel things that seem to be so different to, or are so incongruent with, our day to day lives and our experience of ourselves. Something about us shocks us, surprises us, we react in a way or feel a way about something we can't quite explain, feelings come up triggered by something or someone and we question ourselves, our reactions and responses. We are puzzled, confused and discombobulated.

That is, unless we are so shut down that we deny and ignore, or sweep back under the rug that which peeps out or leaks out.

Or, we are so controlled that every aspect of our lives is planned out, so that there is no room for anything, no space, everything is buttoned up, tightly and neatly...for a time. It does not last. Like everything that is polished, that looks nice and shiny, it comes at a hefty price.

Or, we're still amidst addiction; food, drugs, work, people, alcohol, exercise, TV...just keeping the lid on, barely. But keeping a lid on what?

Life is difficult - this is a given. Anyone who denies this lives in denial.

The process of living, even for people with the most idyllic of childhoods, is beset with problems to solve, choices to make, decisions to take. How much harder is it then, for those who's core problems are their childhoods? This is not to blame parents, blaming leads to bitterness, people who perpetrate abuses are often suffering too, from... their own un-reconciled being.

What is it to be un-reconciled?

When you experience some form of trauma, whether physical or emotional, human beings have an incredible survival mechanism of dissociation or compartmentalisation which serves to protect us from unbearable suffering. This dissociation process keeps the parts of ourselves affected by this trauma walled up, shut away, relocated, so as to protect and sustain the functioning of the whole organism.

Shamans believe that when you experience trauma a piece of your soul leaves, fragments and gets stuck in the place where the traumatic event happened. They have a process of journeying and soul retrieval to aid in the process of reconciliation.

Psychoanalytic theory says we split off parts of ourselves that are intolerable and unbearable and that these split off parts are responsible for a whole gamut of neuroses and disorders. It in a sense, it is that parts of us are dis-ordered and practitioners believe that the therapeutic process aids in process of reordering and reconciliation.

Inner child work says that the child / or adolescent parts of us that were harmed, not appropriately loved and nurtured as they needed to be, remain within us. These parts can be demanding, they cry out, act out, fight to be seen and heard and she/he needs to be acknowledged and reconciled within us.

There are indeed a number of different ways we can understand and frame the same healing process, but the theme of reconciliation is common to all.

Christian's say, of reconciliation, that the soul is in a state of alienation from God and there is a need for us to be reunited once again. So maybe we are the split off traumatised parts of God's own being?

Which ever way you chose to look at it, whatever approach you take, our work is indeed a spiritual process...

one where we can come home, in this life, not waiting for the next.

#spiritualgrowth #journeying #reconciliation #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthmatters #mentalhealthday #mentalhealthrecovery #mentalhealthwarrior #mentalhealthsupport #mentalhealthawarness #mentalhealthadvocate