I prayed for something really bad to happen so that someone might notice that things were not alright. I wished for things to get worse so that it might become more obvious from the outside that I needed help processing what was going on within me. Then I would feel incredibly guilty and disgusted with myself for having such harmful thoughts and panic and plead to whatever god that might still have been willing to listen me to me, to forgive me and offer some sort of sign that I wasn’t going to be punished for the way my mind was working.

There was silence. There was no response. There was no reason to believe that things were going to get better within me or around me. I was only 14. My behavior at that time could be considered reckless. I became sexually active, I stopped going to school, lied constantly about my whereabouts & withdrew all interest from hobbies I had. I was caught in my own clumsy web of lies and was told time and time again that I couldn’t be trusted, that I didn’t know what was best for me, and to some extent – I believed that.

I had spent my entire life believing the choices I made at that age were shameful & I worked hard to redeem myself – proving myself in ways that would create a new identity. I cut myself off from the part of me that had ever dreamed to imagine my life might be exciting, adventurous, wild and free and instead worked tirelessly to replicate the version of “successful” and “stable” I had seen celebrated around me.

Study, work, buy things, get married, keep working, keep buying things… I believed that the “best me” would be the one that could demonstrate that I had excelled in fulfilling all the hopes and dreams instilled in us by the world at large and in doing that, I forgot I had hopes and dreams of my own.

This way of being seemed to work for a while. I kept myself busy. I did all the things we are supposed to do to “be happy” – I went to university, worked full time as a teacher, met a good man and got married, opened businesses and traveled the world.

My life was a validation of “success” but I hadn’t internalised anything that felt successful. There was a rigidity to my experience of self and the world.

In an effort to achieve, I had created certain structures within myself and within my own life that produced results, but also perpetuated an endless cycle of anxiety & chronic stress.  

I started questioning myself, my life, my perception of reality – if things were so good then why did I feel so bad? What was wrong with me?

It was taking so much energy for me to walk around in a life that had started to feel surreal. 

I had so much to be grateful for. There was nothing that I needed that I didn’t have.

I was disgusted with myself. I was ashamed and afraid of my own desires. 

Nothing in my life reflected decisions I had made for myself, as myself because I realised I had never truly known myself. My entire identity had been a cleverly designed reflection of all the things I thought I had to be for people around me to accept me, praise me, value me and love me.

I ran away and disguised it as “going on retreat”. I pretended I was going away to be uplifted and inspired, but truthfully I just wanted space to come undone and fall apart.

And fall apart I well and truly did. 

Without the rigidity of the life I had devoted myself to and distracted myself with that had be busy from the moment I woke up until the moment I fell into bed, I finally had the space to do less and feel more.

It was torture. 

Wave after wave after wave of emotion rose up through my body and I felt like I was drowning in a sea of my own contempt. My body physically shook with rage, then wailed with sadness, tensed up with fear, rocked with longing.. It went on and on and on. 

Witnessing what was within me was terrifying. I felt it was all too much, too big, too overwhelming, too messy and so I packed it all up, as I packed my suitcase and went back to my life again.

I fell into the rhythm of the life I knew effortlessly. My first husband welcomed me back with open arms but I will never forget the disconnect I felt between us - like I had gone away as one person and somehow I had returned as a stranger into my own life. 

I resented everything. In that moment I resented my husband. In that moment I made him the bad guy. In that moment I made him the gatekeeper that was preventing me from accessing what might have been waiting for me if I had a different life. 

Hadn't he been my escape from loneliness into a life of love? Hadn't he been my happy ending? Hadn't he been everything I was looking for?

Why did it feel like he was in the way? Why did it feel like he was blocking my blessings? Why did it feel so easy to be mad at him?

I made him the bad guy so I didn’t have to acknowledge that I wasn’t activating the courage to be a woman that would feel her own emotions without running away from them. I didnt want to admit that I was a woman that didnt have the courage to activate her own desires. That time away had been confronting & scary as my body spoke to me - revealing what I had repressed for my entire life. 

However, my soul had been encouraged. The intensity of my emotion felt like it had let my soul know that a transformation was coming. Something had been stirred.

I couldn't stay in my life anymore. This wasn't the life I was intended for. I felt it.

In that moment I was terrified. 

Time rushed forward and I saw my life in fast forward. I saw ascension. I saw the expansion. It was fast. It was multicoloured. I saw myself standing in the middle of an intersection with everything moving around me. I saw the way life was ready to meet me, to move me, to show me.

I shrugged “yeah, maybe theres more for me”

I played it cool. I played the role of the woman with a million possibilities. I felt the heaviness of being the woman with only one possibility.  

Snap out of it. Get real. Be a good wife and have a good life.

That didn't happen. I didn't do that.

I became destructive, irrational, irresponsible in many ways and although it was a necessary part of paving a new way forward for myself - how I chose to create space for something new created the cause and conditions for waves of shame and regret to follow me into the future I was creating. 

There wasn't ownership, accountability, truth or compassion in my process. 

I ran from the chaos of the decision to implode my “old life”, moved across the country and focused all of my effort and energy on beginning again. 

When I did in fact build a beautiful life for myself, one that reflected the desires I had called forward from the base of my being, I was horrified to realise that I felt disconnected from the joy that was now available for me to claim.  

For the second time in my life I had to learn to turn inwards, to listen to my body and to be guided by the wisdom it had to offer for what was next for me, what was needed, what I should do. 

Releasing all of the toxic residue from the emotions I had been aware of but unwilling to feel became the single most important thing for me to learn to do so that I couldt actually experience the life I had created for myself.

To be willing to feel is a gateway to the kind of deep joy we long for in this life. 

To be willing to feel we must be willing to feel ALL that is within us. 

The desperate need to really experience my own life rather than just participate in it was what lead me to the work of Sah D’Simone and his method of Somatic Activated Healing. 

The somatic approach aims to address both your physical and mental health simultaneously so that you can find liberation and connect to your heart more quickly. 

This is the work. No part is disowned. 

We are reclaiming and reintegrating every part of who we are, who we have always been, who our ancestors have always been and who we will ever be. 

We are reclaiming the lost self and forgiving ourselves for the ways we have twisted and contorted our own story into one that has caused us more pain and harm and suffering than we ever needed to experience. 

This is radical inner work – the kind of liberation and freedom that is available to you in this life and that I genuinely want to support us all in activating so that we can live without the burden and baggage of the things that are weighing us down.

Forgiveness is not cutting away parts of who we are. We aren’t deleting parts of our story. We are bringing it all to the light to be loved for and cared for.

We are bringing a soothing balm to our entire biography. We aren’t trying to change it. We aren’t ignoring it. We are actually bringing all the broken pieces of our past back together in a way that doesn’t feel so sharp and jarring and cutting.

We are reclaiming and reintegrating every part of who we are, who we have always been, who our ancestors have always been and who we will ever be. 

We are reclaiming the lost self and forgiving ourselves for the ways we have twisted and contorted our own story into one that has caused us more pain and harm and suffering than we ever needed to experience. 

This is radical inner work – the kind of liberation and freedom that is available to you in this life and that I genuinely want to support us all in activating so that we can live without the burden and baggage of the things that are weighing us down.

Forgiveness is not cutting away parts of who we are. We aren’t deleting parts of our story. We are bringing it all to the light to be loved for and cared for.

We are bringing a soothing balm to our entire biography. We aren’t trying to change it. We aren’t ignoring it. We are actually bringing all the broken pieces of our past back together in a way that doesn’t feel so sharp and jarring and cutting.