"But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . ." – The Little Prince
Some say that winter’s days are too short, too dark.
I say, they are perfect harmony, for what my body and soul require.
Enough time to wander, to play in the Light.
To greet the morning deer, and howl with the coyotes welcoming night.
Enough time to rest, to read, to contemplate and write.
To whisper and twinkle with the stars and praise the moonlight. Remark in the contrast, the highlight of the white snow, against the navy sky.
Winter invites me in. My soul, grateful for the reflection. I bury myself in books and imagination while the rabbits burrow in their holes.
I feel alive in the sharp chill of the air and in the comfort of the fire.
Winter both calls me under the covers and to the window, to be a witness to the beauty of stillness, as Mother Earth rests under her own blanket, a gift from Father Sky.
Pacer, the blur shown, was one very excited puppy to be running in the moonlit snow.
I ran into the moonless night, not sure what I would find. Was I even searching? After all, I had no light, nothing, to show the way. What way?
Pulled forward only by something I could not describe. One blind step in front of the other, stumbling over rocks and roots. Falling. The dead leaves cushioning my hands.
It would have made sense to turn back, to the warmth of the fire. But in the pure black night, the way back had disappeared.
Then, in the stillness, in the silence of the dark, I heard a calling. So soft, I was temped to call it fiction. Yet fiction is not false. Indecipherable- was it coming from the sky? With my only choice to trust the yearning inside of me, I began to run again.
First hesitant, still falling- and then… Swiftly as a deer, the forest my home, I moved with primal, intuitive instinct.
I was running towards the light of the horizon, the pink and orange sky. My frozen breath, the only sign of my human body.
Until it wasn’t. Until I blended into the sunrise, leaving only footprints behind.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Without question, 2022 was a challenging year for me. While the events were not as harsh as in the year 2020 when I faced the physical death of my older sister, I faced my own spiritual death in 2022.
A great unshedding. Certain events led me to facing the pain inside of me, conversing with my own shadows, shadows that had protected me for so long…and letting them go. It was not an easy process, nor one that I would have necessarily chose at the onset. But I am grateful for it. It has already led to more love and joy in my life, or rather, an unveiling of what was already inside me. Of course, the journey is not over. I am still human after all. Yet I feel something shifting, slowly, and I am quite certain it is only because I had the courage to go into the darkness of my pain. Ironically, it is in the depths of darkness that one finds light.
This is a question many people have, but few have ever truly contemplated. We ask questions like, “If there was a God, how could He let children starve?” If we go any further than that, we usually end up at “There is no God” or “There is true evil (devil) in this world.” Neither of those answers do it for me. They’re just too incomplete, too reductionary. So I chose the path I lead my counseling clients on when they are feeling lost: go right into the darkness.
This essay is my attempt to explain darkness, from a human, spiritual, and mental health perspective and to answer the question “Is darkness real?”
My list on what darkness is or what could be ended up being a pretty long list. It included: evil, depression, night, shadow self, suppression of the light, death, rest, despair, fear, and shame. Some of the things on this list may read as inherently “bad”…but what about the night sky? What about rest? I quite enjoy my 8 plus hours of sleep each night, and anyone in Alaska will tell you that it’s hard to sleep without blackout shades. Then again, during winter, you’ll hear many Americans protest against the long, dark days, although I’ve learned to enjoy the extra time to move slowly and reflect. So if it wasn’t for our resistance to it, would the dark be negative at all?
As I was getting ready to write this essay, a friend replied to one of my social media posts on darkness. She asked me “Do you think the depression that comes with Winter is just something to sink into?” My reply, as usual, was nuanced. I replied “I would say it depends on how we want to define “depression”. Personally, I think surrendering to the “darkness” is simply part of winter/solstice. If I had to start definine things, I’d say depression is more going into the darkness and getting stuck there, rather than being able to go in and pass through.”
My counseling background tells me that depression is a few things. It’s the suppression of emotions, it’s the suppression of one’s true nature, and it’s the loss of hope. I think we could also call it the suppression of light. Like most therapists, I won’t say there are any negative emotions, just uncomfortable ones. However, many people do perceive emotions like sadness, fear, and anger as negative, and for various reasons (that’s an essay in itself), they don’t feel them. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean they go away. It means the emotions get stuck in their bodies and like clouds that continue to build up, they block out any light. In the darkness of that inner cave, it’s hard to find a way out without any help, or without hope, so people get stuck. Lost. Maybe this is what it means to be a lost soul. The true enemy is not the fact everything feels dark, it’s forgetting that there is a way out.
To break from theory for a moment, I’ll add my personal experience. When I experienced depression in my teens and twenties, depression was a mixture of numbness and intense self-loathing. Sadness was there too, but the tears also told me I “wasn’t okay”, that something must be wrong with me. Since then, I’ve had many therapy sessions and done a lot of inner work on my own that was all about going into the darkness, which was really just all my unfelt emotions and negative beliefs about myself built up. Feeling the “cloud of my emotions”, and really, experiencing the storm inside of me allowed the clouds space to move. This gave a chance for the sun to come out. Now, the emotions still come, but they pass through my body more easily.
Next, there’s the theory of the shadow self. If you are a visual person, you can literally think of your own shadow as the 3pm sun hits your body and creates a shadow of your body, like a stealth body guard. Our shadow parts are “the guardians” of the parts of us we reject and that lay outside of us, unaccepted and not to be seen, unintegrated into the whole of ourselves. Or maybe more accurately, shadow parts are the black cloaks that surround the vulnerable parts of us left deep, deep inside of us, almost forgotten…and God knows, we’ve tried to forget them. Shadow parts may also be considered our inner demons, the traumas we have not yet faced. If you’re from the midwest, your shadow part might be hiding the emotional part of you, since “being tough” and not showing emotions is considered a value in that part of the country. Or, if you identify as male, it may not have been okay to show your feminine side as a child. In fact, you probably heard it was bad or weird. So you rejected that part of you. To cover up that part of you, you may have even created an alter ego wrapped in toxic masculinity. The problem is, you’re not whole without the emotional, feminine part of you. Our job is to take our shadows, or rather, the parts that they are protecting, and reintegrate them back into our whole being.
Sometime during the writing of this, I went to see a Reiki therapist to help gain insight on why my Achilles tendon wasn’t healing. Among other insights, he shared with me the vision he had of me curled up in the fetal position. I told him “I know that vision.” In my darkest moments, or what I had then considered my “weak moments”, this is the position anyone would find me in. The image had come up many times in therapy, and I had touched on it doing inner child work, but there was always some resistance. The vision goes back to me as a young girl. Feeling alone, dejected, and unloved. My own darkness: the belief that I am not loved. Logically, I know that there are lots of people who love me. Emotionally, I’ve always felt separate. In one break up I found myself saying “Why don’t you love me?”. But it was never about the guy. It was my core wound. And all the shadows around that evolved to help protect me from feeling the pain of that wound. The only cure was to go in and do the intense, intimate work of learning how to love myself, to go back to my younger self and say “I love you. I will not abandon you.” It was and is some of the hardest work I have ever done and continue to do.
But what about evil?
I’ve always considered myself the type of person that feels the immense pain of the world. I resisted much of this sensitivity through my early 20s because accepting the cruelty was too much to bear. How could such evil exist? If there was a Higher Power, how could they let this happen? So I chose ignorance. I didn’t want to think about it…so I didn’t.
Now, I’m a devout vegan. The thought of an animal ever being hurt can bring me to tears instantaneously. In saying that, my goal isn’t to turn everyone reading this into a vegan (though admittedly, that would be lovely), but to simply help others be aware of when they choose to ignore evil in any area of their life, to ignore darkness. Additionally, I stay updated enough on the news to know what’s happening, so I can help or donate when I can afford to. Yet to go deeper into the wars, to women being executed for claiming their right to exist, to the children dying of starvation…well, I could easily get lost in the darkness all over again and simply go numb to the pain. There’s no sense in any of it…because a world not filled with love is nonsensical! Here, I’m not going to claim that I know with certainty the answer as to whether or not evil exists on its own (although I try), but I can theorize that in many spaces, evil exists where love is forgotten. I hand out no excuses, but I see many of the “evil” leaders of the world trapped in a dark space where love and hope has been so far pushed away that their memory has no recollection of it ever existing. I see them as children in the fetal position, in a cave of darkness surrounded by shadows, and wrapped in a heavy blanket of shame. The shame tells a lie: “I must not be lovable”. Because love is a foreign concept, power becomes the desired feeling and monsters help block the lonely child from the fear of being unlovable. With the inner demons too much to bear, they have created a demon out of themselves. If only they knew the truth: that they are love, not their shadows.
Suicide, on the other hand, happens when a person turns their inner demons on themself. They internalize the shame until it truly becomes too much to carry. Too much to live with. Instead of attacking others, they attack themselves in the most destructive way possible. It doesn’t seem like a choice, because all they can see is the shadows inside of themselves and the shadows have blocked out the light.
In both instances, the lie is that one is unlovable. That love is too far gone to ever get it back. If only they knew…
Knew what?
I guess that brings us back to the beginning.
Is darkness real?
Some would argue that if we created a room without windows, only darkness would exist. I would argue back that they blocked out the light.
What about the monsters under the bed? Would they still be there if we turned on the light?
What if we’re too scared to look?
A lot of great spiritual teachers say that fear is the opposite of love, which I believe is nearly the same thing as saying that darkness is the opposite of light.
If that is true, why would anyone ever be scared of love?
This is where I usually have to bring inner child work into therapy. When I work with adults, some of them are very set in the belief that they are not good enough, that they don’t matter, that they are undeserving of love. Then I ask the question…would they ever say any of those things to a child? Could a child ever not be good enough? Could a child ever deserve the bad things happening to them? “Hell no!”, they say. But what about their 7 year old self?
Without going too deep into attachment theory and developmental research, a child’s view is “selfish”, in that it’s hard to see outside of themselves for answers. If a parent hits a child, the only reason a child can come up with is that it’s because they are bad, not because the parent has issues. And so, this little, innocent child believes they are defective. Something must be wrong with them, because in a young child’s eye, their parents know everything and are the omnipresent being in their world. Truly, children depend on their parent’s for survival, so a child must learn to do whatever they can to survive, even if it means coming up with a facade, or the belief that they don’t matter. That’s the only way they can make sense of misattuned love. The only way we can make sense of darkness.
As adults, we forget about our own light, that the power is in us, not our parents and their demons, because we’ve created our own. We’ve spent our whole life living in the shadows and allowing fear to protect us from harm. It’s hard to see any other option. (Fear truly is responsible for our primal safety. For example, if a child can tell when a parent is upset, they probably know it’s a good day to stay in their room and “hide”. Remember, basic psychology tells us that fear is our bodies’ survival response, allowing us to fight, flee, or freeze when we need to.) The fact that we’re actually free beings, that love is our core, and we’re capable of truly amazing things…well that sounds crazy.
And I, as a mental health therapist, say “then we all must become crazy.” Or maybe we’re already crazy for living in a lie for so long.
Yes, it does suck to know that we’ve all been living in one big lie our whole lives (and many will choose to reject this simply because the “truth is too much to bear”, that they didn’t have to live in so much pain for 10 ,20, 50 years…), but the sooner we accept it, the sooner we can move to toward something better.
With that, my answer.
No, I don’t believe darkness is real. It exists, yes, but only because we’ve made it up. It’s been created from our own internalized darkness, not that different from how we’ve created skyscrapers that block out magnificent views and create large shadows in the afternoon sun. Darkness is simply fear and negative, false beliefs about ourselves that, and when given the power, can lead to truly evil acts.
Even as I type my answer, my shadow, my inner critic, wants to come in and say “Who do you think you are to say you have the answer to such a big question? You, Ray, are full of it.” However, after having gone through my own darkness, another thought, a ray of hope, comes in to say “But what if it is, darkness, really all just a myth? What if you’re right? What if there is something better?”
Being my own devil’s advocate, I ask myself the next logical question: Why does darkness exist? What is its purpose?
I’ve already explained, in part, how I think darkness arises around the absence of love, or rather, the belief we are unlovable. Yet, if you believe in a Higher Power,, couldn’t that Higher Power just wipe that thought out and send us a big sticky note that reads “YOU ARE LOVED UNCONDITIONALLY”?
As someone who loves discussing purpose and meaning, all I can do here is draw on the wisdom of the existential authors that have come before me. We must each make our own meaning of the darkness.
Is it to grow? Is it because that in suffering, we find joy? Is it our challenge to return to love, and therefore deepen our understanding of it?
The answer may be individual or it may be universal. I’m not entirely sure. What really matters is that we each have an answer for ourselves, for the meaning presides over our evolution.
Which leads us to…death.
Here, I turn to the sky.
Every day, the sun sets, and night takes over. The next day, the sun rises. A new day is born.
My main personal experience with death was witnessing my older sister’s slow transition to death in her cancer-ridden body. I still consider it a blessing that she was able to make that transition at home, surrounded by her family. To me, it was the hardest, most sacred, most love-filled moment I have ever been present to. Even at her funeral, amidst tears and mascara stains, there was so much love surrounding me and my family. Today, while I do feel my sister’s presence when I’m experiencing hardship, I feel her the most when I’m in a state of bliss. When I’m in the mountains on a bluebird day with my dog by my side. During those times, I don’t need to call on her for support, she is just there.
My research, both in reading and in viewing others, as well as personal experience, also tells me that we all experience several deaths within ourselves during this lifetime. In fact, biology tells us that we literally have a new physical body every 7 years. Then, there are our own internal transitions, leaving old versions of ourselves behind and becoming someone new. Various cultural traditions have honored these changes throughout history. Poetically phrased, this is the “phoenix process” of death and rebirth within our individual human experience. Until our ultimate physical death. Then, does everything go dark?
I don’t have a therapeutic or scientific way to answer this question. Yes, the physical body most certainly dies. From there, my current perspective is that life, in all its intricacies, is just too miraculous to be limited by this physical realm. My older sister tells me there is more, and so does my inner knowing. That answer is satisfactory enough for me.
The final question: If darkness, a human creation, is present inside of ourselves and in the world, how do we overcome it?
Ignoring the darkness can’t be the answer, as it just creates more shadows. What about fighting it? If we fight anything, shouldn’t it be darkness?
Yet, fighting in itself is a dark act that creates more polarization and more darkness that can only block out the light, although it can never kill it. The energy of war can never heal.
I’m tempted to use the word “surrender”, but that word, even if I define it as “stepping into the flow of Life”, will most likely be misunderstood. Instead, I will choose to offer this word, “befriend”. Maybe a seemingly odd choice still, but remember, fear is a protection mechanism. The shadows created by fear are attempts to keep us safe from feeling the pain of core wounds, with the ultimate core wound being the false belief that we are unlovable. Personally, I can look at my own darkness and thank it for protecting me as a child and as an adult, thank it for showing me what needed healing. Of course, looking at and befriending darkness on a worldy scale is a much bigger challenge. Here, I’ll simply say that what we’ve been doing obviously hasn’t been working, and we will only find creative solutions when we release our own internal fears. So the simple answer, almost too simple to be believed, is that the more we heal our individual selves, the more we heal the collective.
And that is the final piece to this essay. The darkness of separation. Another lie we’ve believed. Why loneliness is a known factor of early mortality. You and I, or “thou”, to draw on the work of Martin Buber, may not be the same, but we are connected. We are one part of the Whole.
If darkness was created out of lies we’ve believed, it’s truth that can bring us to the light.
So far in my research, or “Googling”, I have not found evidence to support the theory that “dog” is intentionally “god” spelled backwards.
But I don’t need the evidence. Whether or not it’s intentional, I already know the truth. Without question, dogs are simply extensions of God, which I’ll simply define here has pure, positive energy. Love and joy.
The more I listen to spiritual teachers, the more I’m convinced that all humans, or spiritual beings in human bodies, are meant to live in a state of joy.
With that, my job as a light worker, or therapist, is to help people move through their darkness and trauma to return to the light, a state of joy. Yet as someone who’s always been highly attuned to the darkness and light in the world, it still takes a lot of work (though less so than in the past). Hence, my gift from the Universe, or God…Pacer. My reminder, or angelic messenger, to return to love. A reminder that joy and peace are our natural states.
*I have to add… because one of my best friends is a cat lover. I think this post can extend to all animals.
*I truly contemplated entitling this blog “Manifesting for Muggles”, but I know not everyone shares the affinity for Harry Potter culture that I do. Also, what I really mean is “physically mortal”, as in, our bodies die, but our spirit continues on.
Is manifesting magic?
No…and Yes! (In my head, this is said in my best Buddy the Elf voice.)
Manifesting is a word that comes with a lot of different interpretations and connotations. Some people think the idea of manifesting is ridiculous, and others practice manifesting daily, with mixed results.
I’m here to provide clarity and some middle ground by sharing a little bit of my own journey with manifesting. If you’re a doubter, stay with me.
*****
I’m not sure how old I was the first time I heard of manifesting. Maybe it was in one of Gabrielle Bernstein’s first books, maybe it was before that. But it certainly wasn’t the word I was using in my early 20s, when first started manifesting. Honestly, I didn’t even know I was doing it. I just knew what I wanted and I, with my Midwestern grit, was sure as hell going to figure how to get it. Only, it wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be.
For example, after I graduated from college, I knew I wanted to take a trip to Africa and spend some time volunteering. I just had no idea how to do that. No one in my family had ever done anything like it. I had only been to one other country…Canada. I’m also from a middle-middle class family from Ohio and I certainly didn’t have the extra cash oozing out of my bank account. So I just started researching.
I was also signed up to run Burning River 100 that year, which was then the USATF 100 mile Championship and I was fortunate enough that summer to have the time train for the race. I managed to get second place to the legendary Connie Gardner, which I think earned me $500, the amount I needed to make the down payment to Cross Cultural Solutions, the organization I chose to volunteer with. During that time, I also was accepted to be a “loaned executive” for the United Way of Greater Cleveland. As the name suggest, usually this position is loaned out from other companies, but I was one of the rare solo hires. The job ended in mid-December as the big fundraising campaign ended right before Christmas. At one of the company holiday parties, I won one of the raffles… usually I’m the person lucky enough to win a dollar on a lottery ticket. This time, I won enough to help make another needed payment for the trip. The job ended at a perfect time too…I spent Christmas with my family, then took off in January to spend a month in Tanzania, Africa.
The next few years was a series of small manifestations, but there’s a few key take-aways here. I gave away my “business” cloths…the pencil skirt and pant suit. I didn’t want a job where I’d have to dress up. I landed my then “dream job” at Girls on the Run of Northeast Ohio. It didn’t pay much, but I loved the organization and the women I worked with. Not long after, my then boyfriend got a job at the University of Colorado in Boulder, right where my sister lived. I stayed a little longer in Ohio because I wanted to work another season with GOTR, but before I knew it, I was close to my sister and in the land of adventure. Oh…and I almost forgot to mention. At GOTR, I met a volunteer who had lived in Colorado previously and had backpacked the Colorado Trail (CT) with her dog. I had been on the CT before when visiting my sister and had a moment of “falling in love” with the scenery. Of course, this all led me to backpacking the Colorado Trail with my dog the very summer I moved out to Colorado (again, after never having backpacked before!).
I then made grad school happen, I got a wonderful internship in the mountains and found rare, affordable housing with wonderful landlords, and I opened my private practice, Wanderlust Counseling. Eventually, my heart started telling me it was time to move again. Actually, it had been giving me the nudge for awhile. After my sister and her partner moved and I found myself spending a silly amount of gas money to drive to further west to play in the mountains with my pup, the calling got louder (and yet still subtle….if you’re not use to listening to your intuition, it’s easy to ignore it).
On August 13th, 2022, just after many miles spent climbing Mt. Harvard and playing on the Colorado Trail in the Sawatch mountains, my twin’s sisters “home” mountains, I wrote in my journal “Universe/Amanda*- we want to find a place near here-close to trails, perfect for Pacer.” This accompanied a prayer I often said in my head “A van or something better.”
*Amanda is my older sister who transitioned in 2020. I know she always has my back and enjoys it when me and my other sister are together…because when I’m paying attention, I can feel it.
Less than 2 months later, my dog and I were moving into a Yurt, 20 minutes away from my sister, at the edge of the Sangre de Cristo mountains. I honestly could not have come up with that idea in my head. It’s perfect. While I give some credit to the Facebook-verse (I had shared a post that I was casually looking for a place on a rentals page, a page that isn’t exactly and uplifting place to find housing), I tell people “I honestly think I manifested it” when they ask me how I found the Yurt.
*There are several reasons why a van would not have been a good option for me right now.
As you can see, or rather, read, my manifesting journey has been both simple and spectacular. Which is really the life I want to lead. Simple in not wanting a lot of stuff but spectacular in outdoor adventures, often in my backyard.
******
Personally, I can’t wait to do Gabrielle Bernstein’s 2023 Manifesting Challenge, and I listen to Abraham Hicks (the channeled beings or consciousness, that is translated through Esther Hicks) most mornings of the week. That practice has been going on for a few months now, and sometimes I still get tripped up and my Midwestern critic voice comes in that says its all nonsense. I get the raising my vibration piece…but then do I really want it? Do I not actually want it? Am I blocking what I’m trying to manifest? Wait, is that my vibration lowering? But I’m trying to raise it, I swear!
Then I judge myself for all that questioning, which is most definitely a block. Sigh.
In short, I’d say the simple key is returning back to your vibration, or stepping into how you want to feel. Which is really, really simple when you break it down with the steps I’m going to give you.
My 4-Step Guide to Manifesting
(Updated 1/14/24) I don’t think what I wrote below is necessarily wrong, its more that is not quite right.
Align with your Higher Self/Heart
This, yes, absolutely has to do with core values (below), but its more than that. Its about aligning with heart wants, over mind wants. My heart really just wants to feel peace, love, and joy, my mind wants success and things to show I’m successful. My Higher Self knows everything is already okay. My Higher Self also knows there is a plan for my life greater than my ego-mind can imagine. So there is a letting go, a surrender, and peace and joy in already knowing that what is meant for me will come to me, and that I am already loved beyond what I can measure in the tangible world.
1. Know your core values.
I like to either think of core values as roots of a tree that ground us so we can grow higher, or like points on a compass, which I’ll use here. When you know your core values, you have a clear direction of where you want to go in life. You may not know exactly what that life looks like, but you probably know the feelings you want to have by following those values. For example, my top for values (in no specific order) are growth, adventure, family/friends, and kindness. Encompassed in all of that is what I feel like my purpose is: to be a light in the dark. If I follow my values, that leads me to a life of love, peace, freedom, and wisdom. Damn, that feels good.
(I’m a mental health therapist, running coach, and aspiring writer that lives in the middle of the mountains with my dog, although not too far away from my sister and her partner/my “brother”…see how my values all play out?)
2. Follow Synchronicities (breadcrumbs) and Joy
This is the main reason why I wanted to update this blog: I’ve created some chaos by taking action, and action even when I didn’t get a sign, or really feeling “aligned”…yet my mind did a really good job of tricking me it was my intuition (“trickster energy” is actually a well-known term in astrology). What I’ve learned is patience is key, not getting a sign is a sign (and not a sign that you should be taking action!), coincidences are rarely random, and what lights you up is always worth paying attention to and “playing in” (but again, don’t be tricked into what you think or what should bring you joy).
2. Take a step onto the path.
Let your intention be known to the Universe. Say a prayer. Write it down. Initiate the spark. Clear your path. I don’t know if this step is necessary for a practiced manifestor, but for me this tiny step towards my dreams always seems to put things into action. I do a little research, I write a Facebook post, tell people about what I’m doing and want to do, etc. Usually, my values have already helped me to align and make it easy to take this first step (and laziness is not a value of mine anyway).
*I have not yet overcome my natural worrying tendency. This step, worrying, is definitely not necessary. For example, when I was looking for a place when I first moved to the mountains for the internship, I worried for months. And then, at the last minute, the perfect place came my way. It had nothing to do with my worrying efforts. An acquaintance, now friend, who is also a running coach happened to live next to people with an empty basement apartment.
3. Practice Gratitude.
Whether I have what I want yet or not, I can always practice gratitude. If I’m wanting a companion, I can be grateful of the quiet loveliness of the current moment snuggled up next to my dog. If I’m wanting to write and sell a book, I can be grateful for the time I have to write creatively, an activity I enjoy regardless if I get paid or not. If I’m wanting my body to heal after an injury, I can be grateful for what I can still do and for all the adventures I’ve already had.
4. Allow.
See what happens. Be curious. Flow, don’t force. Yes, keep moving toward your dream, but you should always enjoy the process. You might get exactly what you wanted, something a little different, or not get it all. Because it might be something you just couldn’t have imagined. Regardless, you’re feeling good. You’re aligned with your values and are grateful for what you have. Life is already good. Manifesting just enhances it. And the more you align with your true self and your purpose, the more you open yourself up to receiving.
Wishing you a magical 2023!
My twin sister, Pacer and I, “Christmas Mountain Day” 2021
This is a topic I’ve wanting been wanting to discuss and bring more into my counseling practice for awhile now.
And so, it begins.
Truly, I believe Inner Work is one of the highest forms of spirituality, but for the sake of explanation, I’ll separate the two in the following paragraphs.
Spirituality is hard to define, because unlike religion, it’s really up to the individual to define it. In broad terms, spirituality is the belief of something greater than oneself, such at the Divine, or the deep connection shared between all living thing. It’s the Sun and the Moon, the Earth and the Sky, it’s Me and You (or, as Marin Buber would say, the relationship of “I and Thou”).
Mental health refers to your the well-being of your mind and includes psychological, emotional, and social well-being. It considers where you are on the spectrum of despair and joy and how well you’re managing daily life (I wanted to say “human existence”, but that already connects us right back to the spiritual.)
In past years, we’ve seen a lot of spiritual teachers speak simply of being happy, connecting to the Divine, and raising our vibrations. They talk about eliminating negative thoughts and switching right to positive affirmations.
Then, we have the mental health therapists, talking about the reality of depression and other mental illnesses, cognitions, being with uncomfortable emotions, and “feeling your feelings”*.
(Actually, I wish more therapist practiced “feeling-based” therapies…too many still focus only on the mind, forgetting the mind and body are connected.)
Now these two seemingly opposing world’s are reuniting. Most spiritual teachers I follow now speak about trauma work, such as Gabrielle Bernstein in her recent book Happy Days: The Guided Path from Trauma to Profound Freedom and Inner Peace. Then we have psychologists like Lisa Miller, PhD, researching and writing books like The Awakened Brain: The New Science of Spirituality and the Quest for a Inspired Life.
I’ve had a lot of friends first on the spiritual path of meditation, Yoga, etc., and then have to back track to mental health. At Naropa University, where I went to grad school, we were taught early on in meditation class the term “spiritual bypassing”. In other words “lets just clear our mind and pretend emotions like sadness, anger, and fear don’t really matter”. That path can only last for so long, although it may be years, until a person eventually hits that “breaking” moment when their soul demands attention for the deep wounds to be healed. (With that, a few spiritual practices early on make for great coping and regulation skills during therapy.)
Now let’s circle back to the idea that Inner Work is one of the highest forms of spirituality.
If we think of Parts work (or IFS), we know that the more we work with our wounded and protector parts (ex: Inner Critic, Ego, Addict, etc) and reintegrate them into the whole, the closer we are to our Higher Self, or what Richard Schwarts simply calls the “Self.” This is the part of us most aligned with our true nature, and for those who practice spirituality-our god/universe/divine-center. Similarly, the more we work with uncomfortable emotions and allow them to be seen and felt, the easier they shift and transform, like clouds in the sky. Built up clouds and emotions lead to storms. Clouds and emotions that have room to move allow for more sun, spirit, and joy to come through.
In short, if I don’t fear not being enough, I have the freedom to just be the full expression of me.
This is why, as a mental health therapist, I still enjoy listening to Abraham Hicks, Wayne Dyer, and Louise Hay*. We do want to raise our vibrations and think better thoughts. I just want to “modernize” things a bit.
First, I think we need to switch from using the word “negative” to “uncomfortable” when speaking about our emotions. I do understand the term negative when it comes to energy, but it’s important that we don’t label any of our emotions as “bad”. All emotions are sources of information and deserve to be seen and felt. That is how we validate ourselves.
From there, we can make “feeling good” a two-step process, with the first part being feeling our uncomfortable emotions. At the beginning, this includes the deep Inner Work of working through trauma and inner child wounds. We have to dig in here so we can truly allow the light to shine in and heal us. Expect a lot of storms and a lot of rainbows. While uncomfortable emotions may never go away, they do start to move through a lot faster once we’ve worked through the deep stuff and have had practice feeling our emotions.
This is also where happiness is a choice…we have to choose to do the work.
In the second step, while their still is choice involved, choice to “choose the better thought”, and to choose your actions on the path towards a meaningful and joyful life, I believe its more about simply allowing. Again, when we let go of the darkness, when we heal our pasts and learn how to move through emotions, the sun naturally wants to shine. Really, its about stepping into your Light.
To summarize, I would say that the mental health/spiritual journey is really the brave journey of going through the darkness, the darkness of our minds, so we have the freedom to be the highest versions of ourselves.
*In The Power is Within You, Louise Hay writes about how, after her cancer diagnosis, she had to go back and feel her resentment and deal with past trauma.
“The opposite of love is fear.” -Said in different ways by many people, but I usually think of The Course in Miracles or Marianne Williamson’s A Return to Love.
Your thoughts?
After all, the Lumineers say “the opposite of love’s indifference” and plenty of others will say it’s hate.
What if we add the caveat that the only way to move towards love is to befriend your fear?
Fear certainly isn’t bad. It’s our key primal survival mechanism. But in our modern world, fear has gone a little haywire. We fear what needs to not to be feared.
Fear in today’s world, you see, protects one from the risk of love, the risk of getting hurt, of having your heart broken. If it’s not the opposite of love, we can at least say it’s the biggest block to love.
Really, it’s all based on a myth. Love never goes away. It may change forms, but it can never disappear. Love surrounds us just as much as the air surrounds us. We’ve just been trained not to see it or deny its existence. Instead of being all encompassing and always existing energy that is all around us, we’ve been told love is limited and that love can hurt us. This is a lie.
While yes, a break-up, divorce, or death can be a source of great emotions such as sadness, fear, and anger, it’s not love that is hurting us. It’s the lie that it’s gone. Love is the cushion we fall back on. It’s in the arms of friends and family waiting to comfort us, our dogs waiting to lick the tears away, the Voice within us telling us it will be okay. It’s still in the relationship that was, it’s still in that other person, even if the relationship ceases to exist how it once was.
This doesn’t mean we still don’t get to have our uncomfortable emotions. We just need to take the time to feel them, as scary as they can be, and let them pass, so we can move towards a path of freedom, a path full of the love that awaits us.
Side note: You’re living a human existence in a world filled with fear. If you don’t understand this right away, that’s okay! You just have to believe it’s true. Personally, it’s been months and months of dedicated inner work to get me to this point, and I’m still not fully there. I just trust my Higher Self that the message is pure.
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“Love in your mind produces love in your life. This is the meaning of Heaven. Fear in your mind produces fear in your life. This is the meaning of hell” ― Marianne Williamson, Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles.
“A Course in Miracles says that only love is real: “The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.” When we think with love, we are literally co-creating with God. And when we’re not thinking with love, since only love is real, then we’re actually not thinking at all. We’re hallucinating. And that’s what this world is: a mass hallucination, where fear seems more real than love. Fear is an illusion. Our craziness, paranoia, anxiety and trauma are literally all imagined. That is not to say they don’t exist for us as human beings. They do. But our fear is not our ultimate reality, and it does not replace the truth of who we really are. Our love, which is our real self, doesn’t die, but merely goes underground.” ― Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”
Early on in my internship days at a residential treatment center, I was doing an intake for a young 20-something woman. We must have doing the sexual trauma section of the intake. All I really remember is when she said “There’s a fine line between consent and giving in.”
I had to hide my gasp. The words struck me- they still do. Such a poignant way to describe a terrible truth.
It wasn’t more than 2 seasons later that I found myself experiencing her words for myself. The truth now haunting my own story.
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This is the first time I’ve told this story*, over 3 years later. Even my loved ones only know this story in part, and I still fear them reading this. Most people know me as an open, vulnerable person when it comes to sharing my journey, so why I haven’t I told it? Here’s a few of the reasons: the story wasn’t there, how stories usually first appear in my mind and then wait for me to write them. I was still confused on what happened, how I could have let it happen. With that, came a great deal of shame. People may actually think differently of me, that I’m not as strong as they thought, after reading this. Additionally, I was scared, for reasons that will later be revealed.
Additionally, I also wasn’t fully aware that what happened was traumatic until a dear friend (another therapist and healer) I was hiking with used that word as she reflected back the story.
Now, I can look back at the end of this story, the part where Pacer and I were staying in a hotel room, and see the beauty within it. I can remember the love and strength of my sisters. When my older sister, in the midst of her journey with cancer, telling me “life is too short to be anything but happy.”
I have also found compassion for my ex-boyfriend. I believe, at least in this society, the term “narcissist is at times overused, sometimes further used to gaslight people who just got out of manipulative relationship, and that we all have some narcissism in us. That part of us is very insecure. To have the true narcissistic wound is a painful existence. Inside, these people hold inside the exact opposite of what they externally show: confidence, prideful, put-together, self-admiration. Internally they are constantly fearful of how others perceive them, have little self-love, and are terrified of anyone finding out about their imperfections. It’s not a way I would want to live.
Finally, I have started to forgive myself and the role I played in the relationship, and the actions I took even after my sister’s helped pulled me out of dark waters.
The relationship began with a surge of excitement. In therapy terms, his love bombing (which comes from a deep attachment wound) played off of the emotional neglect I experienced in childhood. (My parents are wonderful people, but their midwest, baby boomer generation had learned to dismiss emotions as unimportant, and this message was passed on to me until I decided to change it. Otherwise, I knew I was loved and all my other needs were met). This felt exciting to me, and my usual nervousness around new people quickly diminished…which was my excuse of not pursuing a very kind, Jim Carey-like man I had also recently met. I can’t say I didn’t notice red flags, but I easily dismissed them. Like the time the bartender wouldn’t serve him another shot after talking to another bartender at nearby restaurant on down the block on Pearl St.. Then that night, or maybe it was another, that I was slightly nervous about him driving me home after almost missing a red light.
I didn’t know until much later that my older sister had noticed these red flags right away, how he always had a drink whenever we went to a restaurant, or the flare in his voice at the Christmas Eve party. My twin sister still holds on to some guilt. She always questioned my decision to be with him while also trusting my choice. I think that’s what a sister is supposed to do, and I never told her all the details. Probably because my family rarely talks about personal lives, let alone asks personal questions. Actually, my parents know nothing to very little of this story at all (a friend may have leaked a small portion out). My sisters and I felt that they were already going through enough, especially with my older sister fighting cancer. My mom’s cancer diagnosis would come just a few weeks after…and I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t have told us if she could have hid the side effects of chemo. (Twin, while I would prefer that you not read this, because I know it was a painful experience for you too and I’m ashamed of some of my actions, please know that I will always value your opinion and your spiritual guidance. But this was not your fault. Your job was never to save me, but your and Amanda’s support meant everything to me. )
Not much longer after the we started dating, I remember covering for him at a group run. I think on one of the days before he had hit his head on a cupboard, which brought on symptoms from previous concussions he had got fighting in the Iraq war. (Note: Him and I morally disagreed on some big subjects and usually I was made to feel guilty if I even inquired about his view points. Yet. as a Highly Sensitive Person, I felt compelled to caretake.) After the group run and his speaking engagement at the running store, I remember my sister and a friend giving me quizzical looks. I can’t remember what I said, but I did my best to cover up for his odd behavior. Truly, I don’t know if his behavior was concussion related, medication related, or alcohol related. But he was a war hero, who appeared to be highly regarded in the running community*, and wasn’t I doing what I was supposed to be doing?
*Later, after the relationship ended, I discovered that others had mixed feelings about him too. I had no idea. While in no way do I blame anyone else, I wish someone would have said something to me, because I usually felt like I was crazy.
That winter, I don’t remember much. Things must have been okay for awhile, and I was busy with my second year of grad school in Naropa University’s Clinical Mental Heath Counseling/Transpersonal Wilderness Therapy program, which included many trips outdoors (more shame- shouldn’t I have seen this coming with my training?). Actually…wait. That’s not true. During a backpacking trip in Utah, my dog got deathly ill back at home. I remember my sister telling me that he went to work and left the clean-up and caretaking to her and her partner…they quickly took my dog, Pacer, to the ER. At this moment, I can barely type. My dog is my everything… how could I have ignored that? How can I forgive myself for that, and all the other times I let him make the decisions off of his needs…like when our flight from one of his races got in late, and he wanted to stop at IHOP, when I knew Pacer was at home waiting for me?
I do remember almost breaking up with him. I believe it was January. I remember standing on his doorstep. I think we basically had broken up. Then I decided to do a short, late afternoon snowshoe hike to a mountain lake. You would think that would have cleared my mind and calmed my body. But I went back to his apartment after that and allowed the story to continue.
Spring brought on more flags, flags that I didn’t know were flags. I just knew he seemed a little off. My second year of grad school ended with canoeing trip down a canyon in Utah, followed my a formal rites of passage, something my cohort and I had been building up to all year. A rite of passage is a sacred event. All year, I had been working on accepting a part of me that I had pushed down much of my life, and I wanted to step into my sacred feminine power. For three days and nights, I slept, meditated, and fasted on the Colorado-Utah border and basked in the magical space my peers and professors had created with the land. It was a transformational week. When we got back to Boulder, we held a “welcome back” ceremony with family and friends. This too, was important to me. I invited my sister and him. My sister, as always, was excited to be there for me and took part in the ceremony. He was subdued, quiet, and a little “off.” That weekend, I held a more intimate dinner with him, my sister, and her boyfriend. I cooked a special meal, and read a poem I had written in the desert. While a little awkward for all of (none of us had grown up in a spiritual fashion), he just wasn’t there. Uncomfortable. Which ended up being the norm for all the times the attention wasn’t on him.
It wasn’t until summer that the signs really became obvious to me, or I at least knew that the relationship wasn’t good and I wanted to get out. My lease was up at the end of May and I had plans to move up to Estes Park at the end of summer as I began my internship. So, in the interim, I moved in with him. I cried almost as soon as I got there. He didn’t clean. Didn’t make any room for my stuff. I didn’t want to be there, but I had nowhere to go (my sister’s place was tiny and didn’t allow dogs.). That June, my sister was racing in Poland and her partner soon after in France. They bought me a plane ticket and paid for my stay so my sister and I could celebrate our 30th birthday together (we’re twins). I again trusted him with my beloved dog, Pacer, who’s both very sensitive and protective. Without going into detail, what I now believe was carelessness (but he had a good story at the time), led to a lot of court dates that became my responsibility. Luckily, she stayed safe.
Then the yelling began.
I tend to be a forgetful person at times. I lose my keys and forget where I put IDs. For instance, as we were getting ready to check our bags at the airport, I forgot that I had left my credit card in my Yoga bag. The plane tickets and his race expenses were on my card, as usual (I think I eventually always got paid back, sometimes with some dispute. There’s was something about credit after the housing market fell…). He got pretty upset. My survival response is to freeze, his was obviously, to yell (fight). On the ride back to Boulder, I literally sat frozen in the car in fear of the anger penetrating of his body, as well as my guilt for messing up the trip. Back at his condo, he slammed the door in his bedroom, and I laid in the fetal position on the patio. Still feeling guilty for potentially ruining his race and letting his sponsors down, I talked him in to taking a later flight. I repacked his bags.
It happened again, sometime during the Perseids meteor shower and right before I was due to check out my potential place in Estes Park. I can’t remember if this was the time I remember him driving too fast down I-70 and me thinking “Pacer is in the car”, but being too scared to say anything else for fear he would drive faster. Or maybe it was another time. What I do remember him yelling, and I do remember leaving, driving away from town to hopefully see a shooting star, wishing for an escape, but returning, again because I had no where to go and had none of my stuff. And, after all, the yelling wasn’t “that bad.” The next day, I desperately didn’t want him to go with me. A week later, I desperately didn’t want him to sign the lease with me as I moved in. But I had forgotten how to say “no.”
Really, the yelling and silent treatments are all pretty blurry. I only know they happened because I wrote them down, which ended up being a key to my sanity. Proof I wasn’t making things up.
He was staying at his place down the canyon for another month. For a short period of time, I enjoyed the freedom of my new life. I had decided, with the help of a therapist, to write him a letter to end the relationship. I believe I gave it to him before he left to pace a well-know athlete at another 100 miler, another link to popularity (and probably a good reason to date me, with a sister and her boyfriend-whom I consider my brother-, both being professional athletes). While timid, there was a relief in leaving him the letter. If only it had lasted…
Not long after, he came to my basement apartment, tearful and apologetic. I did say no…until he continued. He pleaded for a month or two, to see if we could work things out. I didn’t like this idea, but I gave in. I don’t know if I came up with this idea then, or at the beginning of the next summer, but I decided that I liked the rest of my life, so I could handle a partner I didn’t want to be with. Plus, it made the rent cheap. It wasn’t until much, much later that I realized if your goal is to have a joyous and meaningful life, you don’t need to invite darkness in and then let it hang around (I’m not referring to him specifically, but the darkness inside of him).
In general, things were going okay for the next few months. I let him drive back to Ohio with me for Christmas (why didn’t he go see his own kids?). I soon kicked myself for allowing this, rather than having a peaceful drive with my sister. There must have been some type of argument, maybe because I protested that I wanted to listen to my music too, and then a tense silence. This is when I could feel my older sister’s dislike of him, though she didn’t say it.
Sometime in the transition between winter and spring, I fully understood, by experience, that client’s words “there’s a fine line between giving up and giving in.” Now it’s obvious to me that I had been doing it all along. “It’s not that bad.” There were plenty of good times too. He wasn’t always upset. And really, he only yelled a few times. He’d never physically hurt me. This continual practice of giving in eventually led to sex too. He never forced it. For me, it was just easier to give in, to allow a few tears to invisibly trickle down my face in the dark room, then to refuse and deal with the tension the next day. I know some people won’t understand, and I’m thankful that they don’t. If you’re an HSP/empath, you might…the felt-sense of tension, of waiting for something to break, can feel unbearable.
On the other hand, I learned later that for a narcissist, not having the attention on them can be extremely uncomfortable. That sign, that I didn’t yet know was a sign, was evident that spring as I neared my graduation. Like the day my cohort and I were giving our capstone presentations. I was super proud of mine, “Mother Nature Attachment Theory” I had titled it. I remember my sister being super proud too. He must have said something to me after, but didn’t stay much longer for presentations equally wonderful from my cohort, my friends. When I got back home late that evening, he was napping, no dinner made. Just some comments on the effort he made to get there on snowy roads. Then, a month later, my family flew out to Colorado. I just didn’t want to admit it. I didn’t think they all would come. My old sister barely made it. She was so sick between the cancer and the chemo and other drugs. It meant everything to me that they came. Unsurprisingly, he wasn’t in a great mood the morning of my graduation. Driving down the canyon to Naropa, again listening to his music, I had to explain to him that this was as important to me as one of his ultra races were to him. I think he actually understood that. It just didn’t last. A few weeks later I was driving up the canyon after a long day of wilderness first responder training in the valley, and I ended up right at the scene of a major car crash, just minutes after it happened. One guy was trapped in his car, and I think eventually was helicoptered out. The other gentleman was out of his car (pulled out by two amazing people) and in severe pain, his dog faithfully by his side. While I did little more than check the guys vitals and sit by the dog, I was pretty shook. After making sure the first witness to the scene, who also stayed the whole time, were okay, I drove back down the canyon (the scene was still blocked) to go up the long way, getting home hours later than planned. I don’t remember being asked if I was okay. I remember him walking up the stairs to do his laundry.
We still had a few adventures that summer, though I was sure we wouldn’t make it through him running a well-know desert race in July. He didn’t understand why I didn’t want all the expenses on my credit card, or why I was at least hoping to get help paying for my plane ticket. But he did agree that I could climb a 14er beforehand. The 22 mile hike was amazing, but I got extremely dehydrated coming down and felt like death by the time I got to the car. After first he was concerned when I gave him a call. Then I fell asleep for an hour. When I got back it was a “you took all day while I was stuck in the hotel.” (The town of Lonepine is literally only a few blocks long). Yet, the trip ended relatively well. For the next month, things were okay, until they weren’t.
I’m not really sure what happened. He must have been out drinking with a friend. Something must have been said that opened, or threatened, a wound. I was at home completing my Girls on the Run volunteer online training. He just went off. Then he’d go into the bed room, close the door, and come back out to yell some more. This went on repeat for awhile, me just sitting on the couch with Pacer and taking it. Then I snapped and my protection mode switched for the briefest, regrettable of seconds. I threw a glass at the wall. This just further enraged him. He told me if I didn’t pick it up, he would call the police. I think I refused at first, then maybe I did so tearfully when he actually did call the police. I may have called my sister during this time. I remember praying my landlord and her granddaughter weren’t home (they weren’t.). The cop who came was really nice. He asked to talk to me first, and asked I why I threw the glass. I said I didn’t know (in hindsight, I was fully in my amygdala and definitely not in my prefrontal cortex, the thinking, rational part of the brain. It was a true survival reaction, a brief moment of moving from freeze to fight). Then the cop told me that my then boyfriend actually had an outstanding warrant, and that he was under arrest. He was taken away, and I felt some relief for the briefest of hours, alone in the apartment with just me, Pacer, and his cats. I wish the story ended there. Instead, he called me a few hour later from the jail and told me “It’s in your best interest to come pick me up.” I was never really scared of him physically. It was more the threats he threw at me and my family. More along the lines of ruining careers, and for me a counseling career I had just started. My sister and her partner always laughed at these (and there perspective helped a great deal), knowing there was no basis for his threats. Unfortunately, I did’t have that perspective. So, I picked him up. I think another week or two passed. He ran another famous race that happens here in Colorado at the end of every August. Then it happened again. I was on the couch, hiding under a blanket with Pacer, and he yelled and yelled and yelled. This time, I was at least smart enough to call my sister and her boyfriend in-between the yelling and door slams so they could record what was happening (I still had my old slide phone at the time). After listening to a few rounds of this, my sister told me to get my dog and get out. I don’t know why I needed someone telling me the obvious- probably because I was back in my freeze state, as my fight state had just made it worse last time- but I did. She got me a hotel nearby, and we drove down the hill and towards safety in the dark.
The next day I still really didn’t know what to do. My sisters made sure I was able to stay at the hotel for a few more days. My landlords texted to see if I was okay. They had heard most of it, and would have come down if they heard anything physical. However, they also knew that Pacer is quite sensitive, and that could have added to the chaos. They asked to meet me by the lake in town. The plan was to ask him to move out, which they did. And yet, the next evening, I was crying on the phone to my old sister on the curbside by the hotel. He had given them a story on how this was my fault…he’s always been quite the talker. My landlords didn’t know what to do, but I think we’re taken aback on his refusal to move. In the end, they had to give him 30 days to move out and then allowed me to move back in. This is when I took off for a week to camp, then moved into a motel for a month.
Another hopeful end to the story. Unfortunately, there’s more, including a part that I am deeply shameful of.
Somehow, another month or so later, he asked me to meet him for coffee. I don’t know if I didn’t have him blocked on my phone and he texted, or maybe he emailed, or even wrote a letter….there were lots of letters, many that I just recently threw away as I had been holding onto them as “just in case” evidence. Me, being too overly compassionate, especially because he had two boxes of my friends stuff that we had put into storage for him, agreed. Another tearful apology, still wanting to make things work. I think I said no… but then he called. Late one night, I think from somewhere out of state. Another military friend committed suicide. (I don’t say that lightly. The post-war deaths are some of the most concerning). He was emotional, potentially suicidal. Of course, I, at that point in my life, felt like I had to help him de-escalate. Then for some reason, a few nights later, I was experiencing extreme physical pain. Weak, I called him. Really, for a problem he caused. He wasn’t a fan of condoms, so I got a copper IUD. (My brain and body can’t handle anything hormonal, nor apparently, a foreign device.) The different but shared pain experiences were enough for a chemical reaction and a physical re-connection. A choice I still can’t believe I made. (Being a therapist and learning about brain chemistry, patterns, and subconscious wounds helps.)
I slept with him. Three times. After all my sister’s did for me. After all we went through together. After all the help they gave to me. I felt like I had failed them.
What would they think of me? What would my friends think of me if they new any of this story?
I finally said “no”, a true “no”, when it stopped feeling good, the guilt took over, and knowing I would never let him near Pacer again. I blocked his calls, his emails, etc.
It’s just so hard to break-up with someone in a small town.
Soon, I couldn’t go to the gym without fear of harassment, him matching his schedule to mine. Letters on windshields. Stories from a friend that he was talking about me. Encounters at the parking lot of the one main grocery store in town. My poor boyfriend after, a lovely man, being on the receiving end of my panic attacks and spirals. Calls to my landlords with threats of suicide, saying it was my fault if I didn’t go see him. Another drunk night, with him driving into an electrical poll that fell close to my landlords bedroom. My fierce landlord, a woman then in her late 60s, yelling at him to go as he knocked on my door while Pacer and I hid in the bedroom. (I laugh a little bit now looking back…no wonder why my already sensitive nervous system was a mess for so long.)
Eventually, it ended. A random text here and there after he changed his number, a rare encounter at the grocery store, a message from his ex-girlfriend after me, not saying much except that she was also scared.
The shame has been slower to let go of. It was my fault that he moved to the small town. Being in grad school to be a mental health therapist, I should have seen the signs. Going back on what my sisters had done for me. Putting Pacer through that. The feelings of being weak. Not holding my boundaries.
In hindsight, I think that maybe I thought I was tough. I could put up with it. Because it wasn’t “that bad.” And that is why I write this.
I’m still a little scared to share this story, partially because, as I said at the beginning, I know this will change people’s view of me. A friend I’ve known since college, who knows parts of this story told me “that doesn’t sound like you Rach.” Partially because I am scared of getting an angry correspondence from him or a threat to sue or something like that. But after witnessing another kind, empathetic woman, like me, endure a similar situation, I don’t have a choice. I know too many woman who have uttered the cursed words “It’s not that bad.” as a reason to stay in an unhealthy relationship. Of maybe, like me, having nowhere else to go, with a dog or kids for others. While I don’t want to compare myself to women who have been in physically abusive relationships, I write this because I know my situation is far too common. For no other woman, or really person on this planet, would I wish them to live a life that is “not that bad.” As my older sister, now passed on, said to me “Life is too short to be anything but happy.”
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In hindsight, I can explain what happened from a therapist’s perspective. I can talk about how hormones work, the emotional brain vs. the intellectual brain, and different attachment styles. I would tell my clients “It wasn’t your fault.” “Look how hard you were trying to be loved.” “Look how hard you tried to prove to another person that they are lovable too.” And I would mean it. When it comes to myself, it’s been a lot of work to give my inner therapist a louder voice than my inner critic. It’s been a slow process to give myself the same compassion I show others, but I’m getting there.
Since this experience, I was in a relationship with a good man (aforementioned above) who is still a friend. After him, I briefly dated a man with bipolar disorder. I don’t say this in any way to condemn anyone with bipolar disorder. When under control and actively being worked through with a trauma-informed therapist, there’s nothing wrong with dating someone with bipolar. The man I was dating, however, often presented very young and very reactive. Again, I knew his abuse history and my heart went out to him. This time, I realized a little bit sooner that it was patronizing to him and unhealthy for me to continue dating him. Then, while never in a relationship, I briefly dated a man whom I deeply loved, but his sacred contract was to break me and it was he who finally turned me into ashes. I am still rising from those ashes, but I’m certain that it’s a Phoenix I shall become. (Years later, I learned that this man was deeply wounded too. I had still attracted someone that met me at my level of low self-worth and I had blamed myself while he freely chatted with other available women.)
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In writing this, I have done my best to leave out specific details. However, a few readers may know whom I talking about and I ask that you please, please don’t share this with him, both for the aforementioned reasons, and for his sake. Again, I don’t envy anyone carrying the darkness of a narcissist. He still has light within him. Whether altruistic or not, he has raised money for a lot of charities, has kids, and deserves peace if he chooses to claim it. I’m fearful of how reading this would affect him…it could cause a psychotic break, which is why I’ve gone round and round on whether I should publish this or not. My intention here is to be a light, not to hurt. With that, I hope this gives others the courage to refuse to live in a place of “it’s not that bad”, and to instead live in their own fullness and beauty.
[Personal note: I wrote this after an evening where I accidentally (re: reactively) clicked on an ex lover’s Instagram page, and was -re-triggered all over again. All the ways I had felt uncared for, unloved. The “why couldn’t he be brave and take a step towards me?” “Why do I still love him?” These were more feelings than thoughts, as logically I knew some of the answers. This was followed by a night of fitful rest. In the morning, I woke up thinking “I don’t want to do this anymore. I don’t want to feel this way.” And hence, I added “be my own best partner” to my intentions of serenity and healing. Feeling my emotions of sadness, anger, and fear had helped. It was an essential step in step. They moved enough to create an opening, and opening to want and choose something else. This led to the practice below (with some insight from Louise Hay).]
Most of our versions and definitions of love are constricted. Even if we don’t fully understand this concept (I currently can only tap into it from time to time) we can find peace in knowing that love is so much more expansive than our current, limited view.
When grieving a breakup, or feeling lonely, we often think we’re grieving that person (and I won’t totally rule that out) or that imaginary “perfect” partner, but usually we’re grieving how that person made us feel…or rather, how we want or think a partner would make us feel: loved, enough, fulfilled, complete.
Next time you find yourself missing or yearning for someone, imagine how you think you’d feel if that person were around right then. Actually, let’s try it right now. Feel the sensations in your body, just as if that person were there. This can be an ex-partner from a recent break up whom you still miss, or an imaginary “perfect” partner. What do you notice in your body? Do your muscle relax? Do you feel comforted, like you can breath deeply? Do you feel cared for? Do you feel seen, heard, and understood? Do you feel like you’re enough? Do you feel warm, knowing that you are loved?
Voila! You just created those feelings. Your Higher Self knows that you’re loved and you can provide that nurturance, care, and love for yourself. Sure, it’s nice to have someone and be able to give and receive that love with someone else, but you don’t need someone else to give you all that. And no one else will be able to give you all of that, all the time, beside you. You yourself have everything you need inside of you, sometimes it just takes some digging to access that (and may require more time to fully access it, but this exercises can still provide a start). You can be your own best partner.
Exercise Summary:
Check in with your body. Name the sensations. Then the emotions. Are you feeling lonely? Sad? Scared that you’re not enough. (I add this step in here because it’s important we validate our emotions.).
Lean into the feelings of how you think you’d feel if they were in the room with you. Or, simply consider how you want to feel. (If that’s challenging for you, imagine your Higher Self, or Inner Parent, hugging your Inner child.) Start to feel the love and warmth, and linger there for a bit. Realize that you can, and actually just did, create those feelings for yourself.
Somedays, I’m only happy because I choose to be so.
No, I’m not talking about toxic positivity when one pretends that the only emotion they feel is “happy.” That’s a pretty extreme version of suppressing emotions. Any of my counseling clients would tell you that I’m a big fan of feeling ALL of our feelings. Emotional intelligence is an essential life skill. This practice of choosing to be happy also isn’t about overriding trauma, attachment wounds (a type of trauma), or negative thought patterns. What this practice can offer us is a floaty in dark waters. Or even when we’re climbing out of shallow water, like those mornings we just feel a little off (“blah, ehh”are common sounds for this feeling), maybe for no reason, or maybe because we scrolled through Instagram a little too close before bedtime.
Just that 1-5% difference in feel bad to not-so-bad matters.
Choosing to be happy can help us shift our energy to find thing we’re grateful for, which has been shown to increase a sense of over-all wellbeing. It can help us make choices that will increase our happiness. It may be the choice of asking for support from a loved or a therapist. It might be the difference between saying “I feel like sh*t, so I’m going to eat sh*t all day” to “I don’t feel great, but I’m choosing happiness. I’m going to have at least one healthy meal today.” It’s not a magical cure. It’s not saying “no” to sadness, anger, or fear. It’s actually saying “yes” to them, because when we feel our feelings and let them move, we give space for more joy and freedom. And that is what I want for myself, for you, and for my clients. Not just to learn how to feel and deal with emotions, but to create more space for happiness.
A Dog and Her Girl 