My “aha” moment

In my July 2021 blog I talked about my experience of freedom in the sea. I have been swimming in the sea, lochs and rivers many times since then. In September I took part in the Bristol 10k and it was really hard. I walked a bit of the way but I kept going and I finished. On the way home it dawned on me that the voice in my head had been telling me how well I was doing, walk if I need to and just keep moving. So in July the previously resident critical voice in my head hadn’t been there telling me I shouldn’t be prancing around in the sea in a swimsuit and here again, where once that critical voice would have been screaming horrible things at me, telling me of course an old fat lady like me shouldn’t be out doing a 10k, all I heard was support and encouragement. At that moment the power of my healing really hit me.

Is it worth it?

The question, “Why heal?”, came to me the other day and I am trying to remember how it happened. I think I was trying to work out how to talk about what I do when I work with clients and I was reminded of comments I’ve had from people over the years about what’s the point of therapy. I don’t provide therapy but I do facilitate healing and I think that’s how my mind came to the question of “Why heal?”. Why bother going to all the effort that healing (or therapy for that matter) requires? It’s a good question and I suppose why do we do anything? For me, the reason to go to therapy and then embark on my own healing journey after 3 years of therapy was to learn, to grow and mainly because I needed and wanted my life to be different. I simply could not carry on feeling the way I did.

My childhood was spent in chaos. My dad left at 7, my mum remarried what seemed quite quickly, we moved and two half-siblings came along. My mum was an alcoholic. She always drank but her drinking became more of a problem in my early teens. More of a problem to me. I didn’t feel safe, I didn’t feel supported, I didn’t feel encouraged – quite the opposite in fact. I felt ridiculed, criticised (for everything) and was constantly being told I was making wrong choices.  I took that into adulthood with me which translated into a need for control and a total lack of trust in myself and others. I had a string of disastrous relationships and unsatisfying jobs. On the outside it looked like I was making positive choices to move on but in reality I was running away. Chaos and not feeling safe was what I knew and it found me everywhere I went even though what I wanted the most was calm and safety.

 No option

In 2002 I met my now husband, we have two children (I always wanted children) and when my boys got to the age I was when the chaos really ramped up at home (around 9), my inner child started playing up big time. She saw the way I nurtured my own children and she realised what she had missed out on. Around the same time, I had a few physical ailments that tried to slowed me down – achilles problems followed by plantar fasciitis – but I kept pushing, refusing to listen to my body. Keeping busy kept the hard thoughts and feelings at bay. It was a way for me to numb out. In 2017 my body threw something at me that I couldn’t ignore. I lost a lot of the sight in my right eye which started an unravelling in me that I couldn’t stop.

I knew I had to heal. I knew there had to be more of a life for me than the existence I was experiencing. It was more the way I was feeling that I needed to change. I had a good life materially but there was something lacking, something in me. There was so much more for me. The way I experience life now is so different on the other side of my trauma having healed my wounds. The healing continues but enough has been done for me to know the power of the transformation. I haven’t applied a sticking plaster to the wounds, I have undergone real deep healing of myself. My wounds were deep and they had to heal from the inside out. A plaster is ok in the short term but real deep healing is what brings about change. Timing is everything though, if it’s not the right time your heart won’t be in it.

I finally feel free to be me. I owed it to myself to heal, to the younger me that went through so much. I no longer wince at my reflection like I used to do as I look very like my mum. I no longer think I am broken, ugly and disgusting. I am finding my purpose now and I am no longer existing in survival mode. I want those that need to hear it that healing is possible, that trauma is not the end of your story, it does not define who you are. The trauma is not who you are, it is what happened to you and the essence of you remains strong. What happened to you is what makes you who you are and that is a wonderful human being. It takes care, love, support, time and determination to heal but it is so worth it.

October 2021