I didn’t grow up understanding how to be a whole and embodied human.
I grew up with anxiety and I didn’t even know it.
I grew up under the impression that everyone had to like me in order for me to be successful.
I grew up emotionally disoriented (and deeply sensitive).
I grew up reactive and victimised.
I grew up protected and constantly saved (for my own good).
I grew up learning to ignore my intuition and do the right thing.
I grew up knowing logic, reason and rationality.
I grew up with very few thoughts of my own.
I also grew up deeply curious about why things happen.
Wonder has always been rich within me.
I remember many moments of confusion throughout my life because the ‘right thing’ wasn’t always the thing that I felt right about.
In becoming the woman I am today, I had to open my heart and my eyes wider than ever before. I had to create new neural pathways in my brain, and fire and wire them repetitively. My ego had to die many deaths.
I didn’t know this almost a decade a go, but this ‘transition’ from ego to soul is also known as ‘the dark night of the soul’.
It’s the collapse of our egoic structures and our perception of who we are and why we’re here.
The rules we live by seemingly change.
Our perception radically shifts, and we move through a period of perceived darkness as we try and make sense of ourselves and the world, from a new angle.
It seems like life has little meaning and that our soul is lost or dying -
But what’s really dying is our ego.
It’s the realisation that the ego’s perspective no longer marries up, but we are not yet connected with our soul. This transition, a limbo between who we were and who we are becoming - It calls for a spiritual response, not a pharmaceutical or even a therapeutic one.
Many of us have been conditioned to think that in times of darkness, we need fixing.
But you and I both know that the notion that you are broken is disempowering and unsupportive of the you that you’re becoming. To say that you are broken is to submit to a lifetime of powerlessness.
The solution to darkness is to let there be darkness. Your soul knows exactly when the transition process will be complete.
A more empowering question is: How much can you allow the unknown to be part of your experience?
And how much patience and compassion can you practice?
Do you think a caterpillar impatiently awaits to become a beautiful butterfly?
Or does it simply trust that it will?
It’s easier to accept that our darkness is bigger than our capacity to hold it. And this isn’t wrong.
I am the woman you know and experience today because I choose to believe that my capacity to hold my darkness is innate. I choose to expand even in my collapse.
This may not be the path for you.
But please know that if it is, expect the darkness.
The darkness holds the greatest gift of freedom and choice - if you let it.
Making yourself wrong for feeling wobbly in your soul is counterproductive for your becoming.
In times of darkness we desire solution, resolve, predictability and something to latch onto for stability. And therein lies the exact opportunity to let go -
The path is most unpredictable right before it becomes most clear.