United By Our Wounds

    So last night I had a profound experience. Some time after calling for rapid healing yesterday during my meditation, I used some edibles to fall asleep last night and felt a profound influx of healing energy coming to me and through me, like the energy had finally reached me...or rather I was finally opening to it. And several minutes into this experience, I had the following enter my mind: your powerful story will make you a powerful leader. (Just as I typed that, spirit worked through me again and used the word 'healer' instead of leader; both are true, but last night the word was leader.) In that moment I took in even deeper the idea that I chose these particular battle scars. I chose to go through all of these major traumas in my early life for a reason. Thanks to a book I read called Facing Our Wounds: Looking into the Mirror of My Heart, I also integrated the idea shared in it that people don't typically trust a leader without a limp. And boy, do I have a limp...
    This didn't come with some feeling of grandiosity. Typically, I force myself to think small so that I don't come across that way. This felt like a calling reminding me that I chose my circumstances carefully so that I'd have the credibility to guide people through their own profound experiences of suffering. The whole world is made up of people who have survived terribly excruciating circumstances and frequently these people who have suffered deeply pass their wounds onto others. But I have been ardently trying to make headway in the opposite direction. I want to help others heal their wounds and accept their battle scars. I want to help create a new mentality where we use our wounds as reasons we need to start loving, protecting, and supporting one another.

We are united by our wounds.
But we have decided to allow our wounds to divide us.
We have said to one another, "I am in pain and therefore so should you be."
We have said to each other, "I am unhappy and therefore you should not be happy."
We have said, "I am deeply afraid of the world and therefore you should not have peace."
We have said, "Your happiness makes me angry, because I cannot feel joy."
So we have taken joy, peace, and happiness from others
so that we would not be alone in our suffering.
But we can choose to be united by our wounds.
We have these in common.
And if we were to come together to lift each other up,
we would all win.
We could decide to become wounded warriors walking each other home.

The Possibility of Rapid Healing

    The number one reason behind what I confessed yesterday about wishing I hadn't survived is that I believed it would be so much easier to heal from the trauma on the other side of the veil. I did not wish to heal the hard way on the earth plane. I did not wish to spend years and years toiling through the grief and the shame and the blah, blah, blah. (The list is way too long to put here, but you get the point.) But alas, here I am battling endlessly away. It's wearisome, but I must have chosen to do things the hard way for...I don't know, a greater level of satisfaction as I cross each improbable threshold?
    With all that said, I am meditating now on the possibility that rapid healing can also take place on the earth plane. I am opening my heart and mind to the idea that miraculous levels of healing can still occur while incarnate on the earth. What if healing only seems challenging to us because we are not open enough to it while here?

Dear Mother, Father, God, angels and ancestors, I invite you and invoke you into my mind. Dear Mother, Father, God, angels and ancestors, I invite you and invoke you into my heart.
Dear Mother, Father, God, angels and ancestors, I invite you and invoke you into my soul.
I call upon your light, your healing grace. Please pour your infinite light and healing grace into my crown. I allow the light that you share with me to cleave through the remaining shadows in my energies. I allow the healing grace that you share with me to excise the remnants of darkness and despair, the vestiges of shame, grief, and sorrow.
I allow the infinity of your light, the infinity of your grace to fill me and envelop me.
Thank you, God. Thank you, God. Thank You, God.
Let this be so. And so it is. Amen.  

Battles and Marathons

    I'm still feeling very embattled today. Battling against the constant struggles of my mental health, battling against the fear, anxiety, and desperation that come with the living situation I am in right now. As I have admitted before, the more chaos I perceive in my personal life, the more I want to shut down. It's a form of a trauma response...my "learned helplessness", the idea that I can't do anything right so I shouldn't do anything at all. Or the idea that I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't. And I am beginning to think the other reason I don't have the energy or the will-power to create forward momentum in my life is because I am still dealing with a big portion of my psyche or ego that truly wishes I had never survived. For whatever reason, the wish isn't for it to have never happened, but that I had never survived it and it's hard to make any form of progress with that wish dwelling in my consciousness. It feels as though the trauma I went through stole my life from me...stole my desire to live. But I'm still here because the other part of me continues to cling to the idea that my story and my healing journey will eventually help others. I'm literally still alive because I have the audacity to believe that I could positively impact the world. How crazy does that sound? Is egocentrism keeping me alive then? I really don't know.
    Don't get me wrong here, I am trying my best to climb out of this valley. Yes, my thoughts are all very "doom and gloom" lately, but I have made it to the other side every time, and this time shall be no different. There's a purpose to each of these valleys and when I finally figure out what the purpose is to this one, I will begin to feel a shift and see a change in my outer world. In the mean time, forgive me for being such a "Debbie Downer", such a "Negative Nancy". I'm doing the best that I can.

You may be very keen
to judge me for my melancholy,
and I don't blame you...I am, too.
In my effort to avoid self-pity,
I sometimes
side-step self-compassion.

I ask myself,
shouldn't I be over this by now?
I ask myself,
shouldn't I be moving forward and letting go by now?
I tell myself,
you don't have the right to mope, you got rescued.

But I do have a right
to my anxiety and fits of depression;
that's what C-PTSD gave me.
Healing doesn't happen overnight,
it happens in fits and starts.
Healing doesn't have a finish-line,
it's a never ending marathon;
and sometimes we get winded,
sometimes we trip and fall,
and at times we even crawl.
But I haven't given up,
and neither should you.

I am learning how to trust myself.
I am learning to trust this process,
however grueling it may very well be.
I am trying to believe
in my power to overcome
the overwhelming feelings of
powerlessness and hopelessness.
I'm not sure if I'll ever manage
to get through the weariness
caused by my never ending battles,
but I have people to lean on,
while I limp through
this part of my marathon...

And in fact, I think we are all wounded warriors walking each other home.

Healing is Still Happening

    It's been so hard to write lately. My mind keeps going off the deep end which is why there have been a lot of prayers posted over the last several days. I do the work every day, but there is always another layer of consciousness for me to heal. Last week I had to work through the emotions associated with not having gotten the help I needed after the trauma and that no one was there to save me from my father that day. I kept thinking, no one helped me and my father got away with it. There was no one around to help me process what had happened and my biological father told me to keep it a secret anyway. The adults around me at the time could tell that something serious had happened and in all likelihood they probably guessed, but they weren't able to address the problem.
    Today I had to work on healing the imaginings my trigger word caused me to have. I may have been in denial, but it wasn't a comforting form of denial....and unfortunately, now is not the time to make that statement less cryptic. Throughout my whole denial phase, I did not tell a soul that I had a trigger word and even now, no one in my family knows what went on in my head when the word came up. I think they deserve to know before I make it public here...
    At the moment I am trying to remind myself that even when it doesn't feel that way, I AM healing. I am healing because that has been my intention. But the going is hard, it's exhausting. It's never ending. Yes, there have been good moments and good days, but lately, I'm just getting through the day, getting through the week. I've at least found a reliable way to get some sleep, so that's a big win.

Even when the darkness is creeping towards you,
healing is still happening.
Even when the nightmarish shadows flash across your vision,
healing is still happening.
Even as you shed your tears,
healing is happening.
Even as your ghosts seem to surround you,
healing is still happening.
No matter where you are,
healing is happening.
And when you add your intention to the process,
when you trust the process,
your healing will begin to hasten.

The Love That I Am

I allow the light that I am
to become more tangible
than the body I inhabit.
I allow the light that I am
to expand exponentially.
I allow the light that I am
to transform all the shadows
within me;
the shadows of doubt,
the shadows of shame,
the shadows of guilt;
all of them dissolved
by the light within me. 

I allow the grace that I am
to become greater than
my history of suffering.
I allow the grace that I am
to grow stronger than
my grief and anguish.
I allow the grace that I am
to dissolve the prison
I've made of the past.

I allow the joy that I am
to become more expansive
than my sea of sorrows.
I allow the joy that I am
to envelop the heart of my inner child.
I allow the joy that I am
to outpace my pains.

I allow the love that I am
to settle more deeply into my heart.
I allow the love that I am
to wipe away my tears.
I allow the love that I am
to loosen my death-grip
on my story;
I allow the love that I am
to replace my story full of pain
with a story full of pleasure. 

All That I Am

Know that you are love personified;
As you are the beloved child of God, you are the love of God.
Know that you are peace personified;
As you are the beloved child of God, you are the peace of God.
Know that you are grace personified;
As you are the beloved child of God, you are the grace of God.
All that I am, you are.

Know that you are power personified;
As you are the beloved child of God, you hold the power of God.
Know that you are light personified;
As you are the beloved child of God, you hold the light of God.
Know that you are joy personified;
As you are the beloved child of God, you hold the joy of God.
All that I am, you are.

Unpacking Yesterday's Conclusion

    So yesterday I drew an interesting conclusion: that my trauma and my purpose are inseparable, that they are two sides of the same coin. This may seem preposterous, but everything that I have ever suffered from gives me the credibility needed to support others with similar deep wounds. My intimate understanding of profound suffering has given me a profound level of compassion for others. Just like in Harry Potter when Harry learns of the prophecy and finally understands that the reason he is prophesized to be the one who kills Lord Voldemort not because he HAS to, but because he one, wants him dead more than anyone, and two, he'd want to be the one to do it, my past makes me want, more than anything, to empower the disempowered and to give a voice to the voiceless. I've been at the bottom of the totem pole before, I've been dismissed before, I've been rejected by my peers. I know what it's like to feel worthless and powerless and as I learn how to reverse those feelings, I will eventually be able to share with other people how they can overcome them as well. Now, I'm not saying I'll be as famous as a fictional character, but what I am saying is that my past is intrinsically linked to my future, my pain and my purpose are, indeed, two sides of the same coin.