Sometimes You Need to get Lost to Find Yourself.

“Sometimes you find yourself in the middle of nowhere. And sometimes in the middle of nowhere, you find yourself.” —unknown

Have you ever had something happen in your life and it triggered such a major response that it left you sitting back and looking at yourself asking, WTF?  Have my emotions been hijacked by aliens?  Who took over the control panel in my mind?  This is my experience when I get triggered, and it’s not pretty.  Triggers are powerful and when provoked, can create an entire shit storm of reactions if we let them.  Triggers are often messengers.  They are a sign of something that we need to address.  The trick is to figure out what that is.  We are not a victim of our triggers or the feelings these triggers bring up.  We can learn to choose how we want to react.  We can heal these wounds and take back our power. 

When we get triggered, we tend to look around our world for someone or something outside of us to blame.  And often, we are successful.  It is certainly easier to blame outside than to look within.  But easy is not always right, and right is definitely not always easy.  The brutal truth about our triggers is that they don’t come from the outside world, they come from within.  Meaning within you.  Meaning it's your own shit.  Ouch. That hurts.  Be kind to yourself here.  This isn’t about blame, its about healing.  It’s about truth and honesty and It’s about freedom.  It’s about accepting and allowing and simply being human.  But mostly, it's about love.  It’s about loving yourself fully and embracing every beautiful part of who you are.  This is the truth that I am currently working through.   

Healing is messy shit.  It takes courage and strength to face our demons head-on and call them out to battle. It takes heart and soul and sometimes it takes getting lost in the mountains for a month to reset your entire being. There's something powerful about Mother Nature, the mountains, the trees, the smells, and the feel of the breeze brushing softly through your hair as you sip your coffee on the patio in the morning.  There is a peace and innocence here that doesn't seem to exist anywhere else, and my soul craves it.  So here I am, on top of a mountain in North Carolina, healing, getting back in touch with my soul, and learning to love all of me.  Embracing equally the darkness and the light.  

There are times the feelings hit so hard that its almost like I’m being swept away.  Emotions hit like waves in the ocean. (Yes, this is kind of an overused analogy, but its what feels good right now) Some days you show up at the beach and the ocean is calm and serene, almost glass-like on the surface. Other days you show up and she's fierce and seemingly trying to force her way out of herself.  Giant waves beating against the shore, retreating, gaining more strength, and beating against the shore over and over again, desperately seeking an escape.  Eventually, she ceases and relaxes after exhausting herself and the surface calms again. To the casual observer, there is peace. But just below that calm surface, there is always turmoil.  

This is kind of what healing feels like.  There are days of outer calm and there are days so intense you want to come out of your skin.  There are days of peace and contentment, joy, and happiness.  There are days where hurricane-force winds create waves so big that they swallow you whole.  The waves kick up when you least expect them and once again you’re at their mercy.  It’s all you can do to keep breathing.  But know this, the darkest of days will always give way to light.  Feelings are not permanent, and just like the tides, they flow in and out.  The trick here is to not get attached to the feelings, but to allow them to ebb and flow like the tides.  Become the observer of your feelings and know that whatever you’re feeling right now is not permanent.

Deep healing can be terrifying.  I've been half-ass healing my own traumas most of my adult life.  I would scratch at the surface and make progress, but there were deep wounds that I just couldn’t face.  I would identify a problem, I would address the problem and I would move on.  I like to call it the duct tape approach.  There were issues that I knew I needed to face, but I wasn’t ready, so I ignored them. I tucked these hurts away and disowned their very existence.  I tucked them deep into the darkness.  It was never the right time. 

Now is the right time.  

The thing about ignoring unhealed wounds is that they don’t just go away on their own.  They want your attention and they will show up in your life where you least expect it and they will demand to be seen.  It’s taken a series of events over the years for me to finally realize that my unhealed wounds were not only bleeding on me but also bleeding on the people that I loved.  I reflected on behavior patterns over the years and realized that there was a common denominator, and it was me. And so, I decided to go all-in this time.  

Here’s a little of what I’ve learned so far.  

Healing is multi-dimensional.  Dismantling beliefs you adopted in childhood, processing trauma, deciphering your truth from the lies you’ve been told.  Questioning stories you believe, patterns you developed, habits that are built into the fabric of who you believe you are.  So much of our internal belief system comes from outside conditioning.  How do you separate fact from fiction?  It’s overwhelming.  It’s messy.  It’s darkness and it will drop you to your knees over and over again.  

You have to be willing to let go of who you think you should be to become who you are.  Who will you be when you let go of your false beliefs and old stories? The fear and confusion is real and it's heavy.  You’ve probably spent a lifetime of seeing yourself through other’s expectations of you.  This is an opportunity to shed the identities that no longer serve you and choose who you want to be, not who you should be.  What we know is safer than the unknown, even when we know it doesn’t fit.  Isn’t good enough good enough? Only you can answer that question for yourself, but for me, I realized that good enough is far from the extraordinary life that I want.  

I don't know what I was expecting when I started this journey, but I wasn't expecting it to rock my entire being.  I think we get sold this story that when you make the decision to heal and do the work, that it will be a series of lessons learned, breakthroughs and epiphany’s and boom, you’re done.  That’s complete crap.  It requires patience, compassion, and a whole lot of love.  Healing is many levels deep, it's messy and it can be super fucking painful.  Especially when you realize that most of what you're trying to clear is self-imposed.  It's a tough pill to swallow when you realize that you're the conductor of the symphony going on in your head.   On the other hand, the beauty of this realization is that as the conductor, you can change the tune at any time.  Create a completely new soundtrack if you want.  You hold the power.  That was the key concept for me.  I stopped looking around for answers, and I went in.  I went all in, and it was there I found the truth and the courage to spread my wings.

For those of you embarking on the journey of healing past traumas, hurts, rejections, failures, and losses, I honor you.  I honor your bravery and your courage.  I see you, I support you and I love you.  This is the first step on a powerful journey.  This journey will not be easy.  It will kick your ass over and over again. You will want to quit all the fucking time.  You will cry and yell and scream and cry some more.  You will cry until you have no tears left.  You will want to pull the covers over your head in the morning because getting up and facing the day is just too much.  But you will get up, you will face the day and every day you’ll get a little stronger.  There is a power inside of you bigger than the pain you feel right now. Don’t give in to the voice of doubt, the voice that is comfortable, the voice that identifies with your suffering.  Dare to listen to the voice of your inner warrior. She is ready to slay the demons and destroy the monsters once and for all.  She is ready to emerge victoriously.  Free from every stale and outdated expectation, every should and every false belief about who you thought you should be.  She is ready to guide you to yourself.  She is ready to embrace the absolute beauty that you are.  

Everything that you need to create your most extraordinary life is inside of you right now.  You just have to reach for it.  Create a new story.  You are the author of your big, beautiful life.  You can’t change the past, but you can refuse to let it define who you are in the present.  Get up and keep moving forward because you know that you want more, that you deserve more and you ARE more.  Breathe dear one, you end the darkness by becoming the light.  Become your own damn light and shine brighter than a thousand suns.  You’ve got this!  

Thank you for stopping by and sharing my story. Drop a comment below, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Peace, Love & Light Always! ❤️