When the universe hits you with a bat what do you do?
When you feel crushed, powerless and left "for dead" in your emotional self, how do you revive yourself?
It's such a painful experience. Most of you know what I'm talking about.
Such an experience happened to me a couple of days ago. After a week-end spent with friends in the country, celebrating life, dancing, sharing great food, walks and talks, the universe gave me a life's kick in the butt!
I was driving back to Sydney with a friend still enjoying and appreciating the wonderful journey back home through the amazing country side of Australia, when a nagging sadness was starting to find its way through my psyche.
The perfect end to a perfect weekend was getting tarnished by a well known melancholic feeling. Self doubt and confusion were starting to scramble my thoughts.
The malaise started in the morning before heading back home, gradually and unexpectedly it made itself a comfortable place in my mind.
It had seized the opportunity of the Mother's Day celebrations to drag me into a dark space. A day I had usually never thought much of as I believed it had more of a commercial purpose than anything else. I had always been a little blasé about it and it's the message I had given my children. "Mother's day is no big deal, it's just a day to boost businesses". "We dont need a day selected randomly for you to tell me that you love me".
That morning though, friends started receiving text messages from their children. At breakfast the women started sharing what was organised for them when they would get back home.
I was fine up until one of them quizzed me on my plans. I felt cornered into having to confess that nothing really was planned. The surprise I saw in her eyes created embarrassment. I started feeling that something was wrong with me, with my family, that we were a little bizarre, cold hearted, disjointed...
As we were progressing in the day, the sadness and the shame became more and more palpable. I felt more and more unloved.
Not only we were not doing anything, I had not even received a little loving text from neither of my 3 children! What was wrong? Had it been like this every year? Not that I can remember. Surely we did something, surely they said something the previous years. At least at school, they used to make cards and give me a little present.
By the time I got home, I was a wreck! My mind had gone oven and over my sad predicament.
I was altogether shock, hurt and in disbelief. I could see myself falling into a mindset I didn't like. I could feel I was sliding down a path I didn't want to take. I could hear a pessimistic narrative I didn't agree with.
The coup de grace was, when I rang my husband to tell him I was on my way home, he said between two mouthfuls that he was having lunch with our 2 boys.
-"What? What's going on? Why didn't you call me I would have joined you!"
-"Oh but it's just a quick bite we're having after working on the renovations"
My oldest son is opening a bar and they had done some work on the place.
I was floored! Hardly breathing and totally swimming in the illusion created by my mind; I was alone and not cared for. I was definitely not celebrated.
I decided to have a bath. One of those long healing bath with salts and lavender oil, where I would explore with a breathing meditation what was going on. A part of me was totally aware I was entering a reality based on a story created by my mind. My ego was scripting something that was not real, interpreting a situation to create separation and discord. I was scratching a scab making it bleed on purpose. I was asking for pain!
It felt like someone else in me was taking a bat to beat me up.
I lay in the hot bath, connecting with how I was feeing, braving my emotion up front. This is what I do nowadays when I am not understanding my reality. I switch off the mind and go right into feeling openly what's happening in my body. I connect with what I'm feeling, where I'm feeling it and how it feels to feel it. I breathe into it. I create space for movement of emotions and sensations. I allow them to increase, diminish, move to another place or disappear. I increase the inhale and relax on the exhale.
In time, a feeling so vivid awakened in my body that I felt I was falling. I was like in suspension, not of this world. Falling and falling in a dark, painful and limitless hole. The pain was existential and it had taken my heart hostage with its grief.
I started crying. Oh I love it when I can cry! It relieves me of stress in a magical way.
I welcomed my tears. I knew I was about to shift and transform the gripping pain. I started feeling free of the discomfort that had me prisoner, heart and mind. I was finding my inner compass rather than being caught up in ego or in the opinions of others.
My mind felt renewed, rebooted, my body exhausted and deactivated.
I started to meditate for all the women that were having a terrible day today. Those that were not able to conceive, those that had lost a child, those that had estranged children, those that had lost their mothers, those that never met their mothers and those that never found the right partner to have a child with.
So many women and children were in fact suffering from this organised and controlled day of celebration.
It reminded me of Christmas time which has the highest suicidal rate of the year, and I wondered about why we do this to ourselves as a society?
Energetically celebrating days like those will create as much pain than joy in the world. We are all so different, why are we trying to pretend we are the same?
This creates guilt. Guilt is the reason of disputes, illnesses and lies.
This creates shame. Shame is manipulative and has the effect of robbing us of our creativity.
These organised days of celebration make me feel like I am at school, having to conform and perform in order to fit in.
Do we really need an official day to celebrate each other?
When I got home a beautiful bunch of flowers with a heartfelt note was waiting for me. I had the "proof of love" society had set me up to expect.
The universe had used my mind to trick me and to deceive me into feelings of separation and disconnection.
Was it so I would just take a breath to connect with my higher-self?
Was it so I would take another opportunity to heal grief in my heart?
Was it so I would from my place of stillness connect to the many women that were not celebrated that day?
I am grateful the universe dragged me through my dark void of deception.
Stillness, relaxation and sadness were by my side to support me in letting go and in creating change.
I feel renewed and grounded. I have redefined my identity. I have reclaimed my I am presence.
I love and respect my children. They do not belong to me. I know they love me as I love them. All is well.
If you would like to learn how to be in conversation with the universe, you can join me on my online small group breathwork sessions. Times to suit Australia, Europe and America. Check my upcoming events on my website. Or book a private Conscious Energy Medicine appointment. Book here.
