I am an artist, a teacher, a writer, and a healer. Not quite a year into my healing journey, brought on by my recovery from drug addiction, I started to hear my Soul whisper, "I am a healer." Prior to this time it wasn't anything I ever considered doing. But as I began to navigate my Inner World, digging, following trails sorting through it all and pulling up treasure, I felt the incredibly powerful benefit of healing and I wanted to share that with others. Having been in the trenches of deep emotional wounds from the path that my Soul self and my human self had chosen helped to cultivate this depth of compassion within me that I wanted to bring to the wounds of others.
This passion to help others heal began to grow, evolve, and intensify over time and it was clear to me that coaching would be the best vehicle for me to accomplish that. I tried studying psychology but found it far too scientific and not at all holistic and that just didn't work for me. Going through the process, and step work, of recovery from addiction gave me the benefit of helping to heal any shame I had had. I worked very hard to dig through all the mistakes I felt I had made, to make amends, to forgive others and to forgive myself.
I emerged with a sense of peace regarding the choices I had made during that part of my life, as well as prior to that time. I saw addiction as a blessing because it brought me deep into this spiritual and healing journey that was full of beauty and peace that, prior to this, I didn't think was possible for me. It allowed me to begin to form a healthy relationship with myself, as opposed to the dysfunctional one I had had my entire life. It also helped me to form a relationship with my Soul, with the Divine, with Life and the Universe. The benefits have been beyond words.
Then the storm came in and left me feeling shattered as I began to navigate through the rocky terrain of grief nurse a broken heart. He experienced a Life-quake that had to do with custody of his son. First he pulled away to heal, then he asked me to wait for him if I could while he dealt with the situation kissing me goodbye and telling me he loved me and about two months after that there was a picture of him, his son, and a woman he called his finance on his FaceBook page. He neglected to inform me, I had to find out by seeing that picture. When I confronted him about it, through text message because he wouldn't answer my calls, he told me he loved me but that my past raised a red flag and he was worried it would prevent him from getting joint custody of his son so, instead of talking to me about it and finding out if I could've done anything to prove my sobriety, he bailed without telling me. Keep in mind, this was 3 1/2 years into recovery, he knew me during that time and had seen me change and grow and was proud of me and "the amazingly complex woman" I was becoming. While he was proud of me when it was him and I, he obviously wasn't so proud of what other people would think. He was ashamed of me and my past addiction issues and because of those issues I lost him.
Shame is an interesting creature. I knew the shame wasn't my issue, it was his. I knew I didn't need to carry his feelings of shame and make them mine. Yet, still, I watched shame sneak in. I would write about it in my journal, talk to myself out loud about it, and as I did that and analyzed it I was carrying it around in my pocket, that way I could take it out and look at it and dissect it and, without realizing it, hold on tight to it.
Dr. Brene Brown talks about how shame festers in secret. I talked a little bit about it but not enough. And more important than that is that I think I was missing the root of the issue. When an emotion moves in that is not fully processed and healed, it starts to create this haze that changes not only the way we see things, but whether or not we see them at all. It clouds everything. I started to lose that feeling of passion and connection to my Dream of being a Healing Coach and I was struggling to figure out why and how to get that back. I knew I still had that Dream and purpose, I just couldn't feel it anymore.
I was thinking about all of it today (yesterday) and it hit me, I could not believe I had missed it. The seeming loss of connection and passion was actually a shame fog that was clouding my Dream. What happens when your Dream, the reason you have it, the reason that you are good at it, is something that you feel shame about? How can that Dream be something you nurture, connect to and are passionate about when the very root of the Dream is growing in a toxic cesspool of shame? It can't. The poisonous film around it prevents any of the nurturing, passion and connection to permeate it.
Dr. Brene Brown also says, "Guilt says, 'I made a mistake,' and shame says, 'I am a mistake.'" And if my Dream is built within a foundation and environment of "I am a mistake," growth is not possible. And really it's not that I feel like I personally am a mistake but that is the energy that is surrounding it right now.
It was interesting to me because I was thinking back to when this Life-quake happened to hi and he pulled away and how, for some reason, I became intensely focused on creating my Coaching practice. I wrote up an information sheet and posted to my Facebook page that I was taking free coaching clients. And I coached people and it felt amazing and fulfilling. It flowed naturally from me, gifts coming together in a perfect orchestra of doing what I love-helping people heal, helping from navigate through their own internal world so they could pull up the treasure buried within themselves.
And then I stopped. Obviously heartbreak had an affect on the entirety of my life and that Dream was no exception. But it grew into more than that. I used to gush when I talked about it, the passion would ooze out all over the place and I could feel it in every cell of my being. Over time that turned into frustration and I would rant about people not healing their shit and the passion was clouded.
Well, I know that I have no cause to be ashamed because of someone else's shame. I had peace about that part of my past because I knew that part of what I was meant to do was take the wisdom and experience I had gained, and continue to gain, and use it all in service of myself and others. Like I mentioned earlier, it brought me to the most amazing place in my life. Somehow I allowed someone else's shame of me to be the food the shame monster fed on and now, I chose to stop. So, what's the solution? Posting this blog is part of the solution, bringing light and love to the shame because they can permeate the fog. I can write about it, art about it, and let it go as it was never mine to carry to begin with. My Dreams are big and beautiful and part of the reason I am here in the physical incarnation. There are many people with deep wounds and I can bring healing and empowerment to those deep dark spaces. How could I ever feel there was anything wrong with that Dream, regardless of the past that brought it forward? I am a healer and it matters not what brought me to that space, it only matters that I use what brought me there to help others. And that is what I chose to do.
May you be blessed with love and light,
tia
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