Choose your path

From a place of not knowing, to conscious intention, to leaning into guidance.

The title of this blog post came mid client treatment one day last week. When ideas come to me like this, I sometimes see them as a message from the divine. Like some other pieces of content I write, I have no idea where this one will take me. Only that, here I have a title and a couple of paths to talk about. So here we go, lets see what unfolds with this one…

In typing the word paths, the one I’ll start with came to me first. We’ll be jumping straight into the deepest darkest depths of mental health which although I’ll only touch on briefly, you may decide to either skip the next paragraph with its direct reference and start from the quote or come back to this article another time.

Remember, this post is all about choice so stay aligned with the comfort that you have one. Even when it doesn’t feel like it and/or the way ahead is unclear.

Back in 2016, following breakdown and near suicide (you can read more about Baring All here), one of the affirmations I started with as I continued to drag myself to work and as I crossed over the bridge I had many times thought about slinging myself off, was

For the previous two years it hadn’t felt like the right path or any kind of path at all. My world had been caving in at me from all angles, I felt depressed and the emotional pain I was living with had manifest in (severe) physical pain amidst many other debilitating symptoms for longer periods of time than I had ever experienced before. All on a fast and frequent, ever increasing basis. I was struggling and I couldn’t see a way out.

Affirming I was on the right path, although I didn’t immediately resonate with or believe it, opened up just enough scope to carry me over the bridge and up the steps into the doors at work for 7am every morning. I was living in the depths of despair and this gave the tiniest little flicker of light in the most darkened of places. Was there hope amongst the hopelessness? I was desperate and for me, it was worth clinging on to.

For a good few years I felt as though I was over the cliff edge, holding on to a rope that was fraying. It was a brutal time in my life and yet, still, I clung on.

Without a full body approach and anywhere near the amount of support I needed to fully recover from what I had been living with all my life, I found myself completely disabled by illness within 18 months. Unable to work and without any mortgage insurance, sick pay or immediate family to help. The world that had been caving in at me from all angles, now completely collapsed and in tatters all around me. My dad had died 3 months prior, my income no more. The end of my world as I knew it. Yet, in and amongst all the debris of what was once my life, I discovered this knowing, this feeling. That I could relate to others who share a similar fate in a way I never would be able to without it. Something I realised I could not do without ever having had experienced it to this extent myself.

A few months into complete disability by illness, I sat on the living room floor of my city centre apartment with PIPS forms in one hand - as if representing one path - and continued research alongside making more changes as if representing another. On the one hand there was a guarantee of more pressure and stress proving disability for what is known as the world’s 2^nd most disabling disease a person can live with. Fully acknowledged and affirmed by the World Health Organisation. Yet with well documented little to no interest or support from a medical perspective. I’d already learned this was a gamble and with it, a battle that I wasn’t sure I wanted to take on (especially on my own). In comparison to what felt like to me as an alternative path – it was as if the light from the floor to ceiling windows I sat in front of were lighting up the path of research and making changes. A path into the unknown. Making a choice to venture along all alone. It appeared to me that the initial path did not present to me any hope of getting better. The alternative, at the very least, a glimmer that I might, just might.

I say it felt as though one path was lit up before me but it was more the glimmer of hope that came with it. It was pretty dark, the way ahead far from clear and it was very much best foot forward into the unknown.

For different reasons, either side of the fork in the road felt equally as treacherous. And as if satisfied by the hardship that came from both options, I chose the path that came with the glimmer of hope that I might, just might, get better.

It was a choice and decision made at the time that others around me could not comprehend. I couldn’t fathom or grasp why those around me could not understand or see where I was coming from. I couldn’t understand why they were telling me I didn’t know what I was doing. When all along I knew exactly what I was doing, it was more that no one had taken much of an interest, or taken the time to find out. That, and I hadn’t been able to find the words to express and articulate what was influencing my decisions. Nor the sound basis, knowledge and understanding my choices were made from.

Still, choosing the path that I now see as the one that took me (in no straight line) towards wellness was a path that took me further than believed possible. Not just from a medical standpoint, but also from my own. I had no idea the doors to healing that would open up to me, nor the twists and turns this path would take. Only that I knew what I wanted and this one seemed to have not only hope to accompany me along the way but also a glimmer of light. It was as if a light were there to light up the way forward all along and all I had to do was choose it.

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Though my choices were scrutinised and questioned, I never did once regret this path or wish it to be different. No one ever asked how I felt about it either though I had one friend in a dire state of circumstances herself who came along for the ride - we propped each other up and supported one another unconditionally in the darkest and bleakest of days*. Along the way, I met people who would point me in this direction and that. A couple of years into the journey I realised that

“All that I need

I attract at the time that I need it.”

There have been some mighty ups and downs; I once made it 14 weeks pain free and experienced 3 health relapses in 5 years. Full blown attacks are now few, menstrual related head pain is consistently mild. Health improvements continue.

I’ve made some of the most uncomfortable and challenging decisions that proved unpopular by others around me. In doing so, I’ve opened up a dream life where I do what I want, I love what I do and I live everyday like I’m on holiday.

Recently, during a guided meditation (something which has

• transformed my relationship with pain,

• put me on a whole new trajectory of hope and healing,

• rewired neural pathways to my brain and

• opened up a whole new world of possibility and vision - blog on this coming soon),

I was guided towards choosing a new path.

The words “ease and release” came to me as if floating in on a bubble and landed in such a way that I realised I am setting off (into the unknown again) on a new path.

Back in 2016 it came through as an affirmation of “I am in the right place at the right time, on the right path, going in the right direction”

In 2018, I sat in my living room in a world of pain and suffering and with conscious intention, chose a path to “wellness”.

Now here I am in 2024 being guided towards a path of “ease and release”.

I’ve never experienced the wellness I do now. Nor have I ever been as true to myself as I am now. & I wonder at the correlation between the two?

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In recent years, I’ve discovered that the term “life is easy” is as triggering as much as it is desired. That the belief systems we hold do not support us to live a life of ease. The lived experience of the past does not show us that this is a possibility.

To transform the belief that “life is hard”, “I must work hard”, and ancestral stories of there being “no rest for the wicked”, I’ve healed trauma in my body that has taken me beyond my own lived and experienced trauma (some of which I’d blocked out), to healing all the way along the ancestral line on both mother and father side – all the way back to the witch wound.

As much evidence as I have stacked and accumulated to demonstrate to me that “life is hard”, it’s now comparable to the evidence that has long since been around me to show that “life is easy”. I see it in the lives of others too, only our belief system holds the greatest of all powers as to the reality we experience in our lives each and every day.

Where am I going with this?

In truth, I have no freakin’ idea. Only that I’ve been guided to write this piece and that this is what came through when I did!

It feels as though this post is some kind of predecessor to the one I plan to share with you next week: “Healing Through Writing”. It’s in connection with the Healing Through Writing space I’m creating - a yoga class for writers if you like - that I’m ready (and excited as fluff) to launch on Monday 11th March.

As always, thank you for being here on this part of my journey with me. You make a difference by being here.

*The one friend who was in a dire state of circumstances herself that came along with me for the ride has recently been for The Overnight Retreat and The Expansive Experience with me here at 7 Lakes Country Park in Crowle, England. (Warrior Unleashed case study on this single mum of 4 coming soon – but the one thing I’ll share with you now is that she adopted the mantra of “I do what I can when I can”.)