When it comes to winning, who gets to decide?
My income hasn’t covered my outgoings for nearly 7 years. I’ve been living off the sale of my house for the past 4. Fortunately for me, instead of investing in a pension, I kept my first property (it was cheap and seemed sensible at the time). This year I sold my pension pot so I could stay true to my vision of writing and continue prioritising my health.
So now the only investment I have is entirely in me. Which made me laugh the other day, because when I die I take all the lessons I learnt with me (and will have left them in books for other people to benefit from - and this is where I believe the greatest change will happen). But if my investments remained material and financial, I’d leave it all behind in bricks and mortar with possibly a few digits in someone else’s bank account. It feels like I am winning.
I thought I was winning before. It turned out I didn’t feel it.
My old way of life was celebrated by everyone else and I thought I was celebrating with them. Until I wasn’t.
It took me 3 years of feeling tossed aside to start to celebrate myself in a new way. To become comfortable at being misunderstood. In the summer of 2021, I began to realise that the (inner) work I was doing was not being celebrated by anyone other than me (just like my invisible illness though, no one could see it). At the same time, it was this work and my own insight and guidance that was leading to my improved health.
It was also this work and insight and guidance that was holding me through relapse after relapse, dark night after dark night.
When it comes to end of year reflections, this was a practice I began in arguably the worst year of my life. It flipped the year I’d endured on its head and showed me some meaningful moments.
Last year when everyone was sharing their end of year reflections on here, I couldn’t fathom why my multiple reflective practices weren’t materialising into a post.
In the end, the year was so big it turned into my first book! A writing competition appeared in January and against all societal norms, I rested for a month - then wrote the entire thing in the first two days of February.
I missed the boat this year (I was practicing with a friend), but next year, I’m bringing an end of year reflective practice into my Healing Through Writing circle and we’ll all do it together.
For now, the book I wrote in 2 days (but took 6 months to edit and was already 4 years in the making), with its journal prompts at the end, has already inspired one of its readers to reflect on the year gone by and bring about some clarity for the one ahead. It made my heart melt when she shared she normally found this time of year tough but this practice was gifting her a new lease of life.
The journal prompts I share with you in Unleashing My Inner Power: Daring to Dream & Flying Fearless are the ones I started to sit with nearly 5 years ago.
Just before we went into global lockdown, several months before my first massive relapse and a few months before my ex boyfriend and I consciously chose to part ways.
In the space after more collapse in my life, dreams were reconnected with, heartfelt messages were received, lifelong patterns that weren’t serving me or those around me ended and in and amidst the darkness where I felt like the world was ending, I came through it as if somehow reborn.
Up until I learnt this painfully for myself, no one told me that life is full of endings and new beginnings, that in death there is rebirth. That this is the circle of life.
I feel like I am celebrating a lot right now, there are a lot more wins in my life and far more highs than lows. But I didn’t get here from a place of complete disability by illness on a whim. It wasn’t a linear journey that was in any way understood. There was no team of physicians to help support me. It is only when I look back now that I realise I became the support that I so desperately needed myself.
I did the work of the unseen, the unacknowledged, the unrecognised. Alongside all of which, I made myself feel seen, heard and validated - in a way that no one else could.
I’ve been asked many times this year, how I survived the darkest days, how I was able to keep on keeping on. At one time I thought all I had was hope. But then I realised that hope was weighted in belief. And the belief came from drowning out the noise and tuning into my own inner knowing.
My ability to drown out the noise came from journaling. Journaling saved my life. It wasn’t anyone outside of me. It wasn’t a superhero. It wasn’t a prince charming riding in on a white horse to save the day. It wasn’t a specialist or even a medical team. It wasn’t someone paying all my bills. It was me.
Year on year, as my health improves - even amidst relapse and all that is outside of my circle of influence - I am asked “what’s changed?” and the simple answer is me, I changed. That’s what’s changed.
In the very first post I wrote to you where I shared what a day in the life of the deeply healing looks like, I ended with my belief that “what’s been possible for me is possible for you”.
Whilst there are not a great many who share this belief at present, when it comes to what’s possible, who gets to decide? And where does that insight come from?
