Who am I? Who was I? Who will I be?
I seated myself in a new therapist’s office. Expecting once again to be asked to spill out my trauma on the floor for someone to gawk at and then say “I hope that helped” and be expected to sweep it all back up and go on with my day. Instead, I received magic.
In the last 10 years, a lot of things I used to believe about fate, serendipity, and faith in the Universe have faltered. I felt like I lost my magic. Again and again, this theme keeps popping up for me. At our first meeting, she offered a practice to set my intention for the day using some medicine cards. She presented the deck to me and asked if I would like to draw a card or if I’d like her to. So I said, “Why don’t we see what your magic has in store for me today?”
In moments like this, I find myself hesitating because I want to stand firmly in science. However, it’s very hard to do so, when it feels like you are communing with Universe. The irony of the egg also was not lost on us with the topic we were working with that day (fertility). “Remember your inner magic.” I let my therapist choose for me that day. Each day since, it’s reminded me to look for the magic, inside and out.
When I went on my hike a couple of weeks ago, I had no official plan for the day. I planned to go to an Alexander Technique session and run an errand while I was in Boulder. At the end of my session, my practitioner asked if there was “anything else I’d like to bring into the space.” That’s when the little voice in my head piped up and asked “Does she have any magic?”. So I asked if there were any trails or parks in the area that she particularly enjoyed. That’s when she recommended Chautauqua Park.
This has led me down some very new and interesting paths but it also feels like living from a place where my actions, my behaviors are starting to truly align with my core values. Pause, be still, stop, listen, always felt so forceful, so against who I am as a person. I am a spark, a fire, a flame, a jittery neuro spicy weirdo! Sitting down, being still, and pausing, always triggered the deepest teenage rebellion parts in me! In opening myself up for the magic, other things are becoming easier. To pause, to be, to stop, to listen it happens on its own when I open myself up to the natural World.
I didn’t know how to get through this at first but slowly with shaky legs, I am finding my way. Following the magic.
A mentor of mine called this period of life “The Crucible” I don’t think there is a more apt name. I find trouble describing the depths of my experience to people. How things just keep coming faster than can be seen. Faster than can be processed. Too much, too soon, too fast.
I beg through shaky sobs to please “Slow down” “Please Help Me”. PLEASE, someone, do something…” But the water keeps coming up over my face, and the current keeps pulling me under. I tried to look inside and I saw that the river I had to wade through to help myself was so deep that I did not know if I would have the strength to ford it. You can let your experience drown you, you can let it keep pulling you under and under and under and under and you can keep trying to come up for air as you try to pick up the pieces. I fought. I fought so fucking hard. Because I thought that was the way. I fought against it, all of these things pulling me back down below the surface.
In the beginning, I fought to get rid of my anger. My anger was the problem. But getting rid of an emotion doesn’t fix the problem. Cutting yourself off from an entire portion of yourself does not allow you to be more you. So I fought and I fought and I fought until there came a point where someone asked… “Why are you fighting so hard… what would it be like to love your anger?” To love my anger? You better believe I deleted that app right off my phone for a good 6 months. I kept fighting though, and I kept losing and I kept drowning, not realizing I was drowning myself. That I was the one that kept pulling myself under. So I started asking for help, and I still didn’t like the answers. “What would it be like to love your pain? What would it be like to let it have a seat at your table?”
I still can’t say I know any of the answers, but I did learn something. I learned that you have to let it drown you. Let the waves drown you and pull you under. Give in. For a little bit. Because in that drowning, in allowing yourself to be consumed by it, you find, that maybe what you’re drowning in isn’t actually water… and maybe. Just maybe, if you pause for a second. You can try to breathe this new substance and see what it feels like in your lungs.
This feels different, for each journey, for each layer the taste, the experience evolves. With each step forward in healing, I find that I am 20 steps further behind than I thought. That is the secret though is it not? That our work is never done. So that’s what I did. I let myself sink and sink and sink. I found in the sinking that I could still breathe down there, that it was painful, but I could. So when I reached the bottom, and my feet sunk deep into the soft, wet sand, I stood tall and took a deep breath. When I looked up, I found myself surrounded by support, love, and kindness unlike any I’ve ever experienced in my life.
For a long time, I believed that I could heal myself in solitude. With an internet connection and enough time I could solve any problem. The last five years have taught me that that is the furthest thing from the truth. So I finally stood up and took a breath and said… I need help.
Like a sigh, it opened up and said “Find the magic”.
So with my eyes closed and the image of my mentors and guides beside me, I finally had the strength to ask the Universe a question that my mentor whispered in my ear. “What’s next?” I’ve done all the hard shit Universe. What’s next? Give me what you got! I can take it!
The Universe opened up before me and said here, and lay a bounty at my feet.
I saw light in the sky and turned a corner and was met with sun rays coming over the mountains. It reminded me of something a friend once told me. “When you see sun rays coming down through the clouds that is your loved one telling you hello from Heaven.” I don’t necessarily prescribe to any specific religious views, but I do believe that we stick around after we’re gone in a lot of ways. Energy is never created nor destroyed, only transmuted. So in that, I felt the brush of lips on my forehead as my dear ones said, Look at what’s here, remember your dream. Remember the fire and have faith.
So I sat down. And I began once more, to write.
Andrea Curran© 2023
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