My journey to joy
Looking at me now, it would be easy to assume that I’ve always lived a charmed life, filled with joy and magic and fun. That my struggles have been few and far between, strengthening me in small places as I’ve continued to expand in success and magical experiences.
Let me sit you down honey because this roller coaster ride has had some TURNS.
First of all, before I dive into my struggles, I’m going to acknowledge right off the bat that I have had a LOT of privilege. I am a white-presenting, able and pretty-bodied woman. I have always been able to make friends, no one has ever outcast me for being different, and both of my parents have been physically present for pretty much my entire childhood life and leading into adulthood. I’ve never gone hungry, nor worried about where my next meal will come from. I have financial freedom that has been handed down to me from my successful father, and my sexual history has never included abuse or violence.
SO like WTF? You’re not living on cloud 9? What could you even struggle with?
My deepest pains have come from the upper to middle range of the pyramid of actualization, and the pain of not realizing the dreams I desire most in my heart of hearts have been my guide into some of the darkest nights of depression I’ve experienced. And I don’t share these struggles so I can join the bandwagon of “I suffer too”, because that feels empty and I don’t need to earn respect that way. I share these because I KNOW there are countless women (and men!) out there suffering with the exact same pain in their hearts. This message of “I’m not x enough to realize my dreams”. And I can tell you there are few things more suffer-inducing than the shame of living life every day wondering what the fucking point is. Of everyone around you projecting that you could do it if you just this more or that less. And yenno, maybe they’re right. Totally, I’m sure I would absolutely feel something different or better if I meditated for an hour everyday. I agree! But when the belief of “what’s the point” is eating away at every moment of inspiration that peaks, it feels like another shot to the gut to be told that not only are you not enough, but guess what, you’re also not doing enough. It becomes a cyclone of shame and expectations you’ll never meet that pull you down into a pit of shutting down completely, which only serves to trigger even MORE of the not-enough or doing-enough monsters. Ah, what a beautiful storm of imperfection.
So what changed? How did I go from that place to feeling the spaciousness of possibility and excitement for the future in my life?
I wish I could tell you I buckled down and made the decision to change, and that was it. My parents were totally right I just needed to listen to them!!11!
No way fam. A journey was triggered. A trap door opened up and I fell inside.
This trap door was called “Wilderness therapy” and it was the chamber where everything I knew about my life crumbled. It was where nobody offered my sympathy for my pain or my suffering, nobody validated the ways in which my parents were acting terribly. Everything pointed to me. And I broke. I shattered. I melted and broke down into frenzy. I regressed into a dissociated version of myself, spoke like a 7 year old, talked to the pinecones and gave them names, and I began to heal.
(Continued in part 2)