Hiding from my own pain

I shut off my heart.

Afraid to connect,
afraid to feel.
The pain was too deep,
so I turned my back,
didn’t want to heal.
Scared to meet it,
I locked and threw it away.
Tossed on some strength,
pretending the hurt was never there that day.

 

This past week I had a healing experience that brought to my awareness how shut down I have been this past year. My heart. My connection. My ability to feel deeply.

The last few months I’ve been feeling ‘off’. Becoming more and more aware of how off I’ve felt. How disconnected to feeling and connection. Yet I couldn’t exactly piece together what it was and why.

My older sister had told me about a friend she had gone to for some healing. I immediately knew I needed to go see that same friend. Set up an appointment and went in the following week. She worked through some stuff associated with my head and neck and then got to my heart.

It was completely on lock down. She said she couldn’t even get in.

 

I had shut ‘er down.

Why?

Pain and hurt, entangled with living more true to me than I had ever done in my past. (My divorce last year)

And to me, the entanglement, that meant stepping up to the plate, full on ready to own my own strength that I ‘had’ had to have. Somewhere in the chaos of my insides, I had decided that I didn’t have time to feel the pain. I didn’t have time to feel the gut wrenching sorrow and hurt. I had to hold it all together. I HAD to be strong. Strong for my kids. Strong to ‘prove’ myself.

If I showed the world and those closest to me that I was in the most despair I had ever been in, that meant I was regretting or not owning my choices.

And I didn’t want that. I didn’t want that on top of the judgment and loss I had already felt from those people.

So I slowly hid it from myself. Month after month, I piled more distraction on top. Month after month I let the physical and emotional pain drown out into the background. It became so much my new normal, that IT wasn’t even a problem. And I did a pretty dang good job of masking and ignoring it.

Until my sisters friend stuck a nail on the shell and tapped it. Just enough to start the crack. Just enough to FEEL the surface of what I had been hiding. And then it all came oozing out.

 

The reality I had created for myself and my perception was that every time I took a step doing something truer to ME than I ever have before… my closest people turned their back on me. So I carried that belief. And it played out again. It played itself out during my divorce. I lost a best friend. I felt so alone. I had feelings of judgement and no support from those I thought would have my back. Would buoy me up. Help me stand strong during such a huge change in my life. I went through the divorce basically alone. Besides a few friends that ‘got’ me. That could see, feel, and understand who I was and am.

This is not a victim story. This is me finally OWNING my experience and being okay with it. In NO WAY am I blaming anyone. Just love and learning 🙂 And THAT was part of the entanglement and burying. I could SEE and had MANY spiritual experiences that I KNEW all the learning and reasons and understanding of WHY it all happened the way it did. The reason I lost close people to me. The judgements I felt. The support I lost.

I initially felt the pain, anger, resentment, sorrow, and hurt yet I knew how harmful it was to myself to CARRY those… So I put a bandaid on and allowed myself to see the lessons and light and growth and learning. I rode on those waves. That’s what helped keep me strong. I didn’t want to resent or have anger towards anyone because of what I saw in the love, learning and growth.

And that’s where I didn’t allow myself to honor ME and the humanness of FEELING what I needed to feel in those moments and months. So they sat. As they sat, I feared connecting to others, I feared learning more about connecting to me and who I am. I feared being me, sharing lessons I was learning. I feared it and I stayed away. The longer I stayed away… the more I distanced myself from me. The more I lost deep vision and feeling. The more my physical body started to react.

Constant headaches. Constant neck pain. Internal gut/organ pain. Gaining and storing fat even though I was pushing it harder in the gym and *mostly 😉 eating my normal healthy diet. My heart physically hurt. I had become numb to ALL of that, until the shell was tapped. All that physical pain was brought to my attention and how it was going to get worse before it got better if I didn’t allow myself to be AWARE, ACCEPT, OWN, and FEEL the feelings of the past year going through what happened.

Still the mental battle was there. ‘I have to be strong. I AM strong. If I admit and own up to the feelings…what does that say to everything that happened?’

So this past year I have been battling with and slowing stepping away from sharing and being the authentic ME. I’ve been filtering HOW much of myself I share. Where as I felt before I was sharing it all and not feeling any holding back. I’ve felt it and it’s bugged me and I KNEW I was doing it. I just didn’t understand why.

Until now.

I didn’t want to share anymore of what I was discovering about myself this past year because in my mind, my story and perception that I have held on to… If I’m ME… those closest to me, will turn their back. I’ll lose more people that know me at this level and if I lose them, I won’t have anyone. I’ll be rejected again for being me. That was my truth that I had created and held onto. That was the fear I was living in. Fear of being even MORE of me and sharing that.

I built Fuel Love around authenticity, being vulnerable, sharing my stories in hopes of helping others know they’re not alone and that they CAN heal, and be confident in WHO they are… yet I was personally not being vulnerable with MYSELF. And you can only meet others as deeply as you are willing to meet yourself.

I was my own oxymoron. I had stopped ‘practicing what I preach’. And it was hurting. It was hurting my body on the physical level. It was hurting my spirit and my mind.

So the last week… the walls have been coming down. The morning after my appointment, my sister held space for me to feel some of the deep pain for the first time. I didn’t want it. I wanted to push it away again. It was gut wrenching.

The days following, little by little I’ve let myself feel it in bits and pieces. Had more awareness of how beautiful a gift it has actually been through it all. Again being able to see the lessons and growth and understanding while allowing myself this time to express the stored up hurt and anger that I’ve been clenching onto.

The biggest awareness of growth and learning I’ve had are these:

– We ALL have emotions. Emotions DO NOT define us nor do they MAKE us who we are. Emotions are human. I am an human. We are all human and humans FEEL emotion. Not one emotion is bad. They just are. Not good… not bad. They do not make us good or bad. WE choose what we do with the emotion. We can either store it (and gain physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual pain) or let ourselves BE HUMAN, feel it and then let it pass.

– I am who I am. You are YOU. The MORE I LIVE and BE me, the happier I am. The MORE you can connect and share and love and gain.

– I can admit to myself and own that I’ve felt weak inside even when I’ve held onto strength SOO HARD on the outside. You don’t have to have it all together all the time. Even when you think you need to feel guilt for needing to cry and scream and be in pain. Let that sh*t go. Let ALL the feels come.

– I don’t need anyone to ‘believe’ me or even believe IN me.  I don’t have anything to prove to anyone. I don’t have to feel like I need to yell, ‘JUST TRUST ME AND WHAT I’M DOING!’ to anyone. I KNOW what I’m doing. I KNOW more of who I am than ever before and THAT is enough. You know YOU better than ANYONE else around you. You have your path. They have theirs. And really, it’s none of their business. They’re happiness doesn’t meter yours. Not EVERYONE will understand and again, it’s really not their ‘business’ to understand. You’re not here to please and live up to others expectations. You’re not here to make sure no one gets triggered. You’re here to be YOU. And being you is vibing at your highest. Sharing that love and BEING that love so that others can find themselves and live that freely also. We are each SUCH amazing gifts to everyone around us. Sharing, healing, helping, loving, BEING.

SO BE!

– I am ALWAYS enough. JUST as I am now. YOU are enough RIGHT NOW in this moment. And NOTHING will change that because you always are.

– I don’t have to stand there and ‘take the hits’ or feel like I need to be punished because of others perceptions or judgements about me. Again, I have NOTHING to prove and don’t need to. You don’t get to be someone elses vomit or punching bag.

– I will be me and those that SEE me will stick around. Those that fall away and disappear, have their own things they’re working on. Doesn’t mean youre less of a person or did something wrong or aren’t good enough. We all have connections at different times in our lives for different reasons. Honor those. Honor YOU and where you’re at and whom you connect with at each different stage of your life. It has nothing to do with you anyway 😉

-Love, Compassion, Healing. Let yourself HAVE IT ALL.

– LOVING who you are and BEING confident in that. That’s what will bless this earth and life. Hiding who you are isn’t doing ANYONE any good. Personal healing not only effects you for the better but EVERYONE around you. The deeper you Love YOU, the deeper you can love others and SEE others in their light.

– It’s all really simple yet we like to complicate it and create distractions from digging into our perceptions. Instead of looking at them head on and SEEING that they’re not even real. They’re not even who you are. Yet we fear them. And Yet even on top of THAT is that we don’t see the magnitude of FREEDOM and LOVE that sits on the other side of going deep into our fears, thoughts, and beliefs.

 

Lift up the blankets and rugs. Open that heart of yours and allow yourself to see all the false beliefs and hurt that we’re spoon feeding ourselves daily. Oh, I know it’s painful.

But how much more painful is it to live a life that’s not true to you?