Tag: Fear

Categories
Life

Heart

How my heart breaks when I think of it. The moment I was curled up on the hospital bed, weeping in my husbands arms, just absolutely sobbing with fear as the two doctors stood by, helpless to my tears.

Only moments earlier the male doctor had told me I was fine.

An hour or so earlier the female doctor had done the same thing.

And yet I wasn’t fine, my body was alive with movement. And in that moment, on that bed, all I could do was cry for the absolute terror of it. The absolute helplessness I felt in the face of what, to me, was one of the most frightening moments of my life.

I have experienced heart palpitations on and off for as long as I remember, they are not foreign to me. I know the blips. I know the sort of big, and a little scary ones.

But none of them have been like this. I called the ambulance. For myself. None of them had been like this.

They tell me: this is what anxiety does. Anxiety causes heart palpitations, and panic attacks. Apparently it was one of those.

But still, it frightened me.

It frightened me into an awareness that I wasn’t aware of before.

I am afraid of dying. If you’d asked me if I was afraid of dying three weeks ago I would have said, no, absolutely not.

But when my heart went to loopy land and energy shot straight from my heart up my throat, things changed. I have seen that fear, now, and there is nothing for me to do but honour it as best as I can.

I’ve cleaned up my diet, entirely.

I’ll need to look into ways of removing as much stress from my life as possible.

And also, I’m really quite open to believing that this episode has a great deal to do with where my energy healing journey is at. Trying to explain to Western doctors that energy moves within my body, though, is like trying to explain the housing market to a fish.

And so I’m on my own, largely, on this journey.

They tell me my heart is well. They tell me my health is perfect.

This is good.

Now, all that is left to do is live my best life, and hold my beautiful fear in the palm of my hand.

I have you, fear. It’s okay.

I have you. xx

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Categories
Poetry

Soft Arms

I hold this fear in soft arms

and let her be.

She is a dear traveller.

She knows this village well.

Peace, dear friend.

We shall sit

and we shall be, without wishing

to change one another.

Categories
Life

The Cookie

We spend a great deal of our lives being afraid of the cookie, don’t we?

Too much sugar, too much fat, too much cookie induced shame (note to self, and the world: shame causes more damage than the cookie.)

If only we’d take a moment to just…love the cookie.

Just love it, and eat it.

It is a beautiful creation, gifted to the world by someone who understood that it was okay to enjoy our humanity while we are here on earth.

I’m no longer afraid of the cookie, and because of this my whole life has changed. The black soot of fear no longer owns every choice I make.

I just love the cookie. I love the cookie, and live my life being aware of any cookie danger, but not afraid.

I eat the cookie slowly.

The beauty of life is in the cherishing of it.

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Categories
Poetry

Free

To know the soft skin of my own truth

as it peers upon the fears of others.

I catch their fear,

I hold it.

I catch their fear

I love it well.

And my truth

whispers:

of this ache, my dear,

you are free.

Categories
Life

The Moment Divine

A brief note before my story begins. A note to the mothers, a note to the fathers. To those who have birthed live children, and those whose young ones were taken too soon. This story— my story, our story—may be distressing to some, particularly those who’ve experienced the birth of a sweet babe, born sleeping.

If this is you, darling human, please feel free to leave this post here, taking all my love and comfort with you. To those who wish to stay, thank you for holding my heart during these moments. It is a gift to share the depths of my humanity. It is a gift to know my heart has been seen, held and loved.

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.

C.S Lewis

***

I’ve asked if my baby has died and no one is saying a thing.

The midwife moves the doppler across my stomach as I stare at the wall lit by dim orange light (my favourite kind.) There is no sound, no heart beat. There are no voices. There is silence, loud as thunder.

I ask again. Has my baby died? Still, no one says a thing. There are three midwives there. Not one of them has said a thing.

My body begins to push, and once again I am taken by the strength of the contractions. If my baby has died, I think, then I need them to take this pain away. But it’s too late for pain relief, I know that. I’m already pushing. I am on my own, no matter what is happening here.

There is a stillness in the room that wasn’t there before, and I know it is the feeling of sorrow. My sister is across the room, and so is my husband; the sadness is theirs and mine, and maybe the midwives’, mixed together with an odd cocktail of hope and confusion. Is the baby alive? Why on earth won’t they say anything?

Finally I am asked to change positions. They want me to push. Finally they have found a heart beat. A little slow, they carefully tell me, but a heart beat, thank goodness. I will need to give a great big push, they say, and I am okay with that because the midwife has said the only words I have wanted to hear. ‘Brooke. Your baby is okay.’

At least two minutes.

That is how long I thought the very worst.

Now, we move on.

As I breathe between contractions— between pushes—my eyes fall upon the midwife’s necklace, a butterfly on a thin, silver chain. It makes me think of the angel chain in my sisters hand, the one I’ve given her to hold, so Nan can be with me. It had been Nan’s right before she died. I had given it to her. Now it was mine.

And there is the stillness again. In the butterfly, in the thought of my Nan’s chain.

Another moment divine.

***

I gave birth to a beautiful, healthy baby girl, that night.

She is perfect, and was so from the moment she was born.

I will never forget those moments of indescribable togetherness and comfort.

Was there a divine presence in the room? I’ll never know.

But I will always remember.

I will always be amazed.

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Categories
Life

Choosing This

I’ve always looked beyond.

Always searched for the more.

Sometimes I wait for the more,

craving the sweet beauty of tomorrow.

Other times, I wait in fear.

For horrors that may, or may not come.

None of it is real.

None of it is now.

None of it is me…

until it is.

And even when it is,

it is not me.

It is always only life.

Life that has come.

And life that has gone.

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Categories
Poetry

Dark Mistress

Oh, fear, my dark mistress sweet.

Play me into your arms of fright.

Chill me with crooked fingers.

Undress my calm,

tempt me into hiding:

I will rise.

And you will find the truth of me

has no room inside to hold you.

The truth of me flies

without you

darling.

Categories
Healing

Healing Again

Some more memories came up for healing, today.

It is the most fascinating process, it truly is. Especially considering the memories, as they come up, are attached to a physical feeling within my body and a recognition of the vibration of that particular feeling. (Eg- shame, guilt etc.)

For those of you who are relatively new here, thinking: what on earth is she on about, I should probably explain. I experienced quite a drastic life change a couple of years ago which I call, and many call, a spiritual awakening. After this time, my nervous system returned to the super-sensitive energy system of my youth and has since been dragging me through a healing journey of sorts— a journey that is slowly bringing to the surface the buried wounds of the highly sensitive girl I once was.

The emotions that came up with the memory today were guilt and shame. My goodness. All the bellyaching. And interestingly, the recognition of these particular vibrations was a surprise for me, momentarily, because I had completely forgotten that guilt and shame were a part of this particular experience. Obviously, I’d done an excellent job of burying them.

Let me go through the memory that came up.

I was around nineteen, I’d say, and still living at home. I’d never had a large group of friends, always opting for my own company and the company of my precious keyboard (and my C.D’S and my Nintendo 64.) I was working with my Dad at the time of the memory and, one day, full of excitement, he pulled out a gift for me. A very expensive one. A game of laser tag— a game that would require a large group of friends to go along with me. Friends I did have, If I counted them all, but…I didn’t want to.

I froze.

I could not do this.

‘Why?’ my Dad asked.

‘Because I don’t have enough friends,’ I said, petrified.

Shame-ridden because anxiety was the real reason.

Guilt-ridden that my Dad had done this beautiful thing for me, and yet there was absolutely no way I could even think about doing it. My mind, my everything, was frozen.

Anxiety wasn’t a new thing for me. It had stopped me from taking part in the year eleven ball a couple of years before because I just wanted to watch my friends do it. That was nonsense, of course. I was a dreamer, an all the way through romantic. I longed to take part in the ball. The real reason was that I was terrified. Surely no boy would want to go with me…and the rules were that the girls had to do the asking.

Nope. Not me. What if they said no?

Or worse…what if they laughed at me. And then said no.

I still struggle with my sensitivities, I won’t lie, but now I am able to appreciate them, too. I’m often able to harness the most beautiful depth and power by bringing them to life and asking them to shine, instead of just having them break me like they sometimes choose to do. So there’s that lovely thing. For example, without them, this blog would have died about two years ago. And where would I be without you lot, hey? 🙂

The thing is, though, these ‘superpowers’ have done quite a bit of damage to me in the past, and now is absolutely the time to take care of that poor little muffin child I was. My goodness, I ache for her.

But the great news is, in this moment, she is safe and well.

In this moment she is here.

And healing.

purple rose on wooden surface
Photo by Creative Free Stock on Pexels.com

 

Categories
Poetry

Free To Fly

‘If I am free to fly,’

said the girl

to the moon,

‘why are my wings still closed?’

‘Because you have not yet decided

to flip the closed sign

to open,’

said the moon.

To the girl.

Categories
Life

Fear

‘Sun?’ said Moon, as she wandered along the path of cloud that lead to their shared home in the sky.

‘Yes, Moon?’

‘I’m afraid.’

‘Of what?’

‘Of everything. Of nothing, of…oh, I don’t know. I’m just afraid.’

Sun stopped abruptly on the path and turned to take Moon’s hands in his own.

‘It’s okay to be afraid, Moon, but there is no need to be. Fear can only survive in darkness, and you are made of far too much light to feed it what it needs. Have faith. Your fear will be gone before too long.’

Moon didn’t quite understand what Sun meant. But she loved him and respected his wisdom. So she took a deep breath and focused on the shine he told her was the key.

And though the fear returned occasionally, it did not have a home within her. It only had visiting rights.

She could grow to be comfortable with that.