and carry the trauma of violence and violation often become self-abusers. I know from my own personal experience that my body was my ultimate betrayer as a young child. Sexual abuse taught me that I was bad, shameful and disgusting which embedded a deep sense of guilt within me. I who was violated, became the continuance of that violation as I ravaged my body in the abuse of alcohol, drugs and cigarettes. My distorted understanding of love leading me to promiscuity and simply handing myself over, even when everything inside of me screamed against it, as I believed I would be loved if I did so, how wrong I was as I was left repeatedly to sink deeper into shame.
Reconnecting with my physical self has been a process. Learning to love my body again and finding the ability to forgive it and allow it to be nurtured has been huge. As I write these words, I am on day 26 of being smoke free once again, and abstaining from alcohol. So many times, I have made these attempts to quit cigarettes and somehow returned to the habit. Yet this time, there is a difference. This time I have been so deeply conscious of the process, watching the inner stories arise in me and allowing the deeper truth to emerge. I have noticed the guilt and shame that I have carried around smoking and realised it is connected to the guilt and shame of that young version of me, she who was violated and then rebelled against all that she was told and found a way to medicate and soothe the pain.
“Don’t smoke,” my Mother would tell me. I would go out and smoke more.
“Don’t drink,” she would say. I would go out and drink even more.
“Don’t take drugs,” she would demand. I would go out and take even more.
My rebellion and self-medicating against the violation and the abandonment was to become the deepening into self-punishment and an inner violation that would continue for 27 years of my life, so freshly released with an acknowledgement of all that I suffered and the opening for calling back these remnants of myself to wholeness. See, I have worked through all my trauma, I have sat deep in the fire of my pain and allowed it to be seen, to be felt and to be released. Life has been kind in that it offered me an experience of an abusive relationship to take me back into the darkness so that I could meet my suffering once again and, while I may not have realised it at the time, this was a gift. This man had gifted me an opportunity to go back into the depths of my pain and truly feel and express the energy that I had kept behind my own wall that I had built. As I remember this time, where I felt so incredibly alone and so far away from all those that I love with me being in Australia and my family and loved ones all in South Africa, I recognise that this was my salvation. This was my opportunity to sit in the fire so fully, with so much fervour, releasing my angst through movement and expression.
Every day, every night, I danced for eight months. First it was Florence and the Machine who journeyed me into the depths of my anger. My anger at every person who had ever violated me, this man that I had been in relationship with; the men who had used me for my body; the bosses that had felt me up and made me freeze in panic; the father who fondled me as a child; and my anger at myself … she who violated her own self. I screamed as I danced, I sobbed, and I allowed all the anger and all the pain that I carried behind that damn wall to release and to flood every aspect of my being as I moved my body and offered these energies the opportunity to be fully expressed. At times, I felt like I would die, that I would be consumed by the intensity and that the fire would swallow me up and reduce me to ashes. I would go to work with eyes so swollen from crying and tell people that it was allergies. Yet every day, every night I would do it again and again as I moved and danced into my salvation.
Journeying through this process of becoming smoke-free and abstaining from alcohol has been interesting this time, an offering into moving through another realm of healing, freeing myself of the addictions that have held and hidden the first pain associated emotions to little me and at the same time freeing myself of the old story of guilt and shame I have carried all my life. I witness this process and the energy that has moved, noticing the subtle nuances of emotion that arise; the unsettled energy; the discomfort.
Within the witnessing comes the knowing, the energetic spaces shifting and shaping themselves into something else, something different, something freeing. When we open our awareness to the energetic realms, we are unlocking the first door to consciousness, this is the beginning of the journey home.
Chapter Two
Strange things happen in our lives that confuse and estrange us from our Beloveds. We walk upon the path of life and all of a sudden we have to take sharp corners; come to sudden halts when we arrive at a crossroad, and then turn around again because we took the wrong turn off.
23~10~2000
Unravelling A Ball Of Wool
Self-awareness is the ultimate key to self-mastery. Without it we cannot know or build a relationship with ourselves. We may think that we already know ourselves and that it is impossible not to have a relationship with ourselves, yet how much of our personality, beliefs and behaviours are conscious and how much lives within our programming and remains unconscious? How have we actually cultivated a loving, nurturing relationship with ourselves and truly taken the time and effort to go within and get to know who and how we are being, and whether or not this person is truly aligned with the dreams that we hold for our future.
You see, I always dreamed of something bigger for myself, something purposeful. I dreamed of a life beyond mediocrity, beyond working in restaurants feeling unsatisfied and unfulfilled. I spent 23 years in the hospitality industry not pursuing my dreams because I did not believe in myself, I did not trust myself not to fail if I tried and I knew that I was good at the work that I did so thought that this was the path that I should follow and maybe one day open a restaurant or a lodge. Now, I am not saying that hospitality is a direction of mediocrity, I am saying that I was unsatisfied and unfulfilled in this journey. Yes, I could have followed that path and found some satisfaction in it, but it was not the path that I truly desired for myself.
The stories of my past haunted my reality and imbued me with the idea that I could not be more, that I could not have more; that I would fail anyway and so why bother trying. Yet inside of me I yearned for greatness, I felt something inside of me that was destined for bigger things, yet I quite simply had no idea what that was or what that dream even looked like for me. How could I? I had no idea who I was, who I was being and who I truly wanted to be.
During the breakdown of my the abusive relationship that I was in, one day I went to work and was asked if I was okay, I broke down into desperate sobs of relief as someone had finally infiltrated the loneliness I felt in my suffering of this relationship that I was in, that was collapsing around me and taking me with it. In that relief filled moment I felt seen again and everything came bursting out of me. As I opened my Heart and shared everything that was happening in my world I became aware of myself and in a moment, the strength that I had handed over to this man peeked up over my dam wall and I chose change for the first time in a long time.
“Fuck him,” I said, “I am going out tonight and I am not going to come home until 4am in the morning. I am done with this!”
That night I went out and met a friend that would become such a massive support through that time. I stayed out all night in defiance of this man and this was the beginning of something new, I was shifting into a new realm.
The music also began to shift as I danced through my pain and the anger began to subside giving way to acceptance. With every movement of my body I cracked the shell that held me captive open, and bit by bit it began to fall away as I was stripped bare of this person I had been. With each part of the shell that fell away the light of truth, of my truth, was able to shine as I started the journey home to myself. The next phase of music was Ben Howard, his melodies of love returning my Heart to the light so that it could shine into my Soul and
