Chapter One: A Brief Introduction

{Preface: Umm, hi, my name is Heather. WELCOME. This is a safe space to unravel our tangled situations and make jam out of our mess of berries, though I am the one who does most of the talking. Oh, and we cuss here. If this doesn’t sound like your kind of place, feel free to exit accordingly, preferably without one of those awkward emails telling me about how you’ve decided to leave. Thanks, and I hope you enjoy it here!}

Y’all. Let me just start by saying that 2019 was a very difficult year for me. ”Difficult” isn’t even a suitable word to give an accurate summation of the sheer magnitude to be honest. I realize that you may be wondering how something could still be relevant from what is now almost 2 years ago, and I’ll tell you something that was told to me.

”I know its hard right now, but your story will become someone else’s survival guide.”

That ... that was powerful. Powerful enough that it got me here, writing all my secret words and feelings, and then sharing them publicly. Not for gain, not for acceptance - but because I remember wishing so badly that someone out there could help me. Actually HELP ME. Help me to understand what it was that I was going through. Help me notice the patterns right under my nose so that I might be able to see through them. Hell, even just someone to SEE ME. Someone who would sit with me despite all of my rage, anger, and hurt - and not just to validate me on those feelings, but to help me process those reactions in order to make sense of what was actually happening within me. Someone who could show me a new way of seeing things - seeing things from a place of compassion rather than anger and self pity, mostly. I needed to know the consequences of doing what I was doing - a strong voice of gentle sturdiness that would warmly call me out rather than co-signing my bullshit like all of my peers would.

So, that’s why I’m here. I can’t promise that I have all the answers, but I will tell you that everything is an easily recognizable pattern. Once you can see the pattern, you’re able to decide what you want to do with it. Pattern detection is the easy part. Healing by sorting through and sitting in your own shit is the hard part. I’m not a master, and this won’t be my last deep awakening - but I’ve accomplished a great deal. From recognizing triggers, to building new associations - healing is possible. You, and only you, can decide if and when you want to heal though. This is your healing. You are the only one who can take responsibility for it.

I feel like in order to truly understand and connect with me and to be able to genuinely understand what I have to offer, you have to understand where it is that I came from. I don’t know about you, but personally, I don’t fully connect to a person on a deep level, (and I definitely don’t trust them to lead me through my hard times and struggles) without knowing that they understand what I’m going through - I need to know details.

And these details will come, should you choose to follow along as the telling of my (up until now) very private journey is told. Very, deeply personal, raw and extremely vulnerable details. Details that still make me slightly wince when I recount them. It was a culmination of many events - both big and small, despite seeming to transpire in such a small amount of time, that quite literally, almost took me out. Permanently.

Dancing what was a very fine line between life and death, literally, I was broken down completely - like, a continuous wet pile of snot bubbles and black ash, messy as fuck, sprawled out all over the floor while clenching clumps of hair in my hands. I say ”2019” like this wasn’t over a decade’s-worth web of carefully connected circumstances - some direct cause and effect, others being strung together by a hidden string that I didn‘t even notice until much later. 2019 was merely just the moment in time where it all came boiling to a head. All of it being the consequences of my own actions and choices - even despite my self-pity allowing me to feel as though these were punishments - or - that my said actions and choices were justified. Regardless, there I was - sitting in the broken mess that resulted from a deep calling from within myself that I couldn’t ignore, therefor, chose to answer.

Despite all of the varying degrees and magnitudes of heartache, I persisted. I overcame.

Quite honestly, I fucking conquered.

Time and time again, my battered and abused ego would pull herself up off that floor to fight another round, just to be beat down again.

And again.

And again.

This continued for nearly a year. Nothing changing. I gave it hell though. I learned and applied new techniques, some of them working better than others, none of which got me to where I wanted to be. The whole “one step forward, two steps back” expression? Such a sweet and fluffy way of putting it, truly. Until I eventually hit that last and final wall that even my big as fuck ego bearing, Leo sun and rising, Taurus moon a.k.a. emotionally stubborn as fuck, self couldn’t move.

I had no more energy.

I had no moves left.

I had no choice.

I surrendered.

And then, I rebuilt.

So what sounds like a sad ass *fade-to-black* closing curtain from one of your favorite shows finale that you‘re high-key super pissed about because you didn’t want to see end that way, was actually the most freeing part of this whole journey. It was the end of a decade long, seemingly never ending, perilous crusade. A spiritual obstacle course built only for warriors, testing them every fucking step of the way. This sweet little “love yourself” lesson was a quick witted, relentless, bitch. I hated her. HATED. Giving in and acknowledging defeat was unthinkable - I couldn’t even fathom it. Thankfully, I eventually became too exhausted to allow my pride and ego to dictate any further advances because it was only after I surrendered that I was able to rebuild - and not just my outer/physical/day-to-day world, but everything I had been holding onto within me as well.

And I know, I know

“Heather, why didn’t you leave?! You shoulda cut ties and let it all go.”

“That wasn’t even your problem. You could have just stayed comfortable where you were.”

“Girl, I woulda BEEN GONE.”

See, I had tried that whole “lets run really far away from those thoughts, triggers, feelings, emotions, memories, and person” thing for like, literally a decade. 9 years, ok. I married a whole ass person that, looking back, I had no business being married to. I bought a house in a whole other state, in a great neighborhood, with a great school district. I gave my son a positive and present father figure. I gave myself time and space to “forget” and sat there waiting for the pain and bitterness to subside by subscribing to the whole idea of “time heals all wounds” and then blamed myself that I just didn’t have enough patience for it to work. I had got a great job doing what I loved. I only hung around people who supported me and made me feel good. I established and implemented boundaries for my own mental health. I did everything “right” and yet, nothing ever made it go away. It didn’t work. It just prolonged the hurt and infected every part of my life to the point that I had accepted it as “the new me” while having no idea that what I was actually seeing was deep pain, left to fester alone in the dark, while I went out and numbed that shit through some of my favorite coping strategies - coping strategies that became my life line, and in turn, that I completely abused. I. Was. Pretending.

The concept of surrender was not one that I was familiar with. But what I found was that surrender wasn’t weakness. That shit took so much more courage to surrender than it ever did to fight. The fight was automatic - primal, really. Fighting was my go-to resolution for so long that it became a knee-jerk reaction. Surrender though, pfft. That shit was HARDDD. Thankfully this wasn’t the end of my book, just the end of that chapter.

Ya know, I can’t honestly say that I actually believed that I would ever arise from those flames - definitely not whole, if at all. I can also be completely honest in sharing the very real feeling of being stuck - the road backward was just as toxic, awful, and tremendously daunting as the road forward - though, for very different reasons. I later started to understand that I was merely being forged in what I still consider to be the hottest fires I have ever had to sit in thus far in my life. Those horrific and tortuous fires showed me what I was capable of. In hindsight, I see so much beauty in those same flames.

I look back now and I’m truly grateful for that journey! I wouldn’t be who I am today without that painful, messy, fucked up year. I wouldn’t be able to show others, like you, what is truly possible - and I’m far from finished. Oh no, I’m just getting started. From life altering devastation to facing those deep seeded fears head on to how its possible to come out the other side. And not just come out the other side and be ok, but come out that other side feeling better equipped to take shit on than ever before - AND BE THANKFUL THAT THE WHOLE MESS EVER HAPPENED.

Today, I am powerful.

Back then, I was also powerful - I just needed to be reminded. That reminder was something I looked for everywhere else BUT within my own self. I’m gonna be real with you, it was hard as fuck. No one had answers - some people had good pieces of wisdom, but where was the playbook?! To my knowledge, there is still no playbook. You have to do the work yourself; you have to create your own playbook. You can do it. You just have to pay attention.

Some would say that their story is completely different - but I assure you, it’s not. Details and specifics aside, I’d be willing to bet that you’ve likely been there too. Maybe you’re still there. If by some chance you haven‘t yet experienced anything like this, this is an excellent opportunity to listen in and collect some helpful life skills for your metaphorical toolbox - whether it be for yourself, or for better understanding others in your life.

In honor of all that 2019 was for me, I want to share with you a piece written by a woman who, within this excerpt, made me feel incredibly seen, heard, and understood - and at the time that I found this piece, that was all that I really wanted.

As we are not much different under it all, this is for you too.

“Awakenings feel like our heart is breaking and being pieced back together again at the same time. It feels like all the parts of ourselves are at war and they are inviting us to come along for the ride. It feels like we are caught between this person we say we want to be and the person we are right now (who is a complete mess!). It can feel wretched one minute and like we are on cloud nine the next. Sometimes, it just feels sloooooooow.

And then, in the middle of the awakening, something happens. A flash of a fresh perspective that shifts the entire world on its axis, a rush of love to the heart that makes us grab our chest and catch our breath, someone telling us that we matter, an old wound that finally, finally heals. Something releases. Something surrenders. There is a softening where there was once a hard place. There are moments that feel like we are being hit by a ton of bricks and knocked over by a feather at the same time.

Awakenings tear us open. They expose all the yucky stuff, the shameful stuff, the secrets, the dreams that were never given a voice, the relationships that imprison us, the words left unsaid. Awakenings are a mirror we can’t turn away from, even in our ugliest, most tattered gown. They force us to get real, to get honest, to get transparent. They ask us to up level.

Awakenings don’t just come for anyone. They seek out those who are strong enough to take a hit. Awakenings don’t f*ck around, because they have a mission: to help us arrive. To arrive at our deepest place of love and compassion. To arrive at our endless inner wisdom. To arrive at the tender crossroads of accepting ourselves and loving others. To arrive at the place in which we are in full trust of who and what we are. To arrive at our shattered places and pour some light over them.

And when we do arrive, we realize we have been cleansed, blessed, and prepared. We understand that those dark nights of the soul were an opening for our raw truth to claw its way out. We are humbled that our greatest pain has now become our biggest teacher.

The truth of who we are is not in how well we can contort ourselves into who the world says we are allowed to be. The truth of who we are is when we stop contorting. When we stop making excuses. When we stop lying to ourselves that we are satisfied when we are not. When we stop believing that all the beautiful experiences in life are reserved for other people.

Awakenings allow us to realize all the ways we make ourselves small. All the ways we try to fit ourselves into other people’s rules, limitations, and beliefs. All the ways we have rejected ourselves and not honored our own wisdom.

We change when we realize that there must be another way. When our inner truth is so loud that we can’t find any more excuses or distractions to turn the volume down.“ - Elizabeth Gordon

May we all strive to make jam out of our mess of berries - one jar at a time,

Heather