I recently wrote on my life since 2018 as a very brief recap of what’s been going on in my life over the past 6 years. You see, during the past 6 years I came to the realization that I was not living my life as I wanted. In fact, I began to realize that the life I was living was based on expectations I placed on myself that I felt would help me “fit in.” Unfortunately, everything I did to help me “fit in” just took me further and further away from who I really was. It left me lost and unhappy. I put on a really good front to make it look like I was happy, but deep in my heart I knew I wasn’t.
When I got really honest with myself, I discovered over the past 6 years that I:
- Was in a career in the arts that had me overworked and underpaid. I lost all interest in that career path because of this, and was also highly disrespected and treated poorly.
- Was barely making ends meet financially to the point where there were some months that I didn’t have enough money to buy myself food.
- Didn’t really have a community of people I could lean on. I lost a lot of friends over the years, and though I met new people, I continued shifting who I was so I didn’t lose any more people in my life. This led to some not-so-great relationships because I wasn’t really being my true self
- Was perpetually single even though I didn’t want to be. The relationships I was in left me beaten down and terrified to put myself out there again. This meant that I was always the third wheel or spending many nights alone watching rom-coms wishing I could find my true love, but knowing I didn’t have the guts to be seen or noticed by a guy. If any guy showed me even the slightest ounce of being attracted to me, I would run the other direction as fast as I could.
- Completely disconnected from my emotions and my body. I realized that I was so used to being gaslit that I was literally gaslighting myself…telling myself that what I was feeling wasn’t “right” or ok, so I needed to toughen up and get through it.
- Had horrible self-talk. Because I was completely disconnected from myself, I literally couldn’t think of a single good thing about myself. All I could focus on was what wasn’t good about me. Whether it was how I looked, what I did, what I said, or how I behaved, I never felt good enough. And if I didn’t think of it first, then usually someone else had something critical to say about me.
- Developed a slew of physical ailments that I ignored and normalized over the years. It wasn’t until this past year that I discovered I not only have gut dysbiosis, but also a severe intolerance to wheat and gluten, estrogen dominance, and, as of this week, the possibility of PCOS and insulin resistance. I’ve gained 30lbs over the past 6 years, some of it due to the physical ailments but also a lot of it due to being misaligned with so long. To this day it’s still hard for me to look at myself in the mirror because all I feel is embarrassment and shame
All of these things were the realization I had to have with myself to realize how misaligned I was. I also had a choice to make: I could remain living this way, or I could make an effort to change. Obviously, I decided to change because I truly didn’t want to live this way anymore.
I’m not, by any means, healed. Nor have I “fixed” every single thing that I listed above. In fact, I’m very much still in the thick of things and am still working towards building my dream life. However, because of my ability to wake up and realize I needed to embark on a healing journey for myself, I was able to:
- Leave a highly toxic job
- Moved closer to family to help restore and repair the years of misalignment
- Reconnect to my body, noticing the signals my body sends on a day-to-day basis and honoring its needs
- Allow myself to feel, letting any emotions come to the surface and not bypass them
- Develop a deeper spiritual practice, flexing my intuitive gifts while honoring my empathic nature
- Dived deep into my physical health, getting the necessary tests and help I needed to get to the root cause of my symptoms and start putting a plan in action to help heal myself
And the list will continue as I continue to dive in. So if you’re here and read this far, there’s a good chance you’re curious about starting your own healing journey as well. You may be wondering how you actually start – what do you do? How do you know if you need to embark on a healing journey? Do you need to do something special? All of these are natural questions as I had similar ones while I was embarking on my own. Based on my own personal journey so far, this is how you can start your own healing journey:
How to Start Your Own Healing Journey
- Wake Up: I don’t mean in the literal sense. In order to begin a healing journey, you first need to wake up to your own life and what’s happening within and around you. It requires self-awareness and the ability to question yourself and your life. If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you are not walking through life asleep. Your curiosity alone says you’re starting to wake up and starting to become self-aware. Usually this “wake up” phase is kick started by something significant happening to you or, as I like to say, for you. For some, it’s something related physically like being diagnosed with a specific ailment or a major injury. For others, it could be a life altering event such as a long-term relationship ending, starting a new relationship, getting married, having a kid, losing your job or choosing to leave a job, moving across the country or moving to a different country, losing a relative or friend, or any other type of life altering event. Spiritually speaking, this can happen during your first Saturn Return (around 28-30 years old), but it can also happen at other points in your life. Usually your Saturn Return is the big “wake up” point for many.
- Seek Help: I would not be where I am today if I didn’t seek professional help. I personally believe everyone should have a therapist and a coach simultaneously, regardless on if you’re undergoing a healing journey or not. Hiring a therapist will help you dig into your core wounds and limiting beliefs and begin to heal from your past. Hiring a coach will help you focus on your goals and help you take the steps you need to make to get to where you want to go. I have been working with a somatic therapist and a health coach for the past several years. I have also leaned on spiritual mentors and friends to have an understanding of the energies I’m working with. Make an effort to find the right people to work with, and, so long as you put the work in, you’ll start seeing small results compounded over time.
- Determine What You Want to Change: You may have waken up to the fact that your life isn’t what you want it to be, but do you know what is you truly want? This was a question I needed to get clear on for myself. I realized I was unhappy, but because I was so disconnected from myself, I needed to determine what it was I truly wanted…which also required me to work with my support team to get back in touch with myself. It takes some trial and error – some of the things I wanted for myself when I first started healing don’t align with me now, but that’s ok. You need to start somewhere. Take time to meditate on this or work with your therapist and/or coach to help you determine what it is you want. With your support team behind you, you will have the tools necessary to start making steps towards those dreams.
- Establish Healthy Practices: Make sure you are physically taking care of yourself. This means making sure you are eating nutritious meals, drinking enough water, getting enough sleep, and moving your body every single day. Without these core basics, it will be difficult to make strides towards your own healing because your body won’t feel its safe. If one or more of these is missing from your life currently, then I suggest starting small and choosing one thing to focus on first. For instance, you can start with just making sure you are moving your body every day even if it just means a 30min walk.
- Develop Healthy Self Care Rituals: You have to take care of yourself during this process, but you have to do so in healthy ways. Healthy self-care rituals does NOT mean “taking the edge off” by binge-eating, binge-drinking, smoking, doom-scrolling, binge-watching Netflix, or other unhealthy habits that we all have taken part in at one point in our lives. I’ve done all that – I still sometimes find myself doom-scrolling on occasion. But trust me when I say these habits do not help. They are habits we developed to get temporary satisfaction. They don’t help us in the long-term. So to take care of yourself during this process, try to establish some healthy self-care rituals such as taking a bubble bath, getting a massage, reading a good book, exercising, meditating, getting outside, hanging out with friends, or just taking a nap.
- Commit to Yourself and Put in the Work: I’m not gonna lie, healing takes work. It takes consistent action every single day. You have to make the commitment to show up for yourself. This starts with listening to what your therapist and/or coach is telling you. It also means listening to yourself and what you need on a daily basis. It requires a certain level of discipline too.
Remember, just choosing to start can serve as your first step. Things will start to fall into place after that. You won’t be able to see the whole path in front of you, so just focus on one step at a time. You got this 🫶🏻