Shedding Skin

In my previous life before the initiation, I was not very honest with myself. Or rather, I let who I was, be extinguished and then moulded by voices of bitterness and bullying. Voices that wanted me, a smart, independent young girl with a free spirit be bowed and subdued by a scared and resentful toxic male.

I carried this heavy and biting energy with me throughout most of my life. A fire of potential and purpose dampened to smoke. My heart desired creativity and the catharsis of sharing art and putting my heart into the world, but as a young girl of 7 until I was a teenager and able to exercise some sovereignty over where and with who I spent my time (alas by then the damage was done), I was receiving messages that I was not ‘good enough’, that my pursuit of the things that made my heart joyful were “not a way to earn a living”, that my desires were “silliness” and women like me who were “too clever” should be “seen and not heard”.

Drilled into small-ness and rendered invisible by an insecure narcissist. As a result of this I always jumped around from job to job, never quite scratching the itch inside me, not really knowing what was missing. Jobs that made me depressed and retreat further into myself. This reflected in my relationships, either being too closed off by walls or too needy for acceptance and love. I tried many ways to find who I was, to find the missing piece of my complicated inner puzzle. Some more successful than others. Learning and teaching Brazilian percussion being a particular high note, getting lost in the rhythm, removing my logical Air brain and those dissenting voices gave me a peace I’m still sorry I walked away from. But I’d always get to a stage where I was just getting good and I’d shut off the tap. The fear of success and/or failure, of not being ‘good enough’ steadily dancing through all my endeavours.

Now I’m here ten years since being reborn, I’ve used my fallow time of being buried to dip my toe in a few directions and it always comes back to being creative, giving of myself into something and putting it out into the world. Gardening became my outlet, creating life and beauty that no one ever saw because I couldn’t ‘people’. I needed solitude, I needed to gather. For eight years I wrote a blog about my accident, trauma and recovery, I retired it when it reached a natural end but also because I thought it was bad, I was reaching out into the void and no one was reaching back, so I concluded it was because I was ‘lacking’ somehow.

As I hit the ten year anniversary of my accident I began to feel that familiar feeling again, something welling up inside me that wants to be let out. A desperate urge to now ‘do something’ after 10 years in much needed limbo. A burning desire to take what I’ve learnt and make something with it. I’m feeling ‘out of sorts’, restless and impatient. It brings me back here, to writing, a place that feels comfortable for me. I have a need to be heard, to hear others and to share with those who understand, how after such a rite of passage, you are never quite the same again.

It scares me to try again, to invest energy into something that I abandon just as it finds its feet, but this time I’m coming armoured. This time I don’t care about being good, I care about being authentic and indulging the part of me that wants to write. The voice that smothered me for so long no longer has any power. I want to test myself, my ‘silliness’. I want to see how I can grow not just plants, but community and love, using words. To finally satisfy my longing for creativity and to let that little girl in the picture below know that what she has to say is important, that her voice can be heard, that she, in her robust and courageous little body, is enough.