January 14, 2018
I’m at work on a book called The Healing Pages. It’s about magic.
You can make magic out of anything.
You can turn illness into a pathway of discovery informed by tiny lights of wonder. They’re right there if you slow down to see them, those lights. You can transform utter certainty of failure into possibility for positive change. Loss, however catastrophic, can transmute into a choice – to sink your roots deeper into the ground and find greater sustenance.
Positive growth is a private, personal, magical choice. You can put it wherever and whenever it breathes easily. For me, it’s singing. Knitting, drawing, sewing, reading, cooking, walking, driving, listening to trees and lake, reading, laughing, the joy of meeting others in a place of music and engaged conversation. There are places where it doesn’t fit, too. I’m learning more about those places.
Betrayal releases distorted old belief systems, once you get off the blame train and look at what actually happened. Violation teaches trust of oneself along the long road of healing.
Invalidation feels like a prison. Like a gag, like a soul-eraser, like madness. But this is illusion. Inside invalidation is a gate, made specifically for you, to see, to open, and to walk through. Invalidation is the gate to the fields where your voice rings like the bell of the world. The open fields where your insightful, loving, compassionate, well-informed and sometimes difficult voice is loud and clear.
Inside exhaustion is Promethean courage. Inside every wound, a treasure and a map.
Numbness is a howl. It is also permission from the universe to Stop. Rest up. Be. Contain. Self-care. Slow release the tsunami, do not allow it to crash down. If it crashes down, you will end up in hospital, and the bell will never ring. Nobody’s that strong.
Your Bell. Must. Ring.