Originally posted on Facebook on August 4 at 3:18pm
I HAVE A CONFESSION: I’m afraid of water. Cos I can’t swim… I think.
Sometimes I can, but most of the time I just feel like no matter what I do, my body is just headed towards the depths of whatever waters I’m in.
Not an easy thing to live with when you’re an island girl surrounded by the sea. Boat trips and catamaran cruises, swimming with the dolphins, as magical as they sound, were a big source of stress… and shame for me.
Which is funny, since the whole point of this metaphor was to describe my relationship with shame.
A great part of my life felt like I was trying to stay afloat, trying to defy the laws of gravity while my body seemed committed to sinking to the bottom of the waters. Sometimes I managed to, and sometimes I struggled. Sometimes I did figure out how to let go enough to float, but then I’d get triggered, life would happen and I’d lose it and find myself struggling again.
In October 2016, I was having a moment of peace when I suddenly felt a sharp pang of pain in my metaphorical legs. As if the metaphorical sea creature of shame had grabbed me by the legs and was trying to pull me down again. I got scared. Terrified. But suddenly, from the depths of the darkness, something happened. A voice inside of me said “Enough”.
How long was I going to keep doing this? How long was I going to let shame have a hold on me and pull me down?
“Not long” was the answer. My body felt so tired of fighting that out of the blue came this unexpected surge of strength. ENOUGH. It was time to learn to swim. Time to swim my heavy butt out of those waters.
My head felt full. My soul felt cramped with stories and emotions that were stale. And old. And that weren’t serving it in any way. And yet, they were there. What was I going to do with them?
I needed to free up some space. I had to, otherwise I’d drown: my baggage was too heavy. So I decided to write. I decided to give all those stories and emotions a new container, a new home, in the shape of a book.
And instead of resisting shame, I decided to surrender. Instead of running away from it, I decided to run towards it. Instead of hiding, I decided to come out into the light.
Soul Superstar: Stories From My Sober Heart is my way to say no. My way to let go of my emotional ballast and start afresh. There was no better way to honour my past than to share it. To immortalize it in a book, and share it with the world.
And you know what happened then? I started feeling lighter, and instead of feeling attracted to the depths, I started soaring towards the skies.
My mentor, Gabrielle Bernstein once said “Own the journeys you have been on, as dark as they may have been, own them. Hold them sacred, know that your stories are your vessel, your vehicle for your truest most expansive expression of the light.”
This is what I did. I used to think I was flawed, and that because of my flaws, I was doomed. That I had made too many mistakes and bad decisions to be able to get back on the ‘right track’. But the thing is, I had always been on the ‘right track’. I just couldn’t see it.
I’m sharing this with you today to let you know, there is no such thing as being doomed. If you feel like you’ve missed the boat, look afar, for there might be a bigger and/or better boat coming.
Your past can either be the ball and chain that hold you back, or the force that propels you forward. And there is only one person that can make that choice, and it is YOU.
YOU get to choose.
YOU get to make the decision.
So, what do you say, are you ready?
#yesyoucan
