Category: growth

Do you feel like a blank slate at the moment? Like everything you knew and used to do has been reset somewhat and you don’t quite know where you are going?  I’ve been feeling like this myself for the last 6 months or so and I want to share my experience to give insight and hope, and help you understand the power that exists in such a state.

A few months ago I stopped working as a doula after ten years in this role. A period of intense discomfort followed. Now things have mellowed a bit but I still feel some low level of unknowing that makes me feel rudderless and unsettled. Patience isn’t my strength, and my ADHD brain functions at the speed of knots, so it’s difficult for me to accept a period of what feels like fallowness.

However, having been through this process many times in my life, I recognise the signature of power and new beginnings. This time it feels softer than the forced situation that I experienced in 2019.  Maybe it feels softer because this time this is a crisis of my own doing. Nobody booted me out of my position. I chose to remove myself from my current role, which means that energy feels very different. 

Last Autumn I had a realisation that I needed to step out of doula work in order to be able to realise my next vocation, which is to help people connect and lead from the heart instead of from the mind. The scary bit is that I had to step into the void in order to let this process happen. The other scary bit is that I do not yet know what the offer will actually look like.

This time I chose to initiate the phoenix process myself. The rebirth is slower than I expected. Some days I feel calm and trusting in the process. Some days I feel the power of the void. Some days I feel irritable and frustrated. I want it to happen NOW! Yet something in me know that this isn’t the time yet, and that I have to spend some more time in the strange in-between (which is very similar to waiting for labour to start). Some inner wisdom knows that there is no point in trying to push water uphill. I need to surrender to the flow. Maybe that is part of the lesson I need to embody in order to progress to the next step.

The process is like a train going through a tunnel, you cannot skip it, get out before it is finished, or speed it up, lest you’ll end up missing out on the lesson and have to go through it again until you get it. I guess it is easier because I’ve been there before and I have the insight and perspective of knowing that I’ll come out from the other side eventually. It doesn’t mean that it’s not challenging at times, but at least this time I have awareness of what is going on inside of me when I get frustrated.

If this is what’s happening for you too, right now, I am not surprised because I feel that many of us are going through this accelerated growth at the moment. I see it around me, and in many of my friends. It’s a bit like when you’ve just had a baby and your old life don’t fit anymore. And you don’t know who you are anymore. It’s like you’re been broken into puzzle pieces and they cannot yet be assembled again.

When you feel like a blank slate, this is because in order to grow and process things and rearrange the puzzle pieces, you have to let them go for now. So it can feel like everything you’ve learnt and done is no longer relevant. It can feel very unsettling.

I’ve been feeling for some time that I no longer want to teach most of the things I’ve learnt from others, but rather create my own teaching from scratch and from my own unique experience, and help others do this for themselves. At this moment in time, we no longer need gurus but get insight from our inner knowing. 

Last year I tried this out for the first time by creating a workshop about running mother blessings. I purposefully avoided looking at anybody else’s teachings, or read any books, and created the course for my own knowledge alone. People who attended the course and had already trained with me said it was the best course they had attended. I since made this knowledge into an online course. 

I’m ‘blank slated’ about other things I used to teach too. I no longer want to teach Reiki, but rather something else entirely new, which would be more uniquely tailored and individual form of intuitive healing. 

It is tempting to feel that I have learnt all these skills for nothing, and that I am wasting all these years of experience. Except I know that, when the time is right, the right pieces will reassemble themselves in the right order (and maybe some pieces will no longer be there and that’s ok too).

I’m at the cusp of the menopause which is a rite of passage and transformation of its own. And I find it fascinating that I left science and started working as a doula exactly when my perimenopause started, and that I’m doing a similar huge change as I near the end of the process. I’ve also only recently learnt that the process led me to tip fully into ADHD when I was only borderline before.

Perimenopause in some ways feels quite similar to puberty (although the changes are less visible externally and the energy is quite different). In the movie Inside out, a young girls’ emotions are represented by 5 personified characters who lead her brain. As she goes through puberty some parts of her brain disappear and new ones grow. I like this image (in fact I think I may watch the film again). Research tells us that this isn’t just figurative as brain cells do die in a “pruning” fashion during puberty and the menopause (a process called apoptosis).

When parts of ourselves no longer serve us it can be difficult to let go. It can feel like we need to grieve too, very much as we do during other identity transformations such as puberty and new motherhood.

If this feels true for you now, I’d love to hear about your experiences.

Here are some of the people/books I enjoy and have found that provide supportive insight during times of transformation:

• Lee Harris, an energy intuitive who provide a free monthly energy update on YouTube
• Pamela Gregory, an astrologer, who provides a free monthly update on YouTube

Books (I often listen to audiobooks whilst I drive or cook):

• Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow by Elizabeth Lesser
• The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief by Francis Weller
• Untamed by Glennon Doyle (I have read this one several times)
• All the books written by Brene Brown (I’m a fan), and especially Braving the Wilderness
• Energy Speaks by Lee Harris
• Belonging By Toko-pa Turner

Practises that help me to process my emotions and stay grounded

• Placing my bare feet on the earth
• Year round wild water swimming
• 5rhythms dancing (a form of movement meditation, where you simply move to music according to what your body wants to do)
• Shamanic drumming

“You and I are the Phoenix. We too can reproduce ourselves from the shattered pieces of a difficult time. Our lives ask us to die and to be reborn every time we confront change—change within ourselves and change in our world. When we descend all the way down to the bottom of a loss, and dwell patiently, with an open heart, in the darkness and pain, we can bring back up with us the sweetness of life and the exhilaration of inner growth. When there is nothing left to lose, we find the true self—the self that is whole, the self that is enough, the self that no longer looks to others for definition, or completion, or anything but companionship on the journey. This is the way to live a meaningful and hopeful life—a life of real happiness and inner peace. This is the Phoenix Process.” Elizabeth Lesser, broken open.

Both discomfort and power lies in transitional times.

Since I decided to stop doulaing in April, I have felt unsettled, agitated and overwhelmed. I’m having a hard time feeling comfortable in this transition time. I’m finding it difficult to surrender to what is, and to trust that the path will unfold before me at the pace it’s meant to.

I’m an impatient person at heart, and this is a big challenge for me. In previous blogs I have shared about my leaving doula work and the wisdom of fallow times. Today I want to reflect on embracing the void.

The void is the fertile space in which you are no longer what you were and you are not yet what you are to become. It is a death space of sorts, a bit like the time where you are heavily pregnant and you wish your body would hurry up and give birth. Being heavily pregnant often comes with both physical and emotional discomfort, and this is no different.

There are many metaphors, from the metaphysical process of transforming lead into gold, which goes through a phase called Massa Enigma (where is it neither lead nor gold), through to the death and rebirth of the mythical phoenix.

I’m in this space now. And like waiting for birth, I have moments of quiet acceptance and moments of rage and irritation, as well as moments of despair. I notice that I will myself to be further along the path, and there lies the suffering, in not accepting what is.

I am undergoing a huge transition in my sense of self and my work. There is added discomfort in the complexity of my family situation, with a child who is too anxious to attend school and on behalf of whom we are fighting the education system to get the support needed, and a young dog whose needs are intense, much like a new baby.

I feel stretched and overwhelmed a lot of the time, with balancing the demands of my family and my work, and end up feeling that I’m not doing any of them very well. The fact that I am nearly menopaused, so going through an inner transition and discomfort at a physical and spiritual level is a big part of it too.

I notice that there is something in me that wants to be ‘ahead’ of where I currently am. That I have impossibly high expectations of myself (of which I mostly fall short). I think this is a very important thing to be curious about and to learn to recognise and tame. I’m currently reading a book called How To Keep House When You are Drowning, by KC Davis. She talks about self-compassion and of recognising when your inner voice isn’t kind.

Last week-end I met with a young couple who have offered to look after my dog from time to time. My dog is a 6 months old, 25kg, energetic golden retriever puppy. I’ve spent the last 2 months taking him to dog obedience classes, and I’ve been berating myself because I haven’t practised the training exercises enough for my liking. I was worried that the couple would find it hard work (he pulls on the lead and his recall is hit and miss still), but instead they said they found him very well behaved. And these are people who are used to dogs, and the woman is a vet. I felt this deep sense of relief. Then one of my daughter’s tutors commented on how amazing it is that Blue doesn’t jump on visitors. I reflected that, once again, what was stressing me was the impossible expectations I put on myself.

I told my husband of my overwhelm (thankfully he is a trained counsellor) and he replied that if an athlete was unwell he wouldn’t be expected to run.  And I stopped and nearly laughed because I use this analogy all the time, but I had forgotten to apply it to myself. Isn’t it funny how we have this inner wisdom, yet how blind we are to our own process? Indeed, nobody would expect an injured athlete to train until they had healed. Yet when it comes to mental health challenges we try to push through and force ourselves to carry on, when we need to focus on our healing first, and cut ourselves some slack. After all, we are doing the best we can.

In her book, Rising Strong, Brene Brown asks herself and people if they believe that people are doing the best they can. At first she believes that no, people aren’t, and that they are annoying on purpose. And then she asks her husband who says “All I know is that my life is better when I assume that people are doing their best. It keeps me out of judgment and lets me focus on what is, and not what should or could be.”

After the athlete’s conversation, it dawned on me that I was, yet again, trying to force myself out of a funk by working harder. I realised that I needed to surrender to my discomfort and take the time to tend to the struggle and emotions inside. Instead of trying to push through and tackle my ever growing to-do list, I took myself to the office to do some work on what I need to start doing to be more connected to my heart. I will write about why I am doing this and why it is the most important thing I need to do right now in a separate blog. 

I took this time for myself, about one hour, and I lied down and listened to a drum journey track, asking to be shown how to connect to my heart, and I was shown what to do. I felt much better afterwards.

A few days later, I was listening to Lee Harris’s energy update for this month (I used to feel I didn’t have the time but now I listen to this kind of things on a  speaker in my kitchen whilst making diner and I love it) and he said that there is wisdom in overwhelm, because it is teaching us what is no longer working for us. I hadn’t thought of it this way, and it helped.

As serendipity would have it, later that day not one but two people I follow shared a similar message. In my inbox, I received this message from Shelley Young, who channels Archangel Gabriel:

“Dear Ones, you can’t be controlling and guided at the same time. You can’t decide you are going to do it all yourself and be open to receive at the same time. You are going through profound change, both individually and as a collective. You are being made aware of what is not working for you so you can let go of the old and find new solutions and ways of being.

If you are perpetually exhausted by your life it is a sign that you have outgrown where you are and you are ready for expansion and new discoveries. It is an indicator that you are ready to up-level into something that is a much better match for you and your soul’s agenda. Your soul is beckoning you forward into the new.

So allow yourself to be led. When you don’t know what to do next, get curious. Ask to be shown what is possible that you aren’t aware of. Give the reins to your team who have the vantage point of being on the other side of the veil and allow them to show you the way.”

And then Toko-Pa Turner, the author of the wonderful book Belonging, Remembering ourselves home, shared this on her Facebook page:

“Drop your maps and listen to your lostness like a sacred calling into presence. Here, where the old ways are crumbling and you may be tempted to burn down your own house. Ask instead for an introduction to that which endures. This place without a foothold is the province of grace. It is the questing field, most responsive to magic and fluent in myth. Here, where there is nothing left to lose, sing out of necessity that your ragged heart be heard. Send out your holy signal and listen for the echo back.”

These messages were very soothing for me. They were just what I needed to hear. I don’t need to force it, to be further ahead in my path than I am right now. There is power in the in-between now, and power in embracing the void. It is a fertile ground for the new.