Pieces of Me: will the real Miss Cook please stand up?
Anyone on a "soul journey" (which we all are in one way or another) will tell you that at some point, you receive an invitation from yourself to go deep, to turn and face the Gollum-like treasure trove of things you have spent a lifetime running from, trying to hide, or just flat out ignoring. Your shadow self. It's inevitable when you are seeking your truth and wanting to find your purpose for being on the planet. "Finding yourself" is absolutely not all quiet meditation, fluffy boho yoga, and unicorns sh*tting rainbows. It's as much treading through an active minefield trying not to get your legs and arms blown off, as it is beautiful and spectacular.
Here's the truth of it: good, bad or ugly. The only way forward to your best life, your true self, your higher purpose, is not around your shadow, it's not going over it, it's not going under it, it's plowing straight through the middle. Yup, you heard it right, it's going right through the centre of all the ugly, black bits and pieces that scare the bejesus out of you.
I feel like once more, I am being presented with that moment, the invitation to my tipping point. It's the unmistakable ritual release required right before rising, bright and strong into my true purpose. Put simply, it's the tender nod to the Phoenix-rising-from-the-ashes juncture each human has at least once in their life, the way to your most beautiful, magnificent, shining self, should you allow it to unfold. I truly believe that more than any other time in history, we are being asked to rise up, step into our purpose and own our personal power.
I have had a few of these life-changing moments in my time, and save and except for the first one which I was utterly blindsided by and felt like a freight train hitting me at 200mph, you can see them coming. With that foresight comes a choice on how to handle this prickly cactus of a process, as I see it you can:
(a) run screaming from all of this woo-woo bullsh*t and pray that it doesn't catch up with you
(b) drown it in booze, sex, food, Netflix binge-watching, online porn, drugs, work....the options for numbing are endless
(c) trick yourself that a tiny bit of surface woo-woo will fix it - i.e. a couple of yoga classes
OR
(d) accept things are about to get a bit hairy, your skin is going to feel suddenly one size too small, and simply do your best to sit with it with grace and humility and love.
I recommend the latter option wholeheartedly, however, suffice to say, I have tried all of these. I have been munched into teeny weeny bits by thinking I could get the better of my shadow the easy way, I have tried numbing it or beating it into submission or silence (oh how I gave that one a good nudge), and my formerly favoured method, running away as fast as my little legs could carry me. Surprisingly, none of these worked. Shocker, I know.
So now, I choose acceptance, a peace and an ease with it all, knowing that whatever is going to come is going to come, and that fighting it is useless. I am ready to open the door to all the guilt, shame and knotted bits that live within and let them arrive, feel them, experience them and then with love release them back into the Universe. Yup, I am inviting those ugly beasts inside, willingly. I have done this before, don't worry, it gets easier each and every time you embrace your bravery.
Here's whats going to happen next in a nutshell, if you choose the brave path. You invite these little beasties into your space, into your mind and heart, and essentially, you ask them to tell you their story. YOU WHAT?!?!? I hear you say.... Yes, friends, asking each one of them to tell you why they are like they are. Do the unthinkable, lend them some understanding and love, rather than spitting hatred in their direction. Weird, but trust me, it works.
What's next is revelatory, because if you listen to the beasties, and I mean really listen, you will find out they are not hideous, horrible, blackened bits of you that are disgusting and to be hidden from the world at all costs, rather they are hurt, sad, neglected and wounded pieces of you that need some care and love to be healed.
In fact, what they desperately need is some fresh air, to be let out from the windowless cages in which you keep them. Maybe show them to someone you love and trust. I am taking the somewhat unusual step of showing them to ALL of you, but I do this for the express purpose not of airing my dirty laundry, or seeking pity, but as the only authentic way I know of showing you what extraordinary things can come from a process that requires every ounce of courage you have. Radical honesty in operation; leading by example; in the only way I know how: clumsily and stumbling. But what you see is 100% real, so that's okay.
I am going to use myself as the ultimate guinea pig to show you how this is done. This is going to be absolutely hideous for me (while ultimately empowering this is a brutal thing to do publicly), but I feel that if I do it, you can too. I'm gonna be my own hero here to demonstrate to you that you can also be the hero of your own story, no one else can do it for you. Oh God, I am literally wincing as I type.
Okay, here goes nothing, and trust me when I tell you my heart is racing when I write this, because this is so incredibly personal and raw, but I feel like this is my ticket to owning my own shadow as well as hopefully inspiring you. Also, I think sometimes it helps to see how bland/normal/ordinary these issues are, and how if you shove them down for long enough, they start to seem as if they are terrifying monsters that are larger than life. They are not. See for yourself.
So, the big beasties sitting at the table in my internal house awaiting my attention presently are the following:
- I have some really deep-seated issues around abandonment as a child which only got a lot worse as an adult. This fear is something I developed as a reaction to events past, it's absolutely not the fault of someone else (my parents), this is 100% on me. I am an adult who makes choices from this place of fear, and the choices I have made from this long-held fear of being left have often been nothing short of something akin to a 50 car pile up on the M5. This is a BIG one. Living from this space of fear ensures that instead of getting the love you so desire, you just live behind a series of complex and intricate walls, and you never really show anyone who you really are. Scared, vulnerable and tender. Invariably, when you start to mature, you quickly realise that your shield stops being your protection, and quickly becomes your prison. Cue enormous intimacy problem and make a general note to self cut that shit out.
- Enormous guilt and shame around not being able to provide for myself financially, whilst being incredibly frivolous with money, mainly so I don't have to take myself seriously as my own financial provider because I am alone. I run an awfully toxic energetic around receiving money from others which leaves me feeling infantilsed and childlike about money, and results in me giving all my power to others for my financial wellbeing. This of course means I have no control over my own security, which means....well it's a disaster. That way I don't have to be responsible for my own choices, you know, like a grown up. This makes me feel small, helpless and useless. Urgh. I really detest this one because as a strong independent successful woman this appalls me, and I judge myself massively, importantly it's not only disempowering but also make me really angry at myself constantly which is not good.
- I have catastrophic amounts of shame around my body which I use as a weapon against myself/an excuse for not allowing romantic love into my life. Essentially this little cracker goes like this, if I remain overweight, then I am therefore unlovable, and thus I don't have to be vulnerable and try and find love by going into the dating world with all the fear I have about being left/abandoned. So, I use my body as a shield from the love I so long for. I once believed I was so broken there was no possible way anyone could ever love me if they saw who I really was - and so I piled on the pounds to ensure no one ever got close. Add this to the abandonment issues above and...KABOOM! Nuclear disaster. Seriously, not a word of a lie, that little demented bit of shadow is one that comes up over and over again, but it's slowly but surely improving...one little spoonful of self-love at a time.
- I carry both conscious and unconscious shame around how I have treated my body in the past, sexually, physically and emotionally. I weaponized my sexuality and sensuality to take power over feeling extremely vulnerable about wanting to be loved, wanted and accepted. I can only now see the deep wounds I inflicted on myself in this way, which has led to a deep mistrust of my sensuality, both how it is perceived and how it is expressed. I have really strong reactions when someone engages with me in a sexual space. It's either hyper-sexual (playing the vixen and being sexually dominant) or hypo-sexual (total withdrawal from sex, and in fact anger at being treated as a sexual object). There is a lack of balance in this part of my life, and this little gem is a loaded gun that I have been trying to gently unload and dismantle for some time. I have done a lot of work with some incredibly talented people in this space, and it's a process that has to come with a whole lot of self love and tenderness towards my own vulnerability, but f*ck me if this is not a really really hard one. It strikes at the core of how I see myself as a woman.
So there you have it. My big ticket items. In all their glory. Jesus. That was both incredibly hard, and also the most extraordinary relief, thank you for standing witness to all this...truth. Truly. Thank you.
By publicly sharing my own deep, dark shadow, letting you see what I would previously have rathered DIED than anyone see, I am declaring my intention to step into this light healing space with honesty and authenticity. Please don't think I am not scared sh*tless of being judged or being seen as pathetic, having blurted all this out in public, I just care less about that than I do about being courageous for myself. Standing up for myself, being my own self-love advocate. Taking what is mine from a place of integrity, and saying "f**k it".
By flinging the door open to allow all my shame, guilt and fears to come and look me in the eye, I have said "no more thanks". It's essentially saying to the Universe this is not "breaking of me" story, quite the contrary, this is a "making of me" story. This step is the making of my new life. My life as an inspirer of others, a life of speaking my story in a public way to show others the way out of the dark. To be the candle that so many are going to need to be who they are truly are. That's my reason for being here. I know it with every fibre of my being.
It's for this reason, I feel that it's also really important for me to document this process for others to be able to see they are not alone, they're not going crazy, and that this is possibly the best thing they ever say YES to.
This is the start of something big, but more than that, I really hope that for all of you out there maybe looking for a reason to not say no to yourself, that instead, this little piece of personal bravery serves to inspire you to say yes instead.
All my love,
Miss Cook xoxo