She reclaimed her life – you can too

A story about a woman in her mid-sixties who endured a little over 20 years with a Narcissistic neurodivergent borderline ADHD

Join me in congratulating her for her strength, perseverance, resilience, wisdom, patience, and determination to slip from this toxic relationship, renew her environment, refresh her energy, reclaim her life and start over. 

She starts over, not from a place of weakness. Not from a victim state. Rather, an empowered state. 

If you knew half of what she had to deal with all these years. Especially the last few years, months and days prior to severing ties, you would be amazed just as I was, with her strength. 

I wish I could find a more perfect word to describe her. There are no words. She is an inspiration, a role model. She is one of a kind. 

Having described her as a warrior who triumphed on the battlefield doesn’t mean she isn’t left with wounds to be disinfected and scars to be embraced. You can be as strong as you can be. You can come out a winner in the end. Although winning and battle don’t go hand-in-hand. There is always a price to pay and damage already done. Time lost that won’t come back. Tough lessons learned that won’t go in vain. That realization. These moments of truth are when everything starts to make sense. That’s when the healing journey begins. 

Rumí says it best “the wound is the place where the light enters you.”  

Wounds can be our best teachers. It is through adversity that we break open and are invited to evolve, step up and align with our truest self. Whether we lean into it or run away from it, it’s up to us and how we meet our challenges. 

To think that we are doomed and life is over, hanging the towel so to speak, is a mission of self-destruction. On the other hand, supposing that all is well, the moment you remove yourself physically from a toxic environment is foolish and dangerous. A new era begins from this moment on. This is when you must dig deeper, fall quieter, shatter softer, only to rise higher, shine brighter and bloom more vibrant than ever before. 

No one will leave a battlefield unharmed. It’s in the term itself: “battle”. It can be anywhere from physically, emotionally, psychologically, financially, energetically, to spiritually. 

Everyone is different. Every situation is different, and everyone’s way of handling things is different. Everyone’s readiness, endurance, comprehension, willingness, openness, and education about the subject varies. It is all subjective. Even if it seems from the outside looking in, it’s the same story repeated. It is similar. Yet, vastly unique.

All the factors combined will never be the same from one person to the next. Factors like childhood experience, cultural background, personal sensitivities, educational background, physical stability, external influences, social and economic conditions, past relationships, any traumatic imprints, one’s beliefs, values and attitudes about life and self, and other factors that may be unique in a person’s life. 

The one factor that will make the difference in our healing and growth is the story we believe about ourselves. Whether you believe you are a victim or believe you are the creator of your life, supported and guided by the divine, either way, you will experience what you choose to identify with. That’s just the law. 

You may argue and find explanations to justify your point of view. You may even frown at the idea and immediately reject it. Honour where you are. There is no wrong or right in healing. There is no one way to evolve. It can come in different forms. Including resistance. 

“What you resist, persists” said Carl Jung. A statement that hits home for me. One, I understood by living the actual experience. Now I look back and wish I had understood the meaning of that simple phrase a little sooner. I mean, it’s easy to understand, you think. It’s the application in our day-to-day life that makes this phrase complicated, or so it seems. Once again, we complicate it. 

In many cases, we are not ready for the shift. Even though we want it badly. And sometimes we are not ready to surrender to it. It’s in our nature to intellectualize. And in my personal experience, I got the lesson not by understanding with my intellect, but rather, by surrendering with my heart and soul. Only then did things change. Only then was I free. Free, not from imposed restrictions, but from self-imposed ideals and limitations. Mostly, having to open up my heart to the whispers of my soul and listen. That’s when the unlearning takes place. The death of you. The old you has to die, sometimes more than once, in order to be reborn anew. And when you allow this to happen, you can only soar higher from that point. You can no longer unsee, unlearn or unfeel. You resist no more. Healing begins at the end of resistance. 

Many times I heard myself saying: “I’m fine. I’m okay. Really. I feel great.”

Who was I kidding? I wasn’t fine. I wasn’t okay. I wanted to be. But it was too soon to claim I was healing. I wasn’t ready yet. I did what I had to do to begin the journey. I faced the truth. I stopped excusing. I stopped seeing with rose-coloured glasses. I simply stopped. I paused. I sat with it. And it wasn’t pretty. I cried and I cried. I self-blamed and called myself names. Then I learned to give myself grace. It was a roller coaster of emotions. I was breaking. I was slowly dying. 

I look back now and try to connect with that version of me. Wow. How blind I was. That’s the way I can explain it. It’s like I was going through life all those years with cloudy eyes. At times, I saw clearly. I got a glimpse of what it was like. Then again, I would fall back behind the cloudiness. Until the day I was ready to reclaim my vision. And how ironic. That I literally changed the lens through which I now see. Using this example metaphorically is one thing. Having personally lived it is a whole other level of renewed self. 

This is the place from which I now speak. The place of surrender. The place of rebirth. The place of healing at my own pace, peeling layers as they come up. Not dismissing, not denying, not pretending, not braving it out. Just being. Allowing. Observing. Growing. Living. I’m here to live this life with its ups and downs. And so I am. 

If you felt my words in this article, it’s because you connected to me with your heart, not your mind. If you were touched and maybe even teared a bit. This is a glimpse of surrendering. It’s a glimpse of what it could look like living your day-to-day life. I’m here surrendering to you … when you feel called to reach out to dig deeper, clear the cloudiness, begin healing wounds you may or may not be aware of … when you know it’s time … you will connect. Until then … I send you love and blessings straight from my heart. 💘