The Beginning of the Break Free

On December 29, 2015, I wrote my very first blog post.  I thought I was going to use these pages to chronicle a journey to wellness.  I guess that's what I did.  But, really, this blog became the journal through which I processed a break down and a break up.  It turned out to be one of the most fundamental parts of my healing.  Writing the words and sharing them with people I love and, sometimes, people I didn't even know allowed me to create a little healing community in a time of my life that started out feeling lonely and hopeless.  

Phase 1: Break Down

Years later, the process was so clear even though at the time it felt like the murkiest, muckiest, muck.  Initially, I was just trying to survive.  I faced a crisis and tried my best to be embody the British and Keep Calm and Carry On.  It worked until it didn't.  It turned out, I had to feel all the feelings I was trying to avoid and acknowledge the truths that I had been hiding from for a long time.  It. Sucked.  I was sad and broken and it turned out I needed to be for a bit.  I sat with the feelings and processed them with the most intimate of friends and caregivers until I was ready for the next phase.

Phase 2: Break Up

Once I got my footing and had allowed myself to process the trauma to a certain extent, it was time for me to take inventory.  This was before Marie Kondo had entered my consciousness, but I think I was sort of accidentally embodied her method.  I inventoried my relationships, posessessions, and life decisions and decided which I would keep and which were no longer serving me.  Those in the latter group were blessed, thanked, and, well, rejected.  This was evident in big life moves, like divorce, and in smaller moves like getting a handle on finances and managing my time better.  The result was a more streamlined, intentional, and boundary defined life.  

Guys...  I thought I was D.O.N.E. after this phase.  What more life did I need to live?  Had I not experienced enough trauma to get all the wisdom?

Oh, sweet, Sara of yesteryear....  If you only knew.

You see, all the work had been sort of focused on how I was going to manage the external.  There was internal work that was done....my therapist could attest to that if there weren't things like HIIPA preventing her from doing so.  Ha ha!  But, still, the internal work was all focused on how to manage the external world a little better.  And I did learn how to do that and I DID feel better for a long time...until I didn't.

This time, there was no trauma, unless you count the pandemic when I had countless hours to devote to introspection and self reflection.  If I'm honestly honest though, the seeds for this crop of self development were planted pre-pandemic.  It's just that the loss of distractions and increase in time to be reflective was like a growth accelerant...what might have taken a decade kind of unfolded in just a couple of years.  

It's hard for me to explain what happened in the past two years, so forgive me for the clunkiness that will follow.  It felt that over the course of a few years, I began to grow fully into my SELF and that meant that I began outgrowing some values, beliefs, and practices that I'd been espousing and living for a really long time.  It was...uncomfy...to say the least.  Outside of my safety of my sweet little family, I felt more and more like I just didn't "fit" into the life I had been leading.  Systems I'd loved no longer felt like home.  This transformation had ripple effects on my parenting, my romantic relationship, my career, my faith, my friendships, and, well, all the things.  I kept trying to keep myself contained into the box that had been this life, but it didn't work.  The unfortunate thing is that in that battle to stay "in," the energy seeped out and looked like snappiness, defensiveness, inflexibility, and anger.  And then, one day, I just knew I needed to make some bold changes.  So, I did.  But those changes, which were really mostly about where I spent my work life, were external again.  However, these changes have created space in the form of time and energy that are allowing me to move into the next phase.

Phase 3: Break Free

This phase is all about the inner world and figuring out who I am OUTSIDE and free from all the rules, definitions, and "truths" that I've internalized throughout my life.  I want to learn to live in this body and be EMBODIED.  More and more, I'm realizing that my soul and heart space were disconnected from the physical body I live in and that is just not working for me anymore.  Breaking free means breaking down those internal walls and learning to live a life of freedom and peace.  

It's going to be hard work.  

I'll probably write about it. I hope I will anyway.  Writing about this stuff seems to help and some people have shared that it helps them too.

Here we go.  Let's begin to break free.