Evolution of an Undernourished Plant | When to break free ( part II. )
:: surrendering to softness ::
willingness to shift + opening the channel for a clear solution to act on
So what happened? How did I go from a “HELL NO.” to a singing “HELL YEAH!!!” in a year and completely change my life? I learned on my own time when and how to break free. And I stuck to my own process in my own way at my own pace - no matter what other people said. I refused to abandon myself. I had to learn how to free myself from the external world around me and listen, validate and accept the internal workings of my own higher self, my soul.
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I started off by surrendering to my own situation. Not to become a victim of it, but to take a real and honest look in the mirror and tell myself, “Whatever I’ve been doing, is clearly not working.” I had to be as real as I could get, but also very gentle with myself. I had to hold myself in my own experience - validate my emotions, thoughts - all without abandoning them. This felt like a reckoning. My whole life I’ve always known my feelings to lead the way for me. So, I knew it wasn't working because I wasn’t feeling the change. And because I wasn’t feeling it, I knew I wasn’t living it. Instead, what I was feeling was completely unwell on every level - mental, physical, emotional and spiritual - unwell on every. single. level.
Because of all the compounding work-related stress I experienced during my career in higher education, I had become physically sick with recurring sinus infections since 2011. They were debilitating and they got worse with time. I had seen every medical doctor under the sun and even went to an ENT who took CT scans to see if surgery was needed. There was no evidence. The results were always just making minor adjustments to my allergy medicine and giving me antibiotics every time I had a sinus infection that lasted longer than 7 - 10 days, the length of an average cold. If you do the math, it ended up being 3-4 sinus infections annually over the course of 8 years. That’s a lot of antibiotics and 10 days was a long time to wait for relief. Again, another compounding affect.
When western medicine failed me I chose to “stick it out” which led me to being at an all time low with my own holistic health. I dealt with anxiety and depression. There were nights that I struggled to even just eat a meal or get out of bed the next morning because I felt so anxious and depressed. My energy was at an all time low which meant socializing with friends and spending time with family became a fear trigger. I was isolating myself because I couldn’t cope.
I was also feeling stagnant on every level and to be perfectly honest - I was just plain burnt out. I didn’t know this at the time, but there is a certain rhythm of sorts that has to happen for balance to occur. It seems so simple in hindsight, but in the moment it can be very tricky if you’re unaware. It’s a sort of law of energy between two types : masculinized energy + femininized energy. In order to transcend the binary, we must be in flow. ( sidetone : this is not about gender or gender identity, it’s about energy dynamic like Yin and Yang. )
I was energetically hypermasculanizing myself in my role in a very toxic way and abandoning my feminine needs such as the need for rest, creativity and flow. I had become like a robot or machine trying to support everyone else around me running on empty. I became resentful. I felt like I had hit a ceiling on my creativity and my salary ( which was barely a living wage ). My role itself wasn’t changing and opportunities started to feel really thin. I began to feel competition creeping in. There was little room for advancement and those around me began to apply to Ph.D. programs. I’ve never had a desire to pursue a Ph.D., especially with there being no guarantee of an advanced position opening for me to move into.
On top of all that, I was going through a spiritual journey and learning so much about myself and the world around me. I was learning things outside of my job and I wanted to share my lessons, except I wasn’t able to. Even though the themes were heavy in my work as a career counselor and I felt people could benefit, I just couldn’t. I was afraid to share what I was learning because people weren’t coming to me for spiritual counsel, they were coming to me for resume reviews and job search advice. This was the most difficult thing to accept, because I had always told myself that if I ever felt like I couldn’t be myself in a job, then that job wasn’t worth staying in.
Compromising authenticity was a threat to my freedom.
This stagnancy and dis-ease also started to feel like a sense of learned helplessness. An experience of witnessing how stuck you are but feeling like there’s nothing you can do about it. For me, there is nothing more disempowering than this feeling I had experienced.
In May of 2019, an unignorable alarm went off inside me. I was having serious trouble with sleep. There was a pattern emerging. A cycle that didn’t feel well. I was getting a full 8-9 hours of sleep during the week but for some odd reason on the weekends I found myself sleeping in until 11:00 AM and then just falling asleep on my couch for an extra 5-6 hours a day. I don’t mean a nap - I mean pass-out-with-your-mouth-open-laying-like-a-frickin-mummy kind of sleep. I would wake up and feel like a whole day had passed me by. And what was worse - I never felt rested.
My therapist explained to me that this was a symptom of anxiety. They explained that it’s just like working out at the gym all the time - if you're lifting weights for hours a day and never taking a break, your muscles get tired and your body forces you to rest. It’s the same with anxiety, if your stress is fueling your brain activity and your brain is going and going and you’re never taking a break, then your brain will get tired. It will force you to stop. After they explained this to me, I was shocked. How did I let things get this bad? After realizing it wasn’t my fault, I was certain something had to change. I didn’t know what and I didn’t know how but I knew I needed help. I told myself, “I am willing to change. I will do anything I need to get well.”
It was that willingness to change, that gave me an idea - a solution to try. I noticed on some subtle level that I also had a feeling in my body that I couldn’t ignore. It was something that felt like someone saying to me “Yes. Do the thing.” An impulse, an urge, an itch you need to scratch.
So I did the thing. I opened my wallet, and pulled out a business card for an acupuncturist my therapist had given me 3-4 years prior. I studied the card, it’s image and information. The urge became stronger. I opened a fresh email message and sent a request for a consultation.
I cannot begin to tell you how pivotal that moment has been in my life. Acupuncture and the practitioner that I work with changed my life. I invested in receiving acupuncture treatments 2x’s a week. I also received rich consultation on stress management, diet and exercise recommendations all according to Traditional Chinese Medicine. With the help of this practitioner, I was sleeping deeper and waking up more refreshed. I was cutting out simple sugars - a huge trigger for inflammation fueling my sinus infections. I was also moving my body again in a sustainable way, doing light stretching and yoga, and walking up to 3x’s a day in 10 minute intervals. I started breathing deeper and practicing energetic hygiene such as clearing, grounding and protecting my energy.
In seven months, I had already begun to feel stronger in my overall wellness. My emotions were ebbing and flowing with the grace of humanity, my physical body was building more stamina each and every day. For the first time in a while, I could actually walk outside on a hot summer day and return home feeling energized! A profound inner shift came next…
My communication with my soul became clearer. I started feeling the impulses again and hearing the “Yes. Do the thing.” I followed every breadcrumb given to me.
The fall of 2019 was huge for me. I realized I had gone an entire 7 months without any chronic illness outbreak! I was truly making gains in my health which made me feel so empowered to change my life. I returned to what I enjoyed doing outside of work : energy work, tarot, paddle boarding and making art. And I returned to the idea of leaving my job and decided to start my own business. I began with starting this blog. I was actually feeling well, REALLY well. Not some gaslight version of well. My mental health improved, my sinus infections stopped, and I could start moving my body again with an abundance of energy. Most of all, I learned how to trust myself and my body’s innate ability to heal. It was a beautiful combination of leaning into the feeling of intuitive trust and then taking practical action.
When I reached that next level of healing, I looked back and I realized that somewhere along the way, I just forgot my own inner power. To embrace my softness and vulnerability. To shift and ebb and flow with the energy that’s available to us.
It was just a lesson I needed to learn to be where I am at today. I needed to learn to surrender to my situation and not push through.
The moment of surrendering to the truth I could no longer carry on with, lead me to my willingness to change. Once I was willing, the intuitive nudges started appearing around me and I felt them inside of me as an urge to follow through. It was like a funnel opened inside of me and guidance was flowing through. That guidance lead to major life shift. And it all started with an intuitive nudge to revisit a business card I had shoved into my wallet years ago.
But, this isn’t the end of my story. Because we all know healing is not the same as a cure. Healing is not linear, it is a process.
Once I became my version of well, I changed. Unfortunately, nothing around me changed with me…
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Stay tuned each week for the next part of my story!
Next week I write about how I found my inner trust and support while living the change and having boundaries.
See you next week for part III <3
Keep Planting,
Jamie
*** If you or someone you know is experiencing thoughts of suicide please call The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1.800.273.8255 to be connected to a trained crisis counselor. It is free and confidential 24/7.
For more information and resources on mental health visit NAMI.ORG