Doing the work

I’ve been seeing signs of progress lately.

I wouldn’t call it a breakthrough, but certainly steps in the right direction.

There are still periods of deep, deep sadness and depression.

I first started typing that “I am not sure where that sadness is coming from”, then I deleted it. Mostly because that wouldn’t be accurate. I do know where the sadness is coming from. That in itself might be already an important details worth of celebrating. Let’s save the celebration for now.

Anyways, so the sadness is coming from the same hurt child that it has always been coming from.

So what’s different this time? Finally I recognized it and I started intentionally working on helping that hurt child.

Sounds simple and should be the conclusion of this process, right?

It’s not that easy. Never that easy. But this week marks the very first time, when instead of ignoring that feeling or supressing that feeling by burying myself with work or by numbing those feelings through a hard workout, I actually let myself feel that feeling. As-is.

It was hard. Very hard.

It took several attempts, I finally had short moments of peace. Not the peace I typically achieved through a hard workout, where I was just sitting peacefully with burning muscles and lungs slowly recovering from murder breathing through hill repeats.

But rather true peace earned through these other means which simply provide temporarily relief to the underlying problem, this time that hurt child somehow came forward for moments. By coming forward, even only for moments, it offered me an opportunity to let him know that he is safe. He is wanted. He is enough.

Only time will tell IF and HOW MUCH of this message he heard and whatever he heard, how much of that he is going to retain. But that is how every change starts.

Life works in funny ways. As I just had this moment, but still walking the fine line between feeling angry and sad and depressed vs feeling peace, this ad popped up on Instagram about a film titled Unsinkable (link to trailer) which not only helped me to drift towards the positive side, but reinforced some of these bits and pieces that I tried to apply on my own.

I remember falling asleep feeling calm and at peace. It was a great feeling. More to come…