“There is a crack, a crack in everything/ That’s how the light gets in
Leonard Cohen

I am having another sleepless night. I am in a big transition. And while I had an amazing day with a dear friend talking about how excited I am about the transition I came home and started feeling low.

There were feelings in my body, around my solar plexus, that kept on coming up and would stop me from breathing properly and I didn’t know if I wanted to cry or eat. I decided to eat instead.

After trying a few different things to eat, these painful feelings still started coming up, this general malaise that is hard to explain but I have felt countless times before. “No, no, I don’t want this!,” I say, “why now when I had such an amazing day, why now?”

Then I remember the words of my therapist who says that I must listen to these feelings that come up and not run away as they will get worse. I need to be with these feelings however painful and observe them, be with them, without judgement or criticism. I need to provide a safe and free space for them because what they want most of all is to be heard.

The little child within me is scared. I want to ignore these feelings, but I know now, after I’ve had them appear countless times, that they won’t leave until I acknowledge them and often get worse. So after trying everything, I do the very thing I don’t want to do but I know is the best for me.

I sit, close my eyes, breathe deeply, and feel the feelings. I watch them. It’s painful. There is sadness, fear, anger, and so many emotions, but I don’t hold on to one. I let go. They get bigger as if they are swallowing me up and will eat me whole. I continue to breathe deeply. I observe. I tell them, “it’s ok, you can come up, I hear you.”

I see moments of my childhood of abuse. There is a little girl alone and afraid. I see her shut in a closet scared to come out. I don’t try to fix or analyze anything.

There is a sharp ache that is right to the core of my being. I try to imagine the light coming in from above and nourishment from mother nature coming up from the ground below. I try remember to breathe deeply. The waves come and go.

What started as a pin point of sharp pain becomes bigger and bigger but less jagged until it eventually melds into the light and the earth and leaves the body.

These emotions are like ghosts passing in and out of my body. I welcome them in and out until I feel shivers throughout my body which is a sign for me that something is working. I say, “I love you Caroline, everything is ok, I’m here for you, I’m not leaving.” The parent is there.

In doing this, I am not overtaken by the child and her emotions that my therapist explains comes out when people or situations trigger me. For me, it’s transitions, the big ones, that do this for me, and I’ve had a lot of them over the past few years since leaving my career, home, relationship, and the person that I knew or thought I knew for a long time.

There is more calm, I continue to breathe deeply. The light starts to come in through the cracks in the darkness.

I can start to breath normally again. I feel more than what’s inside me. I know that I am connected to a world where others suffer like me, often in silence.

I don’t want to be silent. I feel a deep need to express through my medium of writing and share. I believe in doing so I give permission for others to do the same. To feel, share, be who they are, speak their truth, and be human.

It is because of love for myself and others that I write this. Pure love, raw and simple, that was always there but I couldn’t see until the light came in.