This week I had an experience that demonstrates the truth of my statement, The sweet whisperings of your soul meet you on the page and something shifts. You begin to stand taller and one day you notice that your voice on the page has become your voice in the world.
A realization
On Tuesday, I woke before dawn consumed with angst. It had to do with something I had been hiding for years, which was connected to feelings of unworthiness. I didn’t know I felt that way—at least on such a big scale—until I was diagnosed with a severe vision problem about a month ago (which is treatable, thank goodness, but the cost of the treatment is thousands of dollars). The condition is described as: Convergence Insufficiency, Binocular Dysfunction, and Visual Processing Deficits.
I had been hiding my inability to read properly since my childhood; the realization that I actually have a vision problem began just last month when I was directed to a TED Talk presentation by Dr. Cam McCrodan, an optometrist here in Victoria, BC, who specializes in treatment of visual dysfunction. As I watched him, I wept because almost everything he said described me to a T!
Sharing a secret
I shared my “secret” about my reading problems and the news of my diagnosis and proposed costly treatment with my dear friend Frances, and she said, “Oh, Junie, this is a perfect opportunity to do crowd funding.” We were at a restaurant having dinner. Suddenly, I started feeling queasy. She went on to say that asking friends and acquaintances to contribute to a crowd funding campaign was the perfect solution to the cost of treatment, and a worthy cause. The queasiness bought prime real estate inside me and settled into every cell of my being—especially after another dear friend Teya had the crowd-funding site up a few days later! When she told me she had done it, I freaked out! “What? I never said to put it up!”
How was she to know that I had been sitting with the shame, fear, and guilt that had continued to natter at me since my dinner with Frances? After waking up in that same dark place Tuesday morning, I grabbed my journal and, as usual, it didn’t fail me.
Confiding in my journal
After pages of seemingly going nowhere, eventually I found myself directly inside a little girl’s psyche with all of her guilt, pain, and shame. I kept my pen moving and then found myself inside the source of the pain, exactly when and where I was when I adopted the belief that I wasn’t deserving. I wrote and I wept and eventually came into a clearing: a meadow of beautiful spring flowers, a gentle breeze caressing my wounds, and songbirds singing love songs above me. And in this sacred setting, I forgave my parents and all of those who contributed to that little girl’s pain where she thought she wasn’t good enough. I offered them my love and it came back to me one-hundred-fold.
By the time I put my pen down, I was singing—literally! I was one of those songbirds singing out my love. And I knew that I could go ahead with the crowd funding. If people judged me, I would still be okay. It would be an invitation to peel away another layer of ego that holds me hostage whenever I take seriously what I perceive others are thinking about me.
Three miracles
And that was just the beginning of my day! Before I walked out of my house to go to my team meeting at the Schizophrenia Society at noon, three more miracles occured!
One, I picked up one of Wayne Dyer’s books and opened it randomly to a page titled, Money and Self-Esteem! Seriously?! How DOES that work? Anyway, it spoke and affirmed of all the things I had just been writing about.
After that I sat in silence for about 20 minutes feeling love pour into me and out of me, and then the phone rang. It was the supervisor of a company where I had stopped services about a year ago, but they had still been charging me a monthly fee. It was my error, as I hadn’t cancelled my plan in the way they had specified because I didn’t read the directions properly. Without a moment’s hesitation, she told me she was going to refund me the money. Two days earlier an employee of the company had told me that a refund wasn’t possible because I hadn’t followed the company’s policy! I literally cried in gratitude with this offer of a refund.
Next came the third miracle: feeling that I AM deserving and that it’s okay to be me just the way I am, I went to my phone and made a video of myself honouring my sisters around the world for International Women’s Day. The day before I would have been mortified to put a video of myself on Facebook without make-up and looking less than svelte dahling!
The equation
What started the ball rolling on this sense of joy and freedom and these miracles was this simple equation: Despair + Journaling = Alchemy & Transformation
How does that work? Because you get to tell your truth. All of it! No one else but you and the page. No one there to correct your writing or have an opinion about it. Just you, a pen, and some paper.
Well, there is one other secret ingredient that sneaks in there when we allow it, when we aren’t judging what we write. God. The Universe. Universal Intelligence. Love . . . name it what you will. But I guarantee you that It is always with you in ways you could never imagine!
Writing Exercise
Today, commit to writing in your journal about something that has been niggling at you, something that has been keeping you in guilt, shame, unworthiness, self-doubt, even self-loathing. Write deeply into your truth. Don’t hold back. Let your heart spill onto the pages until you find that you are no longer a person writing, but an energy moving through space and time, and when you awaken from this writing reverie, you will be someone other that who you were when you first began.
Writing Prompt
“What I never wanted to say was… ”
As always, please leave a comment below or join us at Junie’s Writing Sanctuary to join the conversation.
All blessings,
Junie
P.S. More miracles … I just went downstairs to the laundry room and what was on the table? A card saying, “You Make a Difference”! Thank you for the difference you make in my life. Love this day, and go out and make a difference. Love yourself and let that love shine into everyone and everything you think, see, and do!
I am happy for you Junie. You deserve it. You give out of your heart so much.You are the first person I have met that walks the talk. I too have an eye problem that is not being covered so far by our medical system. It’s not very serious but nagging all the same. When I was young our family went camping and my father asked my sister to help with the tent. I wanted to help. But he told me to go and help my mother. She said she’s no good for anything. I felt crushed. It always bothered me in the back of my mind I never felt my mother loved or needed me.After my mother said that my father offered to take my help,smoothing out the bottom of the tent. You see I was younger and smaller than my sister and couldn’t reach the top.I don’t know why but I cried for years over not being good enough for my mom. she always favored my one sister. I’ve waisted so much time and energy.I listen to Louise Hays affirmations and she says to imagine your mother as a child and a frightened one at that. Your to soothe her and take her into your heart.Not difficult to do for my father.My sister blossomed from my mother’s love and is a very successful artist. I love her dearly but cannot compare. My husband loves me just as I am and I am fortunate to have 2 loving sons,and their families. I live a good life. But I just don’t feel worthy.
Thank you so much for sharing your heart here, Bonnie. I felt sadness when I read that you don’t feel worthy. Perhaps you can do what I do, and pick up your journal but this time, write to that little girl on the camping trip whose heart got broken in a split second with your mom’s unkind words. I agree with Louise – our mom’s do need to be cradled with love as they too have been wounded – but it’s hard to do that when we’re still carrying our own unhealed wounds and resentments. Here’s something else I have been doing for a long time now and it’s helping me so much! It’s simple, it’s just saying I love you to your own heart. I invite you to put your hand on your heart as often as you can during the day, and just say to your beautiful, tender heart, “I love you. You matter, little Bonnie. You are so worthy. So deserving.” It may seem awkward or false at first. But like anything, the more we do it, the easier it becomes. Think of the unconditional love you have for your sons. Give that same love to yourself. In time, you will be able to forgive your mom and when you can, you will realize that her words can no longer hurt you. I am so happy for you that you have a wonderful husband and family. I was doing the hand on heart exercise before I ever heard of Matt Kahn, but there’s something about the way this man says anything and everything, that makes me want to emulate all of it. http://www.truedivinenature.com/
Hi June, I so enjoyed reading this. I know how powerful writing like this can be, and letting yourself focus and then be led to where it takes you. Then, seeing it reflected back on paper. The experience is so profound as the energy is followed without the mind judging or interpreting. The capacity to see it all through the eyes of compassion and release is always a miracle to me. I also notice that lately the part of me that is protecting myself from entering into that process is in full force. That also tells me there are feelings that are really asking to be noticed and the resistance is equal the freedom that is on the other side of this. But that protection is so clever at telling me; knowing what’s ahead, avoiding the intensity. That is so much a part of it…not wanting to be in the intensity. Yet, so funny, intensity is what I love. It is so amazing to witness how we will avoid the feeling of expansion, and yet long for it at the same time.
Junie, you seem to keep popping up in my life at just the right time. As I cried at the inhumamity of our medical system and my body directing my attention to something that desperately needed attention I started to write. It all came through me, this unworthiness you speak of, this deep seeded shame, this unrepressed anger, little pockets of anger letting go releasing in the most painful way. The little girl inside of me so afraid to be powerfull, to be a leader, to speak up! It is all so clear now. Thank you.