When you meet your emotions somatically – inside your body – and place a hand where the energy of those emotions is most felt; when you welcome them, reassure them that they are safe here, accept them for how they feel now, (without any dualistic right or wrong, good or bad judgement)—this is healing at the innermost level. And it is only at this deeper place that you will directly experience your true nature of love.

I also learned very quickly to treat my recovery holistically – if you are not nourishing your nervous system and replenishing your neurotransmitters in a natural way, you will be less likely to succeed. And a healthy and balanced nervous system enables you stop returning to old patterns, and start growing in ways you truly deserve.

If there is any part of you that is discordant with life—that is pushing against life, avoiding, or denying life—then you will never be able to truly experience the feeling of wholeness. You will always feel as though something needs to be found, or fixed, or searched for.

We all have within our reach an opportunity to really show up in our lives; to embrace the moment without feeling afraid and wishing instead for the moment to pass. We all have the power to radically transform our lives by sitting with fear instead of running from it.

Nearly eight years ago, I attended weekly coaching sessions at an addiction recovery centre, and my therapist and I prepared an action plan for my recovery together. We spoke about my goals, not just for recovery from substance abuse, but for recovering my overall health and well-being.

…giving yourself permission to just be Days when my soul yearns to be closerto the heart of the things I

Once you anchor yourself into the centre, all it takes is a tiny shift in the direction of the light for your life to start becoming easier, softer, and more aligned. My dark season came, and I clung to it and identified with it for a little longer than I would have chosen to. But I can now see that I needed it to break something open and take me to a higher place.

My life took me on a profound and, at times, traumatic journey, but the study of spirituality taught me a very valuable lesson: if you only think you’re going to feel better in the future, you are sending a strong signal to the Universe that you’re not feeling good now. This alerts the survival instinct to take you away from the present moment, which starts another loop of seeking something else.

I believe lessons return for a reason, and those reasons become clear once you take the first step towards changing something. I have witnessed many, many incredible shifts in my life when I have intentionally taken just one small step towards a new ray of light. But I have also come to see that in grasping the new light, we must also forgive ourselves for not seeing the old pattern we have fallen into. In grasping the new light, we must reach with one hand in the air and the other hand on our hearts – we must stop punishing ourselves for taking a wrong turn.

When you see the blessings that show up when you are living in the present moment – stop, pause, and honor these moments. The mind will start softening back into its true nature. The things that once felt heavy will start to lose their power over you as the mind starts serving you, and not the thought system.

Healing for me began when I was able to see my patterns. It began when I felt compassion for the confused and reckless person I used to identify with. And it continues each day as I forgive myself for not having the necessary mechanisms to change the way I used to feel about myself. Radical self-acceptance is necessary to be able to fully embrace and enjoy everything life is giving you.

I think we go over a situation in our heads again and again to try and seek relief from it; we are looking for a clue, an answer, a resolution; the final piece that will give us freedom from the pain of that situation.  But the relief can never be found in the thought, or the mental images that are created by the thought. The relief can only be found in the background of the thought. In the stillness, and the silence of the moment that is. And it was in stillness that I was able to start processing the pain. It was with self-compassion that I was able to start releasing the pain.  

In my experience, when you encounter depression, illness, addiction, or anything else that threatens to pull you away from yourself, you have to find something that gives you a purpose, and meaning. You have to find something to get out of bed for. And even during the most difficult times of my life – losing both parents in quick succession, losing a breast to cancer, and losing more than I can even bear to think about to addiction, I always had something to get out of bed for. I always had a purpose. Yet, for the last year or so, I found myself sitting with a strikingly obvious contradiction, an empty page. I had completely misplaced my reason for writing in the first place: to help others move on from unhealthy patterns and behaviours. To help others heal, and evolve, and become who they were always designed to be.