Baby Steps…
During the beginning of my journey, there was an incredible amount of figuring stuff out. There weren’t many people talking about “Dark Night of the Soul” and that part of the journey at the time, but I felt like I was going through that for some time.
I had been experiencing faith-shaking experiences all of my life throughout which time I had convinced myself that I knew my faith, but it wasn’t quite clear how committed or what exactly it looked like.
My life started in trauma as I was adopted and then experienced a feeling of not belonging or being fully accepted for the person I was which created a distortion in my life that led me to be someone I was not happy with as I entered adulthood. Along this part of my life, many moments lead me to question myself and who I had become because I recognized that who I had become was nothing like my authentic self.
This led me to start on a journey of self-discovery, wanting to find the “me” inside of the person I had become. This may all seem a little confusing, and it was for me too!
Usually, this experience begins with a traumatic experience or an upheaval in one’s life that creates a crisis of faith or self or both. In my case, I had experienced several and it’s like it all just came to a head after living in survival mode for about 15-20 years of my life. Some of this manifested in physical ailments and others in emotional dysregulation but all of it was incredibly uncomfortable and such a maze to navigate. k e
When I finally found a place to start, I began my journey through the darkness, accepting all that had been, taking stock in it and deciding how I wanted to proceed with my life. When you are struggling in survival mode, you are going to feel like every step is a mountain, or at least that’s the way it was for me.
I started out by identifying all of the healing and forgiveness that needed to take place.
Journalling was a tool that served well through this part, and I still use now, but in different ways. A few journalling prompts/tasks that helped me identify my direction and open up to my authentic self were:
Writing a letter to my child self. I gave her advice, and all of the encouragement and love that was missing from childhood.
Writing a letter to those who left me behind or hurt me in some way whether it was intentional or not, and forgave them. This part is symbolic, I never sent any of these letters, but the forgiveness was real. I just needed to express the feelings, find gratitude in the lessons and appreciate the best that could be done at the time. In some cases, the hurt was probably felt on both ends because maybe that was the best they could do at the time.
Acknowledging the good in me; this looked like writing about the things that other people have said that are positive about me and finding truth in those words as well as discovering the good I could see and do see in me. This is a good exercise to do every once ina while. I think it’s easy to forget, especially when the world gets a little heavy.
Creating a self-discovery chart or diagram, which ever works best for you. I actually just split a page in half by folding it lengthwise and wrote all of the good on one side, and all of the negative/needs improvement stuff on the other side. I took stock and reminded myself that I am a work in progress and it is ok to have “stuff” that needs improvement. I would take the negatives and work on ways to improve.
These are just a few exercises that helped me through the understanding of myself and my beliefs.
Stay tuned for more!
If you would like personalized life coaching, don’t forget you can book on the shop page, and these are services that can be done anywhere through video chat.
Thanks for reading, take care of yourselves and know you are not alone!
Much love and blessings ♥