Ready to break the pattern

A pattern repeats until you're ready to break it.

I kept adding and adding and adding new practices, rituals, techniques in the hope it would resolve my pain and suffering. I kept seeking outside of myself — learning ancient knowledge and sitting with mentors, teachers, guides, secretly praying it would skip past my pain and lead me to wholeness and peace.

As wonderful and helpful as everything has been, it is so cliché to return back to the truth: all the answers are within you. How dare my healing require my direct attention, awareness, and continued witnessing?

This is said in a tongue-in-cheek way, but truly, for someone so adamant about healing and wellness it can often become difficult to see the forest for the trees. I must also confess: life shouldn't focus on healing efforts 24/7. As the famous saying goes, 'you gotta live a little'. (So much sarcasm today!)

Yet sometimes life demands we stop living lightly and face what we've been avoiding.

Through this first week of June, I have been addressing my pain that comes from deep trauma, deep betrayals, and deep abuse I've endured involving manipulation and controlling behaviors. It is becoming clear how much suffering I've actually survived. By walking myself through these events (and with the help of my partner), I am allowing myself to see how abnormal and dysfunctional all these experiences were.

As any survivor of deep trauma knows, this chaos and stress somehow become normalized — comforting and predictable. Yes — deeply unnerving circumstances and being in serious fear and danger turn into something familiar in a dysregulated nervous system. Now I am suddenly understanding why many women are drawn to true crime — it serves as an outlet where they can relate to crimes similar to those committed against them, experiences that often get no air time or justice.

I couldn't stomach consuming much true crime myself — the abusive tactics and horrible tragedies triggered my own helplessness. That level of intolerance was perhaps a signal that I haven't mustered up the courage to witness my own tragedies. I needed to gain justice for myself, which doesn't mean I'll go all vigilante mode, but something like just acknowledging how wrong and saddening it was can be relieving.

Justice can look like understanding how to prevent those circumstances from happening again — by setting boundaries and building trust with people over time, instead of my go-to extremism of full trust or no trust at all.

While I am devastated throughout this process, it is also miraculous to still be standing. Despite it all, I keep going. I feel stronger than yesterday. I performed a hapé ceremony for myself, complete with sound healing, singing, and deep intentions and surrender. Perhaps all that learning can be applied now that I am ready.

I am ready to break these patterns that no longer serve me.

Wishing you the same courage and tenacity in your own pattern-breaking endeavors.

Thanks for being here,

Nadine of the New Moon ♥