How a massive emotional explosion ignited me into my healing journey:
A story apt for today, when we are all feeling collective rage and grief over atrocities going on in the world right now.
And divine timing ✨ because it was my beloved therapist (and mental health coach and savior!!!) 🎉 and teachers' birthdays yesterday.
March 2022.
Isaac's 18 months old. We've recently been able to hire a helper. Let's call her N. Her English isn't the best. My emotional regulation capabilities are at their worst. 😔
It's been very difficult getting into this side of employer mode, something very new to me. My outbursts were not new though, multitudes of them. In throes of undiagnosed post partum depression. 😞
Anger has always been labeled as a horrible emotion growing up, a lot of shame associated with feeling it, judgement of being a bad person for feeling and expressing it. And I'd been battling all kinds of emotion, surfacing up at the smallest of things. In this story, it's a lime. Half of one. 🍋
And here's that fated day, I've asked my helper to squeeze half a lime into a glass to make a salty juice for my kiddo to drink, while I gave him a bath to get him ready for day care. I need to get ready for work too, and Viv was away in the gym. When I rush out of the bath, I was dismayed to taste the very mild drink. 😖
"Is this half a lime?"
"No ma'am it's a quarter"
"I asked you for HALF a lime!!! The two words are so different!!!! How can you not tell the difference????" I burst out, slamming the kitchen counter with one hand and holding Isaac on my hips with the other. Isaac bursts out crying. 😭
I see his sweet little face twisted and thought, "Faak!!!! Is this the Mother I want to be?? How can he keep seeing me like this, like a monster??" and I pacified him while I was consumed with deep, wretched shame and guilt. 😞
I asked N to sit with me in the living room, with Isaac witnessing me apologizing. Cut to the chase, I reinstalled Insta, found a message from a dear GP of a mental health therapist she recommended. Messaged the latter, whose number I had for a year, but denial made me not take action. 📱
7 minutes into a 30 minute discovery call, I knew I'd found THE ONE. 🥰
And that was the start of a healing journey which has been pivotal in my life. @corneliadahinten.familycoach helped me understand and accept my emotions. I learned slowly to love myself again. 💗 I saw my gifts slowly emerge. I learnt about the regulation of one's nervous system and I remember sitting on her couch in her most gorgeous living room (surrounded by soooo many books, my haven till today! 📚)
Lately life has taken me full circle. I sat just last Thursday on the same couch, but for a Women's Circle. And I reflected on how far I've come in two years. How much reprogramming has occurred. How different and empowered a mother I get to be. What healing feels like in my body, mind and soul. 🌱 How being in tune with my spirit has been so freaking liberating! 🕊️
Am madly grateful. To her, to the many many teachers since then, who've helped me become ME. in capital letters. May we all allow teachers in any shape or form so that we remember our truest selves and live a HEALING and THRIVING life! 🌟 #sacredrage #postpartumdepression #halfalime #anger #disregulation #healingjourney #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #grateful #thrivingisabirthright
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