Never in a thousand years did I ever think I would be where I am in life, living the live that I am living today. Creating the life of my dreams. A life that I never thought was possible to live. Yet, in 2023 I am doing just that.
It wasn’t always like this, not by a long shot. 10 years ago, I was pretty much crippled my anxiety. Consumed by depression and darkness on a daily, and spiraling slowly out of control. I was frustrated, angry, and unable to do much. Unable to find ways to change it, as well as doubtful that it would ever be changed. This, was the life I was living. Avoiding any and all experiences. Staying home, alone most nights. A nervous wreck all days, and struggling just to get to work every day.
Avoiding gatherings with family, and even friends. I was pretty checked out, and more than that, I wanted to check out of here all together. To me that was the only way I’d ever find peace and solace within myself. Anxiety, was crippling. My body was a hot mess, and I avoided everything for fear of my body wrecking havoc on itself. The fear was so crippling that I was throwing up every morning before work. So often that I’d carry plastic bags with me to work in case I was going to throw up while driving to work, or during work. As I drove for a living. It was a figurative and literal nightmare for me. Nothing I did, no test I got from doctors, no medication I was put on would offer me any solace.
At most, I would go out when I had to, like for work, or family, and not eat anything all day. That was the only way I could try and function, and not be afraid of what might happen. As you can imagine that was not a way of being. Yet, it was all I knew. It was what I feared would always be so. It caused rifts in many relationships, and not many people want to be around or with someone who was in such a state. That fear, added to it all, and I avoided relationships for 11 years to not repeat that pain and rejection.
It’s safe to say I was a hot mess, and getting messier as the days, weeks, months, years rode by. I prayed and cried countless nights for help, to be healed and cured of it all. To have a body that was normal. To be normal. I never knew that was possible, and never thought in 2023, my life would be 180 degrees different than it was so long ago.
That saving grace, that change, that help that miracle was Reiki. To be honest, I don’t even know how I stumbled upon Reiki. I truly believe Reiki found me. It found me all the way back in 2007, when I was trying to recover from back to back broken relationships, and one of them being someone I thought I’d have married. As well as from a ruptured appendix. I was at one of my lowest points in my life at that point. Somehow some way, I stumbled upon Reiki, and thought little of it at the time, when I got attuned to it. I didn’t use it, or work with it. Yet it called to me. Over and over for 10 years to work with it, and connect with it. I refused for years. Yet, I kept on whinging and crying that life was terrible. It’s funny, when I look back on it now, about how we cry out for help, we cry out for signs, and when we get the whispers we reject them, or refuse to act on them. Luckily the universe is patient.
It wasn’t until 2017, that I finally listened, and allowed Reiki in. I allowed myself to schedule a session with a Reiki practitioner, that I was referred to from a friend. It was then, in that moment that my eyes were opened, and the proverbial wool was pulled from my eyes. I felt Reiki. I felt the joy, the happiness, the excitement for living pulsating within me, after the first session. Things I had not felt in a long, long time. In that moment, I fell in love with Reiki, and I knew more people needed to know about it and experience it. I also knew that I had a lot of work ahead of me to get my life around. I didn’t know where I was heading, or even what I was looking for. Yet, I set out, like the Fool in the Tarot journey. The only way forward was to move. I knew I had a lot to do on myself, to clear, to change, to open up. To embrace to love.
To do that, I had to be honest with myself. I had to take accountability. To understand my role in my journey, and in also my interactions with others. When we are honest, when we stop being the victim we can start to bring inner change. We can start to shift our awareness, and in doing so, we can start to peel back the layers of identity that we have created. That is the pathway to healing. More than anything that we work with we have to work on our own awareness to see truth within us. When we start to do that we can start to let go of baggage that we no longer need that holds us back and down.
As I started to do that, I allowed myself to go deeper. I allowed myself to change. I allowed myself to start to let go of who I thought I was, to who I can be, and in time I will be who I will be. For it is always an evolving journey of self discovery. Through that journey I met lots of wonderful people, who taught me ways to grow, to expand, to shift, to let go of, and to light the fires within me. They gave me many tools while I was still scrambling around in the dark within myself.
In that journey I learned many lessons. Lots of good. Lots of bad. Lots of horrible. I faced lots of loss. Relationships ending. Being laid off after 19 years. To COVID, to being unemployed for 19 months. 10 years ago, that would have kept me down. Yet because of the tools Reiki gave me, I was able to pick myself up, much faster than before, rebuild myself in new ways, and become much more than I ever was. In that process and with Reiki I learned to love it all. Good, bad, and ugly I learned to love it, and be grateful for it. Through that all, I was able to go deeper within myself to heal and change even more.
I am truly a different person, and living a different life. When I used to say no to it, find reasons not to, and pray that I could find a way out of things, I now welcome it. I step into it, I volunteer to be a part of it, and I even go out to new places to eat, and see. Past me would never have believed I’d be spending a weekend in a hotel working, and going out to eat with co-workers and managers of my department, and not be a nervous wreck. To even driving with others in my car, or letting another drive me. Something I would not have done prior.
The world is my oyster, and I am truly living the life of my dreams, and I look forward with baited breath on where it will take me tomorrow.
