I’ve been feeling like I’ve been having some sort of energetic hangover that’s lasted a few days now. Definitely not feeling the greatest, to put it mildly, and that is okay. The last few days have felt pretty intense and well, wonky. It’s hard to explain but it feels just weird on an energetic level. I’m exhausted on pretty much all levels and have been for sometime now. Maybe it’s from being a single mom. Maybe it’s ascension symptoms. Maybe it’s me picking up on the intense emotions of people around me. Maybe it’s all of the above and then some. Whatever it’s from, I’ve been struggling to ground and “vibe up” especially this last month or so. It’s been rough.

However, lately I keep hearing that we (humanity as a whole) are on the right timeline, and we’re on the right path even though it seems like we are far, far from the right path or even a good path. I’ve been on a healing journey for many years now. I’ve been in trauma therapy for close to ten years working through PTSD. I’ve done a crap-ton of shadow work. I’ve been through my own hell and back. I’ve even been learning about energy and spirituality for the last couple of years. Given all of that, I’ve been struggling to make sense of major recent events in the U.S. and how it could possibly be a good thing in any way. I’m not here to debate with other people about right vs wrong or good vs bad or opinions vs morals. I have my own personal belief system and I understand there are others whose personal belief systems are different than mine. I’ll just leave it at that.

When I ask my spirit guides about what the hell is going on, I keep hearing “it’s the darkest before the dawn” and “you are not alone.” From what I’ve been seeing and hearing lately, it seems that a lot of people are coming out in support of those who are most affected by these recent events, even from around the world. I think I’m starting to see it and maybe even feel it. People are “waking up” in massive numbers to what has been going around us for a very, very long time and are making personal choices to do better and be better. I’m seeing that more and more people are choosing authenticity, love, and inclusion and to support other people with compassion and empathy and that is a wonderful thing.

Maybe, just maybe we are starting a monumental energetic transformation on a level never seen before. That would be worth celebrating. It’s probably going to hurt like a muthereffer. From what I’ve learned, growth can be rather painful but it’s generally worth it in the long run. I know that I’m not the same person I was a year ago or even five years ago. It hasn’t been an easy journey for me but I’m liking who I am now. That’s not to say I didn’t like who I was before. It’s a long story. I’ve learned that we tend to change (or not) as life throws challenges and lessons our way.

In a way, it reminds me of my own “dark night of the soul” that I went through these last couple of years. It was excruciatingly painful and I’m definitely not the same person I was before it happened. Events beyond my control threw me suddenly and without warning head first into major psychological turmoil that nearly killed me. Looking back, I know that it needed to happen and in that particular way in order to “wake me up” to who I really am. It was needed for me to reprogram myself and for me to unlearn all the crap I had been taught since day one on this planet. The point is that while we are in the midst of a major storm (understatement) and when it seems there is nothing but chaos and destruction, that’s when we need to remind ourselves that the storm won’t last forever. We will get through it somehow. It may be extremely painful and we may want to give up, but the storm will pass. Then we will deal with the aftermath the best that we can. We support each other and we rebuild. We rebuild into something better and stronger than before. In the meantime, we rest. We take care of ourselves and our loved ones the best that we can in those moments.

I try to reframe my experiences which I find very helpful. Instead of going to the pharmacy, I’m now on a side quest to the apothecary. Instead of telling myself that this person destroyed my life without a care in the world, I now tell myself that now I get to rebuild my life into what I want it to be. If they hadn’t destroyed it, odds are I wouldn’t have changed anything about it. In a weird messed up way, they kind of did me a favor. While I liked who I was back then and I felt happy, my life back then wasn’t really fulfilling if I was honest with myself. I was pretty much just along for the ride. I didn’t realize that until years later. Stupid hindsight.

Now, I’m on a much better path for me and am happier overall than I’ve ever been. I have found some peace in the midst of all the chaos. Odds are I would never have gone on this particular path if that person hadn’t destroyed my life for whatever reason. Back then, the reason really mattered to me. Now, it doesn’t matter as much. The reason doesn’t change what happened. It still happened. They made their choices which was a catalyst for where I am now. Back then it felt like I didn’t have much of a choice which honestly pissed me off for a long time. It felt like they basically tossed me a grenade and pushed me out of an airplane with no parachute and no warning and expected me to be okay with it. Yeah, no. I was not okay with it. I felt blindsided by someone I had known for years and had trusted completely. I suspect they didn’t expect me to survive it. Well, I did and they don’t get to know how I did it. They are no longer in my life and never will be ever again. They will never know the healed version of me and that was the choice they made. They chose their path and made it painfully clear. I almost followed their path, but I was then redirected by the universe and in an extremely painfully way. If I hadn’t listened to the universe when they redirected me, I would either be in jail or no longer on this planet. Neither is a really good option. If I leave now, then there’s a chance I would have to do all that crap all over again. Aw hell no! I am not going through THAT again! So I chose to follow a much more difficult and painful path of choosing to heal. Part of me did it out of spite, to be honest. I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of having destroyed me to the point of leaving this planet. A win is still a win.

I could sit here and throw out positivity quotes all day. Does it help? Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t. I could say “don’t lose hope” until I’m blue in the face. Don’t let them dim your light. Remember the proverb, “It’s always the darkest before the dawn.” Yeah, that’s a good one. Things may seem worse before they get better. I prefer this one. “This too will pass. It may pass like a kidney stone, but it will pass.” For me, there are times when I do lose hope for a time. I try to not stay there, though. I find it again eventually. I’ve come to accept that is just part of my journey. I’m learning to accept the ups and the downs. It’s part of who I am as an energetic being having a human experience. Sometimes I lose my mind, but I generally find it again. There are days when it feels like my sanity is a runner that I have to chase. Now I just let it run in circles until it wears itself out and I can reintegrate it back in. I think the “trick” is to let ourselves feel what we feel in the good moments as well as the bad moments. We “just” need to do what we can to not stay in those lower vibrational feelings or to become those feelings. I know it’s easier said than done. I could talk all day about lower vibrational feelings vs higher ones but that’s for another time.

So how do I “vibe up?” How do I get myself out of feeling angry and depressed? This is what I’ve learned from years and years of being in therapy. This is what helps me now. If you haven’t spoken to a therapist, I highly recommend finding one that feels right to you. It took me awhile to find one who is right for me and I still see them on a regular basis. It helped me to get started on finding what works for me.

I try to find things that make me feel better and ground me fairly quickly, like certain music and certain scents. I may have a slight addiction with incense and candles. I’ve had to try different things to see what makes me feel good. I’m not great with meditation. So sometimes I’ll try quick guided meditations that are only a few minutes long. I’m a believer that every little bit helps. Sometimes I just need a small push in the right direction.

I also try to ask myself if there is anything I can do to change the particular situation in that moment? Lately, it seems that most things that make me feel angry are out of my control. If I can’t do anything about it in that moment, I try to accept that it’s out of my control. I can’t change it. That in itself can be a process for me and can take some time. I also try to accept how I feel about it. For example, if I’m feeling angry I tell myself that it’s okay to feel angry. Anger is an important emotion and also a tough one for me. It tells us things like something feels profoundly unjust or how we’re being treated feels so very wrong. I’ve learned that it can also be the “tip of the iceberg” of emotions. Anger can sometimes mask other emotions that we would rather not deal with, such as grief and sadness. I’ve found that it can be easier to feel angry than to feel the underlying grief, pain, sadness that’s also there. How do I really feel? This is where I need to write stuff down as it comes up. The physicality of writing actually helps me to feel better. There’s a whole science behind it too which is a whole other topic for another day. I even have a “dear asshole” journal for certain topics that come up. I’ve learned that we need to get the emotions out of our bodies or it gets stored in our nervous system which can make us explode later on if we don’t deal with it sooner rather than later. Sometimes while I’m writing about it, I learn that this particular situation reminds me of something else that happened to/for me. I follow those breadcrumbs and it starts to make more sense to me as to why I feel the way I feel about this situation. I learn to process the emotions from the older event which helps with the current event. It’s not always easy and I really needed help from my therapist for quite some time before I could do it on my own as things came up.

One important thing I’ve learned is to not give up. I can rest or pause if I need to but I get back up and keep going, even if it’s just one step at a time. Sometimes it’s a slow crawl and that’s okay too. I’ve also learned that healing is not a straight line. It can get really messy and sometimes it’s more like a cha-cha. That cha-cha may look like a crazed squirrel hyped up on an undisclosed amount of pixie sticks but it still counts. All we can do is at least try and we may be surprised to look back and see just how much progress we really made.

I honestly don’t know if I’ll ever truly be 100% healed. I’m learning to accept that. I will just do the best that I can even if it doesn’t seem like much and that is good enough. I also believe we all have a light inside of us. It took me quite some time to find mine. I didn’t even realize I had one until I felt it one day. That day I had thought I was completely alone in the dark and that no one cared enough to shine even a little bit of light. It wasn’t much but it was enough to set me in the direction I needed to go. I don’t want anyone else to feel alone like that which is one reason why I decided to write about this stuff. Maybe I can help even just one person with what I’ve learned in this last half century. Dang, that makes me feel old. Maybe I’ll just refer to it as leveling up from now on. Although, there tends to be at least some wisdom (along with a lot of stupid stuff) with having lived a half century.

So until we get to the other side of whatever this is, I’ll leave my weird little light on in case anyone needs it.