A chapter

A wrinkle in time

A piece of a puzzle

The whole too big to see yet

Each word carefully chosen

Each touch by design

A dance of opposites

Finding flow and finding fault

A roller coaster

A mirror

A safe place to land

For just a moment

Maybe

A beautiful moment

Just enough to reveal something

Just enough to heal something

Just a chapter.

To all the versions of me. To all the women I had to become. To all the women I once was.

You shaped me – cheered me on, tore me down, fought for me, hurt me, healed me and held me.

For most of my life I’ve hated you. I tried to hide you, forget about you, I shamed you and pushed you away.

After almost 40 years of self-hatred, shame and rejection, only now am I learning how to live alongside you, to make space for you, and little by little to love you.

And holy fucking shit, it feels like coming home.

As all good stories do, this one starts with a pivotal moment, a slap in the face from the universe and a choice.

Around 10 or so years ago I woke up in a hospital bed with no idea how I got there and to my terrified surprise I had another woman’s name and date of birth on the admission wristband staring back at me.

To say I was scared and confused would be an understatement.

I drank heavily and smoked weed from a young age, turning to harder drugs as I got older. A coping mechanism disguised as ‘the fun friend’, carefully designed to avoid some deep daddy issues.

Apparently, on that particular night I’d chosen to mix a concoction of escapism that landed me pretty close to saying a final goodbye to this world.

Waking up with a wave of fear and a hangover that I thought might last a lifetime, I decided that enough was probably enough.

As far as pivotal moments and slaps in the face from the universe go, this was a pretty good one.

Over the coming months, without the numbing and distraction that I had spent years hiding behind, I had no choice but to sit sober and face the woman I had become, scars and all.

As it turns out, I did not like her one bit.

All the shame I’d drowned out before had nowhere to hide now in the cold light of sobriety.

All the bad decisions, all the ways I had failed, all the mistakes I had made formed the foundation for a story of not-enough-ness that has shaped most of my adult life.

A story that played loudly and relentlessly in my newly sober mind.

The intensity of the shame was overwhelming, I couldn’t sit in, and I certainly did not know back then how to move it through me.

One day a few months after the hospital fiasco, a particularly unattractive photo of me drunk at some party poked itself into my Facebook memories, and I snapped.

In one slightly unhinged moment of despair I made a choice, I decided that it would be a good idea to erase all of my former selves from existence.

I deleted every picture I’d ever uploaded to social media, every piece of writing I’d ever published, every photo in my photo reel or saved on my computer.

I even burned my physical belongings, things from my childhood, letters, poems, journals, schoolbooks, paintings, even my clothes.

I couldn’t stand to look at myself. The idea that someone might find those versions of me, that they might know I was her was more than I could bear.

I wanted her gone.

As I watched it all burn, I pushed all the shame, fear, sadness and anger down and locked it away with every ounce of strength I had.

I have been fighting relentlessly to keep it there for the past decade.

Over the years I got to work building a carefully crafted new identity, an image that I’ve been hiding behind for all this time.

My ‘healing era’ let’s call it, another coping mechanism, just this time wrapped up in different packaging.

The pursuit of growth became my new drug of choice. But now I was gaslighting myself with spiritual sentiment in yoga pants.

I convinced myself that I was ‘doing the work’, even my very expensive therapists bought into my carefully constructed identity of half-truths.

And for the longest time I believed my own bullshit too.

I ran so fast and so far around the world that I couldn’t have caught up with myself even if I wanted to.

I was so out of touch with my body that every time I slowed down, the anxiety, the shame, the fear would all come rushing back in.

The ever changing, ever becoming pull of novelty was my kryptonite and perfecting my external environment became my life’s work. I got lost in the chaos and I loved it. In the mess and the movement I had managed to keep my internal world unreachable.

New cities, new countries, new hobbies, new friends, new skills, courses, careers, the list goes on and on. On and on and on to the next and the next and the next…

Praying for peace and of course never finding it, never choosing it.

I have craved depth and closeness. Yearned for it. Frantically scoured the globe for it. At times, wanting it has utterly consumed me.

I looked for it anywhere I could. In friends, communities, cities, jobs, hobbies and often in the beds of men.

But no matter what it was never enough, I was always left empty.

The high of the newness lasted a little while and eased the pain just enough, but it soon wore off and I found myself reaching again, craving the next new thing that would surely fix it all.

I am not sure when it happened, I can’t pinpoint a moment or a catalyst. Maybe just enough time had passed, or the pattern had repeated itself enough times, but one day I started looking inwards, I started sitting still a little bit longer.

Noticing the deeper voice of intuition trying to catch my attention. She was quiet at first, but the more I leaned into her, the louder she got.

My own body, my own soul, telling me once again, but somehow differently this time, that enough really was enough.

And on an ordinary Tuesday it came over me like the most obvious of realizations, like I had of course known it all along – I wasn’t running towards something new, I was running away from myself.

From all the old versions of me, the ones I couldn’t bear to stay still long enough to meet.

I have been the one sabotaging myself from ever having the thing I said I wanted most in the world.

How could anyone ever know me, love me, accept me, if I couldn’t first.

I want to know those women now. I want to sit beside all the versions of me that I have been and hear their words, to let them share their stories.

To listen with care and compassion. To let them have their moment in the light. To give them the grace I so often afforded to others but have denied myself for so long.

To welcome their fears, their shame, and to love them wholly in spite of it all.

To love me wholly because of it all.