Where do we go when the darkness keeps coming?

You just go deeper and deeper and deeper until you find the place it all began.  You find the nook and the deepest crevice and you sit there.  You stay there until you see that it is not in control, it is something you are safe to have and to hold and to become a part of your story?

How do we become unknown to our self?

We become unknown to our Self when we stop listening to our Self or when we start talking pourly about our body or when we create scenarios in our mind that do not reflect our reality or when we stop doing that which brings us joy or when we feel trapped or when we experience pain we do not want to feel or when we stop learning.  We become unknown.

The darkness is a filter that allows us to re-enter the world with a new understanding and a new appreciation for different parts of us.

It is those darkest parts that have carried us through life times of pain.  It is those darkest parts that we have hidden that make us who we are once we emerge.  It is the struggles and the pains and the scars that shape our views and allow us to become harsh and shallow or loving and compassionate.  It is in the darkness that I found love.

It is in the darkness I seek solace now. 

I seek a way of living that is beyond even my own imagination or understanding.  What I am seeking is so outside of my own control that it is terrifying.  I am asking myself to trust in a bigger vision without my own expectations.  I am asking to be shown and to be seen for all that we all have done.  I want to be the one to blaze the trail but yet I sit afraid in my darkness.  Not even afraid, that is definitely the wrong word.  Maybe I should say confused in the darkness.  It is always so murky when we sit in the waters alone, we must lift up and outside of the body to gain a deeper perspective of what is to come and what is to be had.

We do not exist in the darkness or in the light but rather in both.

This past week has been one of shedding and of seeing.  It has been one of existing and resting and just witnessing what has been unfolding.

A pain in my side and over my heart has been there for days and I know it is grief.
It is grief for a boy, a man, someone known to me in the past life and in this life.  It is something so deep and profound that it has haunted me for life times.  It has embedded itself in my bones and my womb that it is screaming at me to let it out. 

Let what out? The careless bravery of the child?

I always thought that child who was decapitated and dismembered in my dreams was my child, what if in fact that child was me? What if as that child I was still a Warlock (Witch) and was punished for my visions which is why my sight has been clouded in this life time?  How do we know anything to be true?

to be continued...

​I have become undone.  Walking into the shadows of myself once again I find myself lost in a heart space so dark and harsh, it feels as though nothing can be found.  When I take a step I begin to wonder when I will return.  With each step I begin to see clearly why I will never return.

I am walking alone with no one to hold my hand, with no one to guide me. I am alone.  The inevitability of being alone can feel so suffocating when we resist it yet somehow liberating when we return to the knowing that being alone is coming home to the Self.  Being alone is the beginning of the end and the end is never found. 
As I sit and wonder where my life will go, I am missing out on where my life is now.  I am getting lost in the inevitability of a future that simply is. 

I wonder what my gifts are, how I can call back my magic more and more?  How when I get a taste it feeds me on so many amazingly stunning levels. 
It is scary to be willing to walk alone.

I am lost.

It feels so nauseating I have no appetite.

How this works is something that comes into the mind and the body and the soul, straight into the genetic coding. 

When we get lost we change our DNA. 

I am taken back to myself 15 years ago.  I am taken back to a time when I believed in myself so much but so little.  I want to be free to do as I please to dress as I please.

Is it time to re-establish my darkness in clothing?  My Gothic Witch is missing her Divine Self.  Is that what this is?

Is it my darkness screaming at being suppressed?

Is my darkness my light?

Are they even separate?

When do we know how to become again….
How do we become when so overwhelmed and bombarded with thoughts of incompetence?
Inside me is screaming and I am surrounded by humans unknowing.  This has never been any different so I am not sure why I am surprised.  I guess maybe I thought that because I have women who resonate with me and are able to talk about the things I am interested in that I would feel less alone.  I never should have stopped believing that we are only alone – did I ever truly stop?

I just feel so different and am afraid of speaking.  But WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?

That is always the million dollar question….Why oh why do I feel so different? I always have.  Thinking back to when I was younger and I would try and protect the trees and the birds were my favourite.  I realize now how much medicine I have possessed my entire life and why I couldn’t stay at home for months at a time when my parents were fighting.  It wasn’t because I was weak or the youngest, it was because I felt everyone’s pain in the house.  I felt everyone’s rage and depression.  I was 12.  My Mom must have intuitively known because she suggested I stay with friends and my Aunt.  My Mom was definitely a medicine worker in her past lives, she just knows and has always preferred natural solutions wherever possible.

But oh my darkness.  I even begin to wonder if I am with the right partner.  Am I supposed to be with a partner at all? It doesn’t feel like it right now.  I get confused and caught up.  Ah that’s my own bullshit talking because I have weak boundaries with my partner still – work in progress.

to be continued...

The sadness you're feeling is your Soul's way of getting your attention. 

We have been told in the West that depression is dealt with in a pill or two, maybe even three.
We have been told that it is our brain that isn't working properly and our hormones are out of whack.
Unfortunately the thing is that the brain is the most misunderstood piece of our body.  Doctors will admit openly that they know almost nothing 100% about how the mind functions. 
It is terrifying that we go on medication to support one system that harms another important system, the liver and our ability to detox and it is not healing the causes of dis-connection.

The sadness you're feeling is your Soul's way of getting your attention.

I have personal experience in "healing" my "depression" without medication and really, very little to do with Western Medicine. 

I have always loved nature, I have continuously ran to her in times of despair and she has held me and coddled me back to my heart.  Her great beauty and destruction holds so much truth if you are willing to see her.  

You can look up so much research now that has to do with helping alleviate feelings of sadness or grief or anxiety by spending more time in nature, it is a thing. 

One of my main goals through doing the work that I do now is to show people that there is another way.  This path like everything else is not linear.  We hold the secrets to our emotional stability and our body is always communicating to us.  

My journey took me 15 years to find a way out with random periods of happiness and joy.  What I find now that I have done the work and healed my self-hatred, disgust, worthiness, self-blame and lack of ability to create a life worth living is that I am happier.  I am able to feel when the sadness is coming forward and taking hold and I am able to sit with it. 

Why is it important to sit with your emotions & why it comes back?
It is important because they are clues to your overall health.  They are indicators and flashes of pains you are still enduring.  When we refuse to look at our pains we refuse to honour our life and our story.  When we refuse to honour our life and our story we start a cycle of self-rejection that can get pretty nast.  There is always room to grow and when we begin to get uncomfortable take refuge in the knowledge that you will evolve again and again and again.  We are not stagnant beings.

Meditation, Reiki, Nature, Retreats, Plant medicines, research, courses, and endless books have allowed me to find a way back to my Soul. 

I never thought I would say those words together in my life as I was a very proud Atheist most of my life, I still don't use the word God and I don't believe in a lot of things but I have to be honest when I say that I believe in a lot too because I have experienced them - a blog for a later date.

What I do believe in is energy, dark matter, atoms and ions and everything in between and the fact that as humans, we are all of those things rolled up into what we perceive as solid form.

Our Western World has been telling us what works and what doesn't work but it has not been in the works for that long. 
We are currently being used as human trials for medications and birth controls and we are being poisoned by the food we are consuming. (1950's was the birth of 2 mood alteration medicines, it did not get an overhaul auntil 1987 when fluoxetine (Prozac was birthed) came in, this was one specifically for seratonin reuptake inhibitor.)  It seems every year there are more drugs being made and more money going.  It is a latch that people cannot let go of and it is harmful on so many levels. Birth control was not legal in Canada until 1969 (prescribed to patients in 1960 for therapeutic reasons) and it was not offered like it is today and was brought forward after the war and all the "extra" babies came along.  I am just throwing these dates in here because it has not been around for a long time and it has not been administered at the same rate that we are giving out these types of drugs today in the West.  

These drugs are causing us harm that we don't see.  It takes a lot out of our body to process drugs and can lead to overworking of organs and underworking of natural chemical production in the body. 

I offer you this and encourage you to do some research and get to know yourself again. 

Go for a nature walk or sit under a tree.
Eat some goddamn vegetables from the farmer's market - it is usually cheaper than the grocery store BY THE WAY!
Eat less meat and sugar.
Do some journalling every day.
Ask yourself what you want out of life...
Get real with who you are and how you have changed after certain encounters or relationships. 

Energy work is real.
Healing is real. 
You have been made to believe it is one way or no way, I am here to break that nasty cycle. 

There are infinite ways and your mind is fighting because we live in a linear society as non-linear beings. 

"Where do I start?
How can I feel better?
It is never going to end.
Why does it always end up this way?
I just want to die."

I would be lying if I said I never thought those things .  In fact, for the majority of my life they were constants. 

"I'm never going to be happy." 

A lot of people will tell you to change your mindset, to just tell yourself to be happy, to be in gratitude, to be in the sunshine.

For me, it was this statement that changed my life. "I am never going to be happy." I know this may seem counterintuitive but please hear me out.  What also came into my being that day when I surrendered to always being sad was a huge bout of acceptance.  It was radical and it was different than what anyone else had ever told me or led me to believe. 

When I stepped into my sadness (my personal darkness) I made myself comfortable with being there.  I stopped trying to fight it and chase what everyone else was doing.  I let myself finally just be.  

I think one of the worst things we face when dealing with elongated periods of sadness we learn to be "depression" (which I associate with a disconnection from Self) is the judgement we put upon ourselves.  It is the tragedy within the tragedy.  This is harmful as we blame ourself for not being able to be happy or be like everyone else and the shame cycle gets thrown into the mix...
GUESS WHAT! What I have learnt by sharing my story with so many people from different walks of life is that they feel the same way you do, in their own way of course.

When I said, "this has been how I have felt for ten years, I might as well get used to it" something shifted, I was 19 and had been meditating for 1 year and was just wondering what it would take to finally get out of this depression.  I was happy with my life, my friends, my relationships - I was lying to myself, even as I write this I feel the illusion creeping in.  I was 19 and working 7 days a week at a bar in my home city and making some friendships that will last a life time.  What I was also doing was drinking excessively like every night until 3,4,5,6,7am...It changed but it was constant.  I love these memories and will cherish those I met and worked beside for the following 4 years.  But like I said, as I write this, I feel the illusion of happiness creeping in.  Me telling myself I was happy, I wasn't really.  But to me, that was the happiest I had felt in a very long time.  I started drinking a lot, I was functioning and I went to work and I paid my bills, I went to school and I went on vacation, but I wasn't happy.

I wasn't sure how to get happy. 
I didn't really know what would even make me happy - that's how little I knew myself.

"I might as well learn to live with it."  I accepted myself for the first time and it was the true beginning of my journey home.  My journey back to myself after a life time of being disconnected due to a number of factors. 

Here I sit today (at 29 years of age), happy, in love with myself and working on cultivating the life of my dreams because yes, anyone can choose to create the life they desire.  I recognize my privilege.  I have also been working since I was 15 and began making dinners for my family when I was 12.  My life has been a balance of privilege and struggle.  It is quite beautiful for me to look back on knowing what I know now. 

When I talk about stepping into the darkness and accepting yourself for all that you are, this is where the beauty starts.  This is where the work starts.  This is where the shifts happen.

When we burry our heads in the sand and disconnect from our feelings, body and life, our darkness seem so overwhelming that we feel like we're drowing, we can't breathe and we have no where to go.  What's up panic attacks, anxiety attacks and chlosterphobia...

When we accept our pain as part of us and we let ourself understand that it is part of our life and our story and who we are going to be.  We also let go of the expectation that we are going to "get better" as we step into the knowing that there is nothing wrong with us. 

"Our shadow is with us for life, why not make it your ally?" - Jessy Dawson

Next time you feel yourself drowning, let yourself know
"I am okay, it is going to be okay." 
Let yourself get mad, cry, scream, throw something, stab a pillow (one of my favourite when I was 15 for getting out aggression), go throw some axes (because yes, that is a thing where I live), jiu jitsu, dance, baseball, movie, walk, journal, have a shower, meditate, do nothing because even that is something.
Let yourself feel the freedom by no longer trapping yourself in the emotions we are told are good.

There is a rainbow of feelings and emotions out there, when we learn what they are, we learn how to exist with them and one day, eventually freeing ourself from the control of the emotions (emotions are ego in action).

May you forever be able to walk with your head high into your darkness to offer yourself love, acceptance and forgiveness.

For it is in the darknes of corners that you will start to feel the true freedom.

Always with love, forgiveness and gratitude,
​Jessy Dawson