On our shared struggle with living

I feel very emotional this morning and my stomach is all awash with strange sensations. When I log onto WordPress to check comments and read new posts I can be moved or horrified or sad or just feeling like I wish I could give some writers a big hug, that may be a boundary invasion if I was with them, (I’d always ask), but what really strikes me in my heart and gut is how many people, just like me struggle and suffer and are working to try to understand their pain, deal with their anxiety or panic as well as deep, deep feelings of being alone or needing to be alone in order to shut out the cacophany of voices or energies which can and do cause disturbance for them.

I noticed last week the posts that most resonated with people were about alone time and being present to our own hearts.  If you think about it most of us long for love in this world.  Most of us would like to feel that we are worthwhile that we do our very best, that may not always be true, sometimes our worst may be the best that we can hope to do on any day, but still we try.  I also am thinking a lot about (and this is a bit silly really) how separate feelings can be to thoughts.  How exactly do we express our true feelings in words or thoughts when really they are energies moving deep within us in all sorts of strange ways?

For myself I think or feel the split between thinking and feeling has been a big part of why I struggle.  I find that when a true feeling like sadness burst through (which is happening a lot lately in the wake of my mother’s death) I am surprised by it.   I have been making big steps to come out of PTSD paralysis/shut down which became severe following accident and head injury I sustained on the first annivesary of my husband leaving me.  In a way when I got scared and said no to pursuing  a forward life in the UK in 2001 and then came back to be close to family but not too close I entered into the wierdest of parralell realities.  I was half in this world but so much of me was not,  it was all strangled, tied up or locked down in the past and deep complex feelings I had not fully recognised or processed yet.

I was listening to a video by Jeff Foster on Friday night and he spoke about acceptance and the fact that if we are being strangled by a serpent we don’t just let it strangle us, we try to take some action and that struck me as a powerful metaphor for what happens when our reptilian brain of fear flight fight possesses us…..and this fear dynamic was massively triggered for me and millions of others when 9/11 occured.  I was in Holland on that day in 2001 with my Dad’s sister who I hadnt met often and my Mum.

Anyway I have kind of regressed.  I just wanted to write today about how much I see us all struggling in this way, with fear, with hope, with faith, with love, with pain, with finding courage, and a will to live not die.   I see the heroism in the very ordinary, in the souls of my brothers and sisters online here who I have grown to love and feel such fondness and affection for, even though we have never met.

This morning I am on the hop as I have therapy in an hour and 40 minutes and I need to eat and walk Jasper as we didnt get out at all yesterday (at least I did as it was 40 deg Celcius here 100 F so I went to the airconditioned centre close to my home), so this post is a trifle rushed.   I still want to post it before the day progresses any further.

Today I don’t feel as alone, for I know there are so many of us out there just doing our damdest to survive and thrive and grow in inner knowing.  I wanted in some very small way to acknowledge that and to say how important this platform is to so many of us.  I may never meet you but your struggles affect me and I am here with you in spirit even though miles away sharing in each of your journeys and finding all the time resonances and connections which to my soul have a supreme value.  Life can be so hard but still we find ways to persevere and dig deep because in the end we know life has value, even if at times it hurts like hell and is confusing to live and harder even to breathe in this increasingly crazy mixed up world that is still so full of deep love and awesome mystery.