The Void.
There have been many times throughout my years where I have felt lost and confused, with who I am or what I want my life to look like. . When nothing seems to satisfy the void I feel within. It’s something I have attempted to sit with many times but would end up frantically scrambling for something to fill it with. This dissatisfaction with life, the feeling like I have no real purpose or passions can be daunting to say the least. When I track back to times in life when I have felt this, it has been before big life changes. A change in career, house move, wedding, pregnancy, starting degrees or building businesses. It’s as though, I must find something to give me purpose in life. Anything to escape the void of emptiness that creeps about within. Times when I have felt like this, I tend to hyper focus. It will be head down, study, work, work, work. Or I spend my weekends drinking to escape the inner battle and weekdays dealing with the dreaded anxiety. I’ve struggled to find much balance through it.
The older I get the more comfortable I get with spending time in my head, with my own thoughts and dialogue, in my own energy, to feel what is occurring within my own body and where these feelings stem from. To sit with the uncomfortable feelings of wanting to escape or to become something else. To finally learn to be ok with doing nothing, whilst I journey through the wave of emotions which have been sent to teach me the right lessons in life.
One thing I have noticed more over the last couple of years of my healing, is that I have all the characteristics to be diagnosed with ADHD. My brain never stops processing, it’s busy even when my body is exhausted. So, I struggle when my body is tired, as my mind doesn’t want to rest. Life can at times seem overwhelming when your brain is in full speed, but your body can’t keep up. My brain will be working through 10 jobs on the list, and contemplating the next big life move, while my body hits overwhelm, as it has no idea where to start, to tick everything off the list. When like this, I have found myself running round in circles, starting endless different jobs and finishing nothing before I crash. For years I struggled with this, trying to hide it from people, pretending I had all my shit together. So I would just push through and refuse to stop to make sure everything was done. It was guaranteed to end in a massive burn out. Now I embrace it. My friends and family laugh along with me while I’m running wild, finding everything in life funny, a million tasks on the go all at once. If everything isn’t done before the high drops, it’s fine, I just need to rest for a little while then back to it, bit by bit. It’s about trusting in yourself, learning to listen to you own body. Understanding that these quirks are part of me, without them I wouldn’t be the same. Learning to love myself has been the most empowering journey possible.
I preach about holistic healing, meditation and spiritualty, but I do this because it’s all these things which have saved me and brought me back to life, time after time when life has got too much to handle. I’m the world’s worst for stepping off track with the things that keep me centred and can quickly spiral into regular binge drinking, junk food and lazy mornings, which in turn leads to a rapid decline in my mental health. What I have found through my recovery, is that it is all about understanding, identifying the patterns and cycles you fall into. It’s about noticing the triggers early enough, to start incorporating coping strategies to prevent the mindset from dropping too far. It’s taking the time to look deep into your core wounding to find where those triggers stem from. By understanding these deeper layers of self, we can begin to heal the wounds with compassion and love. It can be a scary journey to delve into our childhood and core conditioning, but in the right environment, with the right support, it sets us free. I am a big believer that we will be sent similar cycles on repeat, in life, until we learn the lesson that’s meant for us. It can be frustrating to feel like we are not ‘where we are supposed to be.’ However, we can’t f##k up what is truly meant for us. We may steer of path for a while, but we will only learn more about who we really are and what we want our life to look like. With every low comes a deeper understanding of self. So, by stepping into that scary void of emptiness we can learn why it’s there and embrace the lesson it’s sent to teach us.
Like everything in life, healing and self-growth is a process. A process which takes time, patience and understanding. There is nothing linear about it, you will go up and down and sometimes around and around the same cycle until the lesson starts to sink in. I am far from the finished product. Nor do I believe anybody ever will be. I believe the key to happiness is in the ability to understand ourselves, in being able to accept ourselves for all that we are, light, dark, daftness and everything in between. The important thing is that we are willing to start the journey. To do the inner work. To be brave enough to go deep within our own minds. To take accountability for our own actions and own our shit. To be brave enough to change what needs to change. And to be kind enough to ourselves to create the life we truly deserve.
For anybody reading this, do not hide yourself, embrace all that you are, your quirks all help to form who you are. There is only one of you in this world and the world needs your smile.
Be real, be you.
Jen x