When life shakes you awake
In 2021 I went through what my teacher Martha Beck calls a "catalytic event” that turned my life upside down. The type of thing that shakes you to the core and leaves you completely obliterated and
In 2021 I went through what my teacher Martha Beck calls a "catalytic event” that turned my life upside down.
The type of thing that shakes you to the core and leaves you completely obliterated and lost. Your past self is gone, and you don't know who or where you are anymore.
This type of event could be something you are excited about and prepare for, like moving to a new city or becoming a parent, or it could be something unexpected like a death, a divorce, or an accident.
Either way, we all end up in a confusing fog of sadness that can be hard to name, but let’s just call it Square One. Your old life is over and there is no going back. You must be reborn.
The old identity must die. You must grieve your old life before the baby, before you lost your job, or before your friend died.
You are the caterpillar undergoing metamorphosis. Dissolving in the cocoon, your life as a caterpillar is over. You must dis-integrate, turn into bug soup (link is to a great podcast on this topic), and reimagine your life.
Square One is super duper uncomfortable. And unfortunately, the only way out is through, you have to grieve, surrender and let this process happen. The more you resist the pain of this stage, the more it hurts.
Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room “for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.
Excerpt From: Pema Chodron. When Things Fall Apart.
Surviving after loss
Thankfully, Square One doesn’t last forever. It can’t because nothing lasts forever, even though it might seem like it. Eventually, the caterpillar must start reassembling its parts to become the butterfly. And so must you.
To find your way back to yourself, to rebuild after the fire, you must let the dissolving and metamorphosis happen. If you resist, you will stay in the discomfort. If you allow yourself to be sad, to give yourself time and space to fall apart, you will move through this stage much quicker.
In 2021, I went through an extremely painful parting with a friend. It was a loss I had no grid for. I had never lost a friend like this before, she was angry. So was I, boundaries had been crossed, things were said that couldn’t be taken back. My whole world was thrown upside down.
It was worse than a breakup with a romantic partner, she and I had a history and a future that was no longer going to happen. I was devastated and felt like I was free-falling into a bottomless pit of grief.
A few months after this tremendous loss, my partner and I were in an accident and we are still healing from the effects of that.
In addition to all this, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer and my brother ended up in a difficult legal situation that was hard on the whole family.
For the past 3 years, life has felt heavy, hard and sometimes unbearable. I didn't have the energy to work on growing my business. My time became consumed with just staying alive and helping my husband find his way out of the darkness. Survival.
Everything around me died because it had to. This series of traumatic events took me away from my life in the most profound way, I had to cocoon myself to feel safe. It was indeed a death, some other friendships died, my business died, my sense of safety was challenged, and even my poor houseplants died.
I simply couldn't take care of anything but myself and my husband. I had to surrender to this season of life that was asking for everything to be let go.
The more we resist death, the more it hurts. So I let go as much as I could and trusted that all of this pain would eventually lead to a brand new life. A better life than the one I had before.
I know this is part of life, endings and beginnings, I’ve been through it many times in my 45 years. I knew that focusing on my healing would eventually lead to better days, to Square Two and building a new life.
It's impossible to see how all this will turn out when you are in Square One, but slowly over time, the frozen places in your life start to thaw out.
And then the buds start to pop out on the trees. And something you never could have imagined takes the place of consuming sadness and pain...Hope. Light. freedom.
I feel myself just now thawing out after the long winter. There are signs of life regrowth all around me. I am not the same person I was before, I have changed in so many ways. I have learned so much from the darkness of winter but I am very much enjoying the thaw.
How to survive the death of your old life
Wherever you are, I hope you remember that winter doesn't last forever. Allow the darkness to change you, and spring will be even better than you ever remember it.
XO Amber