The Emmaline - Maditas Blog

WALK IN STRENTGH

One of the things I have struggled the most with over the years is how trauma steals your light! It´s actually the one thing I have worked my absolute hardest against – I didn´t want to also end up being depressed, feeling down or having a negative outlook on life on top of having a lot of pain. I can take all the physical pain but having my inner light and positivety taken away from me has been crushing! But I couldn´t really do anything to prevent it and that has crushed me even more. It felt like a personal failure!

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AND ONE DAY I COULD SEE HOW THE HEALING WAS THE GIFT

“Another way in which we can transform our darkness and “easter” the life of the new self is by holding the painful tension within us – the tugs between what the ego wants and that to which the True Self calls us.

The first step towards growth is to enter these tensions, embracing and exploring the pain and ambiguity within rather than running from them, concealing them, or anesthetizing them. Few choose this path, however. We´re more apt to try to quell the conflict by banishing the unwanted side of the opposites.”


Page 160-161 of WHEN THE HEART WAITS by Sue Monk Kidd

I have struggled to hold the tension! It did not know how to bear the connection to my inner self! It felt too heavy, too dark and too painful.
It felt so unfair! Hadn´t I suffered enough? Couldn´t I just shut the door and forget about the last very painful 8 years? I felt like I could not bear it so I ran from it. But by running from it I ran from myself and the more I was doing that the more I longed for me to be “happy, healthy and succesfull”.

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WAITING IN THE DARK…

The question ‚how are you?‘ is one I am honestly lost on how to answer. I‘m better than I have been for the last 8 years, I‘m exhausted to the deepest part and core of myself, I‘m lost of all strenght and power to really get anything done and wondering ‚what, at the heart of it, caused this deep burn out ‘ but I am also doing good. For the most part I am at peace – or I try to be.

There are days where I just wish I knew where all this was talking me. Where I knew what I will study/work/do with my life or at least have the strenght to do anything to figure it all out. I am the first to want to work but here I am and can‘t. 

There really is no point in doing anything else, because I quite simply physically cant. I am waiting – actively waiting. Trying not to rush through this time of rest and reflection, learning and becoming. 

Instead I am still waiting – resting – becoming whole not through something I do but through everything I am. 

Instead I am – still unable to do as I wish but this time at least without pain. 


WHEN I`M SCARED AND HURTING – CAN I BE OPEN?

My thoughts circle back to being/feeling incredible lonely regularly. Its part of trauma I have come to know. Feeling isolated, different than ‚others‘ and questioning ‚God‘/the Universe/fate. Its a feeling that sucks the joy out of my life quicker than anything else and brings me to my knees more than any pain will ever be able to.

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TOO MUCH!

Norway Summer of 2014

Writing this on Friday deep into having the cold on top of my exhaustion is messing with my mental being.

It feels like too much, too much sickness, too little strength, too little strength to help myself, too little life in me to be happy while being bed ridden. I start questioning myself and if anything was caused by my mental health but the reality is: I was freaking exhausted before the cold and having fever on top of exhaustion is a lot for any body, so my allergies go crazy as well because my immunsystem is simply down. I‘m trying to hold on to my saneness but it brings back ALL the trauma of being constanly sick and being home/bed ridden without being able to help myself. I feel helpless and I feel angy and it feels unfair but I can help myself ans everything will be fine in a few days and there is incledible medicine that can treat fever very well. Still urg!

Before this all cold craziness hit me I was reading ‚When the heart waits‘ by Sue Monk Kidd after hearing her story on Oprahs Supersoul Podcast and it has been inspiring. I‘m only a couple chapters in but its good. She talks about waiting:

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OH HOW SCARY JOY CAN FEEL…

Something interesting happened 4 weeks ago – it all of the sudden clicked and I knew what I am supposed to study and where to go with my life!

Nothing has kept me more up at night or has made me question myself than realizing that where I am at right now, what I am set to have my diploma in is not what brings me joy or brings me life. It was this weird thing of ‚I can still imagine myself studying and working in that field. I know I am and will be good at and the people at my school are seriously awesome human beings‘ but at the same time it gave me so much anxiety and imagining to go back there in September felt like something I was dreading. At the same I had absolutely NO CLUE what else I was supposed to study or work in/at and that left me standing there very confused and frankly very scared. What if its me? What if I’ll never be able to have enough energy and life in me to work/study joyfully? What if from here on everything will be only half ok and I will always have to fight against anxiety and fear of failing and the fear of having it all taken away without me being able to have a say in it?

And then all of the sudden it clicked..VIEW POST

LIFE MADE ME EXHAUSTED…

I’m exhausted to the point that I don’t even know how to describe it or put it into words. It feels like I am drained to the point that I can’t find my strength again without something coming from something else than me. VIEW POST

HAPPY MONDAY – Filling in the blanks…

I was talking to a friend the other day and it became so clear how we all tend to just share the good or paint a picture of someone else’s life and forget to fill in the blanks. The blanks that are the struggle, the hard and scary moments, the courage it took to get to that moment. The pain, the grief or simply doubt. You can see achievements and moments of highs but we all have doubts and experience hard times that test us.VIEW POST

THOUGHTS

Rocky Mountains, Canada, 2017

It seems so easy to sweep it all under the carpet, only talk about the sunny side of life but oh my its so important to talk about all this other stuff. We look at pictures and listen to stories and go “oh my god she is so good and I wish that was me” but we dont hear or see her struggle, we dont know her fight and we dont know her story – even in friendship its so easy to only show one side of it all. How often do we think “its only me”? I at least do a thousand times a day.

Every time I‘m in the deep of something it feels too hard too sad too much to share but when I read back on it a week or months later I think “well that sucked but thats life sometimes and not too much to share” – funny how that perspective changes.

Its so hard to stay open and vulnerable when I´m hurting. It feels even harder to put it all into words. Ever since I read in “the body keeps score” by Bessel van der Kolk that traumatized people can experience a very real struggle putting into words what they experienced or are still experiencing – I recognize that happening to myself. Every time I get overwhelmed or feel like I have been thrown under the bus because of everything and anything thats been triggering my trauma I just get quiet. I wont talk to Albrecht about it unless I make an conscious effort, I forget to write my blog and I tend to skip writting in my journal. It´s if I am holding my breath, trying not to feel, not to know, not to move and numb myself hoping it will solve itself by itself. Exhaling seems impossible, moving seems out of reach and feeling emotions seems very dangerous. So if I disappear and forget to write a blog post – I simply forget to put words to my experience.

I was talking to a good girlfriend of mine the other day and soon I realized that I gave her the advice I needed to hear but didnt even know I needed.

“it feels like it will NEVER end and life feels like it will never be good again but it will. Today is already better than yesterday so why shouldnt it be even better a year from now?”

„But I want my old life back – I dont want all this crap – I was really happy and content before.” “I´m so sorry for the loss but I am also so sure something good will come of it. We will grow through this.”

“Instead of fixing on one event in the future that I am afraid of `I will never be able to get back to school‘  I should focus on the emotions I´m running away from. Instead of focusing on me and my emotion I apparently tend to ignore them and am rather thinking about a possible event in the future I most likely can´t change”

“Feelings of ‚this will never end‘ ‚everything will be bad‘ ‚I‘m the only one‘ is part of it all BUT ITS NOT TRUE. Life has gotten SO GOOD!!”

So lets be open and show it all – not just the “everything is so good” side but also the “this is what it took me to get here”.

Sending you lots of love!

Madita