What If The Thing You Dread Is Actually Your Dreams Trying to Unfold?

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Space to me feels like opening, expansiveness, finding my centre. But it can also be terrifying when the cosy world of my making seems suddenly blown apart and I find myself freefalling through the vast darkness of an unwelcome space.

My friend asked me to name the three biggest moments in my life when things felt out of control, she recognised my trauma and distress. It was hard to prioritise just three if I’m honest. 

There were the days, weeks, months and years that followed when the person I loved with all my heart told me our relationship was over; the same when I had my first experience of death and both my paternal grandparents died within a couple of months of each other. And there was the day I started at university, alone, and had to navigate my way to a lecture theatre holding three hundred students I didn’t know to study a subject I hadn’t a clue about (computer science), to name just a few.

Then there was, of course, the childhood memory of the day I accompanied my dad to the hospital when my brother was born, all excited, to be left on the stairwell alone while dad went to visit mum and new baby. Children were not allowed in the wards, so I waited unaccompanied, age three, and recall hearing every set of footsteps, watching the door open in hope, anxiously awaiting my dad’s return.

I remember thinking “What if he doesn’t return?”

Circumstances beyond my control that shake the foundations of the reality upon which I’m standing are not new to me. The feeling of being in freefall is not new to me. The fear of the huge space that opens up uninvited can be overwhelming, but I’ve been through this enough to know that the space which appears can also be my growth and expansion if I will befriend it.

As Sarah Blondin says “We walk invisibly cocooned with all the things we wish to control, we think that by keeping these things close that we will be able to manage them. If we keep our worries in plain sight we will have less of a chance of them coming true”.

I have always believed that, once children were involved in a relationship there is no backing out. Of course, that is my belief and a relationship consists of two people. Having had the experience of being jilted before, I was well aware that I actually have no control over whether the other person will stay in relationship with me.

So, since having children, it is fair to say that I have always harboured a fear about this. No more so than since leaving my career, and my financial independence, to be at home with my kids.

In Learning to Surrender, Sarah says “The more we constrict, the more worry and burden we pick up along the way. The denser we become, the more we sink like rocks to the bottom of our river. We then ground ourselves in the turbulent waters rather than allowing ourselves to be carried to the cool, calm waters”.

When I listen to Sarah’s captivating voice her words come from a place far beyond her lips and far beyond the reaches of my mind, the words carry truths that only my heart instantly recognises:

There will be moments in my life where all will seem in chaos and disharmony, and in those moments I must remember the universe is reordering my life to match more of what I am calling forth. Fear is useless in these times; trust – however - is paramount.

This is what I know above all else, I have known this with certainty for a long time.

So while I rage and feel helpless against this dramatic change in my circumstances, it is a dance of the mind versus the heart. My body, knowing this sense of abandonment, begins its trauma response.The mind, in trying to keep me safe, plays out all the “what if” scenarios and, meanwhile, my friend asks me to remember because – in remembering – I also remember the vital part: this too shall pass.

At some point I will stop freefalling through the empty black space and start to construct a different reality. In fact, I can see the glimmers of it now, the many positives that could exist on the other side of the many changes afoot for me and for our kids.

Some words Teal Swan wrote this week in relation to self love caught my interest. She said “The tension you experience is a sign you are giving away your power. It is calling your attention to the areas of your life where your free will is needed as a necessary agent for progress.”

Tension was the word that reeled me in, having chronic tense headaches, shoulders and neck. It will be no accident that in Learning to Surrender, Sarah Blondin also says “These places of tension are where you are holding a secret fear that you are not supported, you’ve been forgotten, that life does not love you, and that you are failing. Imagine cutting the ties to these tense places and allow yourself to be carried into the mysterious and rushing waters raging around you”.

She explains that this does not mean I stop trying to create my best life. It does not mean I give up in the face of stress or adversity. It simply means I let go of the hold it has on my physical body.

I can do this, I know I can, I just need constant reminders right now. And they come in many guises and forms, through the friends who love me, and the wise sharing of people like Teal and Sarah, whose work I love.

It occurs to me that the space that feels like freefalling through the vast darkness and the space that feels like opening, expansiveness and finding my centre, are one in the same. It’s all about perspective.

I hear Sarah’s words “You are being asked to surrender to the beauty trying to unfold, the beauty of that far off land of dreams you have been looking outside yourself for. Understand that it has been trying to take you there all along. Now get out of your own way and allow it to.”

If you enjoyed reading this, you may enjoy Even in Grief There Are lessons to Be Learned, What to Do if You Feel Trapped By Your Circumstances, In What Unseen Ways Are You Abandoning Your Own Free Will?, The Soul’s Yearning – How to Recognise Your Inner Work, and Make the Invisible Visible - Celebrate the Gold in Your Emotional Reactions. To be the first to receive these posts, you can also opt to subscribe to my blog.