Your higher self awaits you but it is one Mofo of a climb.

The last few days I hit rock bottom for the 100th time.

I cannot believe people often describe this is ONE lol grand defining moment.of reckoning.

While forgetting to mention the fucking climb!

Wake up calls look a whole hell of a lot like Reese Witherspoon in Cheryl Strayed’s book turned Into movie: Wild.

Screwing up on life’s stage before a grand audience who don’t see your pain or loss, just deemed Wild or Crazy or a Drama Queen, too big for her britches or every other bs thing we hear when we finally try to un-become who we thought we were supposed to be to become who we were meant to be.

To redefine normal and live life on our own terms!

A woman who looked a lot like she had LOST IT.

But FOUND IT – HERSELF.

Whom with no navigation skill. No 25 years experience in Boy Scouts.

She put her entire life into one MF on a backpack and carried it, often unable to take another step from the burden of its weight on her back – like lugging around our your entire life and and a survival kit packed with shame and trauma and loss – it’s freaking heavy!

But she did it.

She had to figure out to build her own place of SAFE PLACE.  While braving the pacific coast trail completely alone, beginning in the desert – that dry parched thirsty place, that’s water is a but amirage.

I am not a hiker I didn’t think I had the endurance.

However I’ve spent many a night alone with my own dark thoughts, while hearing the wolves off in the distance bellowing out to alert that internal alarm to flee, fight, freeze or fawn.

Be alert at all times because something may creep into your personal space and eat you alive or just tear you apart and leave you for dead.

I think most of us know that fear all too well – the fear of what you don’t know. And the MoFo of the fear of what you DO KNOW already.

With often times, the latter being the most frightening.

All those hours climbing back from rock bottom – a thousand miles on foot, with nothing ,driven by sheer will power, to not curl up and give up when haunted and by those flashbacks that sneak in.

All the would haves, a could haves, and should haves done differently, but it’s now the present moment and ya can’t change a f*cking thing.

Plagued by those demons in our minds speaking all at the same times, those voices refusing to shut up because you can’t exorcize them anymore.

Depression: Why even bother? Nothings going to change anyhow.

Anxiety : Be afraid, be very, very afraid. Sleep with your eyes open cause ya never know what’s next.

Panic Attacks : heart racing, head pounding, knees shaking, voice trembling, chest crushing pain. Is this a heart attack? Yup, I’m gonna die. This it it. This is the big one! All the while it’s actually an ATTACK TO THE HEART.

Dissociation: Drawing those blanks – Hide it away first  I’ve come to set you free. However I’m going to hold the damn keys to that very freedom, while you wait.

Trauma: Hey you! Here I am again, I was hiding in under your bed. You can’t pray me away. I can’t hear your cry for “get here behind me Satan”……because I AM f*cking Satan!

Inner Critic: That voice of the accuser that seeks to silence you, cut your tongue out, put you in a choke hold till you tap out, or the words strangled out by a hand around your throat, until you surrender and let those demons win.

And finally……

The Healer: Who keeps us focused on the climb, in spite of its intensity, the rocky terrain, the downpour of tears, the winds of change.

That sunrise that seeps through into every broken piece of your soul into a mosaic, like a stain glass window – beautiful.

That same dawn that awakens us every day to remind us- You are still here, I see you.

I’ll shine the way for you to see your way through this – all the way to where you are headed which is forward not back.

Because today is only the beginning and as long as you still woke up today, you are still on road, still invested in the journey and it’s NOT too late.

Awakenings aren’t easy or pretty or neat or organized or planned – they are freaking hard core relentless WORK!

It’s never lost on me that we often arrive dirty, messy, bruised to the bone but healed to the core.

ARRIVED at The Bridges of God’s as Strayed did.

We aren’t all best selling book writers about the Hike to find that which was lost.

Or as talented daring, boldly feminine and fierce soul – arrived and able now to challenge the status quo directors,  (who is one of my fan favorites)

Some of us are just trying to get through life, which can be hard enough.

But we ALL know about those long stretches of highway with no end in sight.

Keep your eye on the prize or the divine or whatever you define – as your higher power because damn it….

Your Higher Self awaits you!

“It was all unknown to me then, as I sat on that white bench on the day I finished my hike. Everything except the fact that I didn’t have to know. That is was enough to trust that what I’d done was true. To understand its meaning without yet being able to say precisely what it was, like all those lines from The Dream of a Common Language that had run through my nights and days. To believe that I didn’t need to reach with my bare hands anymore.

To know that seeing the fish beneath the surface of the water was enough. That it was everything. It was my life – like all lives, mysterious and irrevocable and sacred.

So very close, so very present, so very belonging to me. How wild it was, to let it be.” Cheryl Strayed

I’m holding out my hand and telling you this is a solos journey but it doesn’t have to be.

I am here to link arms with every sister I can find until we pull you back up.

This is the journey of the Trauma QUEEN.

No crown required.

Come as you are.

I welcome you with arms open wide.

Tag a soul who needs to know she’s never alone.

Or share this as an act of the love we are – love in action.

Then love, pass it on until we narrow the great divide and our way back to humanity and to ourselves.

Christinalepore_traumaqueen