I wasn't broken after all

Unlearnings and rememberings as I reclaim a sense of trust in my body...

Hello lovely one

How is your tender heart today? How do you find yourself being in the world today?

I am writing to you for the first time from my new creative space. For so long I have dreamed of having a dedicated area to write and create AND a space where I can hold space in Circle and it has finally come to life. Over the weekend, as the finishing touches to the structure were put in place and my desk and computer moved in, I simply had to sit in my garden and stare in awe at this dream come to reality. I am yet to hold any gatherings but they will be coming soon and I cannot wait to welcome intimate groups of women into the arms of The Held Space Studio.

A ‘pinch me am I dreaming’ moment as I sit and write these words to you today…

I wasn’t broken after all…

I recently received a beautiful compliment from a fellow yoga teacher and friend via a direct message on Instagram. She said that she thought I looked really fit and I was moving well after I shared a video of my first little yoga practice from the new studio.

I instantly started to respond to her saying how I actually felt exhausted, and anxious, and wobbly and achey and drained… and that I must be doing a really great job of masking that because people keep saying that I look really well and how vibrantly I seem to be shining and I keep dismissing and disregarding it.

My default has always been to brush it off… ‘oh it is because I put makeup on today’, ‘oh it is because I am wearing something other than leggings and you aren’t used it it’, ‘oh it is because I washed my hair’, ‘oh it is because the sun is shining’… I keep rejecting the positive reflections of others because I cannot seem to stop seeing myself through the lens of ‘depleted’, ‘haggard’, ‘exhausted’, ‘a burden’, ‘unwell’, ‘fragile’… ‘broken’…

I paused and deleted the words I had started to type and instead sat with this realisation that perhaps what others are witnessing in me is actually true?

Perhaps I am actually strong, fit, moving well, vibrant and pretty healthy?

Could it be true? Could I be hiding behind an old pattern of diminishing my vitality? And if I am… who (or what part of me?) is that serving?

Have I spent so long telling myself that I am weak, too sensitive, that my nervous system is too fragile, that I can’t cope and that I don’t have energy that this is the story I have become devoted to?

The story of my brokenness.

This isn’t the first time I have used the words ‘broken’ to describe myself.

When I started having panic attacks in my late teens I considered myself broken. When I started to withdraw from socialising and friendship groups in my twenties, I considered myself broken. When I had health challenges, I considered myself broken. When I struggled mentally in my second pregnancy, I considered myself broken. When I found the transition from one child to two so intensely challenging, I considered myself broken.

There have been many times over the past 6 years where Motherhood and life has absolutely broken me… shattered me in fact… obliterated me into a million pieces that have never returned back to their original form (because they weren’t meant to), but does my innate humanness and tenderness to life mean I am a broken being?

Broken open maybe… but broken? That is a story that is beginning to unravel…

Motherhood re-arranging me in ways I could never imagined

Collecting evidence

Since my early twenties I have been in the thick of a highly awakening journey with health.

I have struggled with digestive issues, I have been with anxiety and depression, I have been called a worrier and overly sensitive, I have had nervous habits such as sniffing, blinking excessively, and even pulling out my eyelashes. I have been to healer after healer, taken potion and supplement after potion and supplement. I have restricted foods, developed orthorexia, obsessively exercised, injured myself, lost my period totally for four years, had irregular cycles, had more panic attacks than I could remember and been diagnosed with an underactive thyroid which is caused by an autoimmune condition called hashimotos.

I have spent year after year defining myself by these labels and at the foundation the story that this has lead me to believe is that I am broken. I am unwell. I need to be fixed. I need to find the next test, the next healer, the next person to fix me because at my core I am just broken.

A darker side of wellbeing

I found myself in the wellbeing world in my mid to late twenties (I am now 41) and was instantly captivated by it.

I fell deeply down the rabbit hole of every nutrition trend possible — and back then it was all so new and exciting — I finally felt like I belonged somewhere, and the sparkle of it all was enticing.

What I didn’t realise at the time — as I took photos of every single meal I ate to share on Instagram, spent hundreds (probably thousands in fact) of pounds on superfood powders and healthy ingredients, intermittent fasted, cut out carbs, counted macros and obsessed about every single thing I put in my body — that this world I had entered was also fueling the message of brokenness.

It was all in a quest to perfect myself — because ‘when I fixed my…. (insert particular health issue)’ I would no longer feel anxious about my health, or struggle with my digestion, or worry about getting unwell.

(spoiler alert… this absolutely wasn’t the case!)

I do look back at this time of my life with absolute fondness, it was magical in so many ways. I was part of the initial wave of London health bloggers. I got invited to launch events with the rising stars back then (Deliciously Ella and Madeleine Shaw, etc), I was sent products to photograph and share on my social media, I was asked to collaborate with Brands, I spent my spare time visiting new healthy cafes and finding the best raw food and plant based restaurants in town.

It felt meaningful. But I didn’t see the fear that was fuelling it. I couldn’t see the scared little girl who felt at her core like she was broken and was desperately searching for something, or someone, to fix her.

A photo of 2016 during my 200 hour Yoga Teacher Training in Costa Rica — a ‘picture of health’… or was it?

Mistrust in my body

I have repeatedly, over several decades, told myself that there is something wrong with me. Health anxiety has driven me to deep places (it has also opened up my eyes to new worlds so it isn’t all bad), but fundamentally it has been rooted in a mistrust of my body. Terrified of my body letting me down.

So when my friend messaged me and said how well I looked and I had a moment to question my reaction, I suddenly realised the weight that I have been carrying around. I haven’t allowed myself to believe that actually… maybe… I am well. Maybe I am not broken? Maybe — all things considered (age, motherhood, lack of sleep, etc) my body is actually doing a really great job?

Yes I am tired. Yes I get ill sometimes. Yes I have an autoimmune condition. Yes I have aches and niggles in my body that I have to take care of. But that is because I am human… it isn’t because I am broken.

I have been afraid to let myself believe that I could actually be ‘well’ because I have for so long defined myself by all that is wrong with me. All that needs fixing. And if I am honest it has felt a lot safer in that place.

Who am I without this story? What would other people think of me if I was fully in my vibrancy? What would other women think of me if I owned my aliveness? What would I change in my life and how would I act differently? Might that cost me relationships? Might that give me a confidence that others don’t like? Questions I am sitting with curiously right now.

Choosing a new story

If you read this piece here you will know that I have been working with a therapist since the beginning of the year. There is no doubt in my mind that the work I am doing with her is beginning to bring about change in my system.

A month or so ago I came out of a session and had this urge to drop into a book that I bought several years ago, but hadn’t ever got round to reading (like many on my shelves!!). It was Breaking The Habit of Being You by Dr Joe Dispenza. Having resisted reading it for so long I decided that this kind of material would be better to listen to rather than read so I found the audio book through my Spotify Premium account (who knew you could get audio books on there?!?!) and within days I started to feel a piece of me ignite once more…

That piece was hope.

Listening to the science and the educational elements on the mind, gave me hope that actually it is possible for me to change the spiraling patterns and restrictive stories that I have felt a hostage to for so many years.

I sought out his meditations on Spotify and started listening to them. They are not my normal style of practice, however I found that listening to them soothed me AND gave me an opportunity to start imagining myself making different choices. I began listening to them every morning in bed with my earphones in, next to my littlest as she slept.

Another chance to rewrite an inner narrative. The story that I cannot meditate in the mornings because I can’t leave the bed incase my little one wakes up, or that I will get interrupted (which I often do) and it won’t be effective, BUT I decided that even half a meditation, or listening to affirmative words even with the girls was better than nothing.

One particular piece of his teachings has been very powerful. Mental Rehearsal — creating the image of what we wish for, or hope for, and knowing that our body doesn’t know the difference between whether it is actually happening or if it is just a picture in our mind. This idea that if we rehearse it enough mentally we can start to align ourselves with the emotions that exist in that picture.

For me this has been so powerful, not necessarily for the big things in life we are taught to ‘manifest’… but for the little things. Imagining myself having a really calm morning with the girls instead of waking with anxious thoughts and my cortisol raised, picturing myself making nourishing breakfasts for myself instead of shying away from eating because I am worried it will make me feel sick, visualising myself laughing and dancing with the girls in the morning instead of white knuckling it through my panic.

Dr Joe talks about our addiction to certain behaviours and I can see that in myself — there is an addiction to the thoughts that take me down into my spiral of overwhelm and anxiety, and acknowledging this and actively working on gently pruning away these stories hasn’t been easy, but I am starting to see and feel the work paying off.

Exploring new worlds and ways of being with my littlest…

The world wants us to feel broken…

This newer awareness has made me really look at the environment I am surrounding myself with, particularly when it comes to things like social media and online consumption.

While I adore that we have so much access to information, I can’t help but question whether it is doing more harm than good. I am constantly served with accounts and posts that are talking about all the symptoms of peri menopause, all of the ways my body is telling me what is wrong with me, all of the ways that my nervous system is broken, all the signs that I have an imbalance, or that something is wrong with me…

The world is telling me (and selling to me) stories about my brokenness. And if the thoughts I think are fuelled by an inner story that I constantly need to fix myself, then what am I feeding by staying in spaces that reinforce this through their messaging?

While I am grateful for a level of education and information, and that so many things are being highlighted in terms of health and wellbeing— I am wondering whether I would feel a lot more trusting of myself if I wasn’t consuming quite so many messages about all that ‘could be’ wrong with me?

As someone who is quite easily influenced by those around me in terms of my thoughts (hello open Mind!!) I have to be meticulous about the environment I place myself in, and as someone who also spends a lot of time in the online world, I simply must take responsibility for curating my spaces.

If I stay in the story of my brokenness then I will keep spending money and all my energy on trying to fix myself. I will stay meek and mild, a victim to my storyline. I will stay fragile and quiet and unassuming. I won’t make changes in my life and those changes won’t ripple out into the world around me. I will stay small. Diminished. Subdued. And I don’t think I need to spell out here who that benefits now do I? (It certainly isn’t me!)

A foot in both worlds

As I write this piece I have this sense of being ‘in between’. Not an unfamiliar place for me I would like to say, I am getting quite used to this liminal space of becoming.

WIth one foot in the world that is my old story, and a foot in the world of a new one… sometimes I feel a sense of floating and not knowing who I am at all. The old ways don’t fit anymore but the new ways aren’t quite embodied and integrated yet. It is easier, from this place, to go back to old habits… the familiar paths, but there is a determination and an audacity in me (fuelled by the devotion to my daughters) to believe that patterns are disintegrating and layers are unraveling.

Gently I step forwards. Compassionate but awakened to hope and trust and a sense of faith that for the first time in a long time…

I wasn’t broken after all.

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Until next time, go gently, and do let me know if any of this resonated for you.

With so much love and gentleness

Lauren

xxx

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