Patience- My Final Phase of Healing

It takes a great deal of energy to withdraw. So says Carol K Anthony in her book, A Guide to the I Ching. I know this statement to be truer than true. I’ve tested it out on more occasions than I care to mention, for a wide range of reasons and it’s always shown me what I’ve needed to see, without fail. Withdrawal can really free something up to be what it needs to be and also expose the real truth of the situation. Thanks Carol!

The question is how much further am I being asked to withdraw? I’m not saying I find this challenging at all, I’m a natural hermit, but I also love being around people I care about and I genuinely do love people. I’m drawn to spontaneity and adventure and then I like to find my solitude, so I can process life and renew my energy and then step out into the world again. To withdraw at the precise moment that I felt myself expanding. How would this work? I felt so ready to start fresh. I’ve been in isolation for ages.

There is nothing like an illness or an injury to test your skills and resources. This walk with cancer has been the most exquisitely difficult journey. It’s not one that I’d ever want to trade-in for something else and certainly not one I’d like to repeat. So, there will be no trading-in and no repeating, only healing from here onwards. Yay!!

I have titled this blog, My Final Phase of Healing, because I have a very strong sense that I am now at the final sprint of this race, towards the finishing line. Well, the current situation doesn’t exactly allow a final sprint, perhaps a gentle jog, but let’s see how things unfold. If anyone can do “patience”, it’s me. We all need to be patient right now and rushing decisions will only work against us, so one day at a time. Easy does it!

On the subject of sprinting, I loved being an athlete when I was in junior school. I remember being a part of the relay team. I was always placed in the position of the final runner. It’s called the anchor leg. They say this position is given to the fastest or most experienced competitor on the team. I didn’t know this. I’ve just googled it right now. It says, “The person is responsible for making up ground on the race-leader or preserving the lead already secured by their teammates.” Huh, that’s cool to know.

I’m saying with some sense of certainty that there will be no repeating of this illness because, I have faith in this statement, the last couple of tests and appointments I’ve had have been positive for me, and also because there is still so much more for me to do in this life. How incredible to be given this opportunity for growth and reinvention. I feel it’s all now integrated fully into my awareness and is working its way out my body. A few bumps still here and there, but we all have those right now.

There is one final hurdle to jump over and that will happen once things ease up with COVID. I’m a patient, with patience, and I know I’m in the best hands here.

The last time I checked in to Safe Spaces and to Cool Mindz, I shared a blog I’d written about Balance. The opening line was, “Sometimes you have to withdraw so you can renew yourself.” This was published on the 6th of August. I had no idea then how long my recovery would take, but I didn’t expect it to last as long as it has. I’m still not quite there, but I’m making quite a lot of progress, I’m told. Slowly catch the monkey 🙂

So where have I been and what have I been up to? I’ve still been putting Cool Mindz at the centre of everything and have managed to carry on developing the content, creating the exercises and doing the research, but it’s happened in gradual stages, according to what I’m able to cope with. I’ve managed to keep the focus, but I have experienced a great deal of pain and frustration along the way. I’ve had some days where I’ve had to remain fairly still and force myself to watch Netflix. Haha!! Any recommendations?

Mikayla and I have continued working together. She is an absolute gift to me. I’m currently putting all of our work together to present as “evidence’’ of how I work as a transformation coach, and will begin sharing bits and pieces on social media in the coming months. It’s exciting for me right now, despite the pain and discomfort.

The beauty of pain and discomfort is the discovery of what, how, where and why it’s presenting itself to you at the time it is. I’m a huge promoter of digging deep into all the areas of your life, so you can find clues, patterns and reasons as to why your body is reacting in the way that it is. This is how I learn and uncover what’s mine and what belongs to someone else. It’s allowed me to heal and to see my relationships in a different light. The physical manifestations of our emotions can be fascinating.

This blog was initially set up for me to be open and to share, so I’m going to continue to do that. I may not reveal all the intimate details, but I will share enough so you get an idea and then hopefully, if you recognise similar patterns, you can reflect on your own life and see if anything comes up for you to look at too. Or you can just read.

I’ve been working with quite a few beautiful energies over the last few months. Some are just through research I’ve done on-line, links I’ve been sent from friends, conversations I’ve had with those who really know and understand me, and also some revelations I’ve had from my meditations. The information may end up all being muddied together, but there are distinct areas where I’ve been given information by healers about what I’m currently dealing with. I will share this in stages as I continue to write.

I shared in my last blog that I suspected that I’d developed Repetitive Strain Injury. I was experiencing a lot of pain in my arm and shoulder and was starting to have less use of it with each day. It was an incredibly active time for me, from a writing point of view especially, but I had also begun to be fairly active on social media. This brought up a few things for me which I don’t mind sharing. I know some feel the same.

I resisted conversations with friends who said I needed to get Cool Mindz “out there” and onto social media platforms. I’ve had a long career, some of which has been in the public eye, and have never taken to self-promotion. Thankfully, I was lucky enough to have a beautiful flow of work and experiences, so I never really felt I needed to promote myself.

Although I am still continuing my career as an actor, I am now adding a new title on to my skill set. I’m working as a transformation coach and Cool Mindz is brand new. I understand the need to put it out there a little more and have really enjoyed receiving the lovely feedback about the website and the concept. I did however find it interesting that just as I was resisting this expectation for me to promote myself, that my body decided to shut down and I found myself unable to do that.

At exactly the same time as this happened, I made a new connection with someone who sent a “lovely to connect” message to my inbox, saying that if I had a book to publish, I should get in touch.  I found the timing to be very interesting and although the message wasn’t directed specifically at me, I had in fact written a book to help others with their journey through cancer. The book has been ready for quite some time, but I am resisting it. I’ve still not had the time to focus on why this is, as I’ve been distracted by so much lately, but I suspect the answers will surface as the rest of this all becomes clearer than it already is right now. I did get in touch and now have a lovely, like-minded “white butterfly” soul connection, so all is not lost and perhaps the timing isn’t right yet.

Resistance seems to be a theme here and not something that will be useful to me at a time when I’m ready to move out of the journey I’ve had with an illness. I didn’t resist that much when things were difficult, so why should I resist the good things that are coming my way? The answers will be incredibly obvious to you, the reader, who is reading this. We all do it. I don’t know many people who haven’t mastered the ability to self-sabotage, especially in the industry I’ve been in most of my life. This is but one thought to many different realisations that have been coming to me over time.

So, as I unpack this all very slowly, I hope my sharing helps in some way or another. It’s really been such an incredibly difficult couple of weeks trying to get my body to co-operate, but the lessons and the insights, as they have always been, are really quite magical. I’m extremely grateful.

I’m ending this blog by attaching this quote I found. It’s so appropriate for me currently and no doubt will be for you too. The changes that are taking place within us at this challenging moment in time are the gifts that we have to offer the world, to move the energy forward, and if we continue to resist, what we could have built, will only be destroyed or destroy us.

Why would I choose that for myself, is the question that needs answering.

Why would any of us?

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you”                                                                                  The Gospel of Thomas

You can find Cool Mindz on Instagram at cool_mindz, Twitter @MindzCool and get in touch on the Cool Mindz website at coolmindz.co.uk

Hopefully I would have started posting again by then 🙂

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