New Beginnings

New beginnings are both exciting and intimidating. They usually follow an ending. And endings are both exciting and intimidating. In this case the ending of my decade-old role as an editor on a television show. I had been planning to leave for quite some time and still when the time came to inform them of my impending departure I was overtaken with extreme panic attacks and anxiety.

I had never experienced anything like it before. At night, as I fell asleep, I would jolt awake gasping for air. My body telling me my heart had stopped and I was no longer breathing. It was terrifying. I would stay up the rest of the night convinced that if I fell asleep I would die. This went on for two weeks. I even tried to talk myself out of leaving my comfortable job even though everything else was telling me it was time to make a change.

Finally, I shared the news with the company that had kept me comfortable all those years. It was an emotional parting for me. I really came to think of them as family. I had thought making the date of departure real would alleviate my panic. It did not. I had to find another way.

The way that came to me was to stop fighting the panic and allow it to express itself. It was scary. The strange feeling that shot through my body was foreign and uncomfortable. I persisted. I slowly let it take over my body. It tried to shake me. It tried to make me run. Instead, I found a way to love the discomfort. I gave it the respect it craved. I was in awe of its power. It’s fear. I began crying with it. We cried for all my ancestors that didn’t follow their hearts because of this fear. And the strange feeling began to dissipate until I was able to sleep.

That wasn’t the end of it. The following weekend I worked with a powerful plant medicine and took a deep look at what was causing this panic. What I expelled from my body was an ancestral trauma that had been passed down for centuries. It presented itself as a bull when I bucked it from my psyche. Then I lay there as if taking the form of this dead bull, my ancestors passing by in a procession of grief and anger paying their respects to the wound that had held them back for so long.

Finally my grandfather (my father’s father) came to me. He sat with me and we cried together until no more tears would come. He died before I was born. I never knew him in life, but at this moment I knew him very well. Together we celebrated the spaciousness of this new beginning. This new approach to life. We had freed ourselves of what was holding us back. It was time to let our souls lead the way.

So that’s what I’m doing. I’m allowing my soul to lead. And the path has taken me from post production to ‘a little room for healing’. Helping others in the best way I can. By creating a space for people to come and heal and process. And hopefully to expand.

The end of the last chapter was hard. The beginning of this new chapter is exciting. And intimidating. And has never felt more right.