I Did Not Wake Up Like This

Beyoncé sings. How compelling to imagine — to wake up and ride around feeling flawless and to be able to declare with total confidence

Despite the power of this imagination and despite how easy Beyoncé makes this look, this has not been my experience.

I did not wake up like this.

In fact, for ten years of my life, I woke up most days struggling against a depression so thick that sometimes waking up was all I could do. I did not feel beautiful or fierce or powerful. I felt flawed. I tried medication, therapy, meditation, but nothing was quite strong enough to intervene in the pain and panic I felt crumbling through my heart. I experienced this like being on a treadmill that was going too fast. I watched myself slipping and then I would fall fast and hard and completely into a dark place that I couldn’t escape.

When I was 28-years-old, to my great surprise and with the help of my therapist, my ancestors spoke to me for the first time. They told me that my depression was actually a spiritual emergence and emergency. They showed me that my pain was my ancestors’ pain, was my past life pain, was the earth’s pain and was the pain of the traumatized human family.

“Look,” they guided me, “You have mistaken yourself. You believe you are the twisted demands of oppression. You believe you are your distorted mirrors. That terrifying pain in your heart is a signpost not a disease. If you listen closely and hold steady, you will hear this pain is guiding you to the part of your spirit that has been stolen, silenced, and beaten by so many oppressions at once. You are not crazy, and you are not alone!”

They told me that to heal, I needed to connect myself to the earth and the cosmos and let that connection be bigger than my connection to the inherently out-of-integrity white Western patriarchal world.

“Go to the mountains where you are beyond the city lights and wires,” they said. “Sit on the earth. Be still. Watch how things grow and interact when they are in balance and in sacred relationship with one another. There you will remember yourself.”

And then they cautioned, “Do not wait. Go now. Shake off the excuses, immerse yourself fully in this labor of healing, and you will transform.”

This is how my healing journey began.

The first steps on this path were like standing in the middle of a rushing river and trying to walk upstream. Every single moment of my day was dedicated to shifting my center of gravity and definition of myself energetically, spiritually, and physically. This meant that I had to believe more in my ancestors’ visions than both my fears and my desires to be affirmed by society. I had to practice intervening in the racism, sexism and exploitation that I had internalized — giving my power away to men or white people, making myself smaller, not trusting that what I had to say was valuable, putting myself down, wishing to be someone else, feeling ugly, not smart enough, not thin enough, not good enough, not productive enough, not worthy of love.

When I caught myself following these thoughts and actions, I had to stop myself with unconditional love and bring in another practice. If the ancestors were correct, these messages were not my essential truth, they were my allies guiding me to where I was out of balance, disconnected from my purpose, and merging with social norms and expectations. And so I sat in these feelings and learned to ask them a radically different set of questions.

Instead of asking: what is wrong with you?

I asked: what do you want to show me? where did you come from? what do you need to heal? how can I soothe you? where are you most free? what do you feel like when you are there?

When things got rough, I prayed and took baths, I listened to guided meditations and sought support. I saw acupuncturists, energy workers, intuitive readers, and shamanic healers. I spent time in nature. I sat against trees and put my palms directly on the earth. I studied everything I could find on non-western healing practices and herbal medicine. I cried, and fell apart, and rocked myself to sleep, and gave up, and started again.

And I healed. One degree at first, then five degrees, then something big would clear and something else. Healing is not a destination, it is a path and a practice. However, a year-and-a-half after beginning on this journey, I woke up most days in awe, excited to get out of bed and continue this work. I had transformed more than I could have ever anticipated when I began. It truly felt like I was living on a lighter frequency.

Through this very non-linear process, I learned that our distress does not make us bad — it makes us human. How could we not feel distressed, depressed, anxious and uneasy living in the world that we live in? Pain, anxiety, and depression guide us to our personal and our societal wounds, which are so often mirrors of one another. If we can hold compassion and love around ourselves and each other when the dis-ease arises, there is more transformation and healing available to us than we could imagine.

When I finally made my way to the mountains, sitting directly on the earth and looking out into the sky, I had a flash of something deep and beyond this physical form. It was a spiritual memory of a self that is always free. The feeling was so powerful, that I literally gasped out loud and broke into tears.

“Ancestors!” I cried. “I see now. But how do I keep this with me when I return to the city?”

“Sweet one,” they replied. “You are already always this. The light is within you and stronger than the darkness.”

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