The pauses we don’t enjoy sitting in, but must.

The space between the states of our becoming. 

Here I am sitting in the car with the window open, allowing the sound of the crashing waves on the beach to be my soundtrack. I came to walk along the beach, but the tide is still making its mark.. 

The waves are high today following last night's storm. With my walking plans abandoned or should I say paused (until the beach is cleared of tide) I thought I'd sit here and write some. Writing has been a focus this week whilst I've been navigating my own high tide. My emotions have been similar to how the sea presents today. Large waves engulfing me trying to take me down, trying to take me under the waves. Some have been strong enough to take the stability from under my feet. 

I’ve felt teary. I felt myself fearing the next wave at times, even though I know I can swim with the swell and come back up from the crash, but also really not having the strength left in me on some days to fight the current. 

These last few months have been challenging to say the least. I've had some real core wounds resurfacing to be seen and cleaned out yet again. I have felt a complete loss of identity, things that I felt identified with who I am just ripped away and thrown in the fire. The fire that's been burning in me so fiercely that anything that was clearly wanting to be released and let go of was swallowed by the flames.

Six months ago, my contract as an agency nurse ended. For the past four years I had been providing an online therapy service for an NHS child and adolescent mental health team. 

This role took a lot out of me. I knew I was coming to the end of wanting to nurse and over stretch my nervous system this way to make a living. I'd recognised how I was stuck repeating the patterns of believing it was my responsibility to fix and heal people in their pain. 

I was working on healing these patterns, unravelling and unstitching myself and my beliefs that had been my identity for a lifetime (and I’m sure many before). When the role ended, I was left unprepared for the grief I would actually feel. The grief and loss of the identity that I'd held as part of me for so long. Out of fear I rushed forward, feeling pushed by something to move on and into a new identity. 

This less established identity desperately wanted to show up more, but felt that she was being forced to step forward when her legs were still wobbly and she was still somewhat unsure in how she wanted to fully express herself. This new change of the guards was quite overwhelming. 

Life tried to go on in the same known fashion, but over the weeks of the grief and sadness, coupled with physical fatigue and exhaustion, I found myself collapsed and unsure of what was up or down or even forward or backwards.

When changes in life happen we expect life to somehow continue the same. We have been programmed and conditioned to be strong and to keep going. Keep our heads held high. But  if your head is held high because it is trying to keep itself from drowning in the waves of emotional uncertainty that is reclaiming your world, then at some point you will likely drown. 

We don't give ourselves the time or space with endings to grieve lives that change. We rush on without pausing to breathe and reflect. How do we create new beginnings without fully becoming empty and still. We become afraid of the void, the nothingness. We don’t in our culture see the sacredness or the value of this space of not knowing. 

Instead we sense that the feeling of emptiness and uncomfortableness as something to busy away.  

Unlike in Tibetan Buddhism, where they call this state between death and birth the Bardo of Becoming, the pause, likened to the pause in between in the in breath and the out breath. The space where exchange of states take place. 

 I heard on a podcast once, someone describing this state as one similar to that of the transformation the caterpillar makes to become a butterfly. When the caterpillar enters the chrysalis, it breaks down into a goo, a messy and sticky state, where it is no longer a caterpillar but is yet formed into something new. Within the goo, are what are referred to as  “imaginal cells”. These cells hold the new patterns of becoming, but the goo cells see them as invaders, and fight them trying to stop them becoming who they are supposed to become. This conflict inside the chrysalis actually makes the imaginal cells stronger, they stay their ground and eventually become the magnificent butterfly. 

So when we are in our own chrysalis during times of endings and beginnings, are in those in between states. When everything feels like goo, and our old habits are fighting the new ones, and we are uncertain of what is happening and have the unknown wrapping us up in the internal battle. We must remember this, that in us we have always had our own “imaginal cells”. The cells that are our true self, and the conflicts are where the transformation occurs.

Like the caterpillar the darkness changes us and makes us stronger, strength comes in the ability to trust the pause, and see it as essential to becoming who we are here to be. 

Slowly I'm becoming stronger by the day, life feels lighter, more hopeful. The sky feels clearer, some sunshine poking itself through the clouds. This new identity feels safe. It's beginning to show up. She's becoming more in tune to her values, her own needs and embracing her softness and vulnerability as her strength, not something to be seen as a weakness or needing to be changed or hardened up. 

This threshold that I'm now in is pregnant with new possibilities,new opportunities ready to be birthed into reality when the energy and timing is right. I too will become a butterfly.