Worthy of Beauty
It was a cracking in my skull, as if someone had thrown me against a cement wall, that woke me up on March 10th 2019. It was a morning like most mornings over the previous few years I had awoken to. Around five o’clock the previous night, the first bottle would pop, or the first shots of vodka would hit my glass, and it was numbing time. At first, it was just meant to take the edge off, the edge off of being a single mom. The edge off of being alone. The edge off of being far away from my family, and what felt like a Universe away from my best life. I was angry, I was sad, and each glass I poured took me further and further away from the truth I desperately wanted to be a dream, my current life.
I couldn’t understand at the time why God would expect me to be able to handle raising three kids on my own. My best shot would be to find a partner, but who would want a used up, mom of three, who could barely hold herself together each day? These words created the sad Universe I had developed for myself, not one full of hope and wonder, but one where self sabotage and escape had ruled the decision making for the majority of the previous few years. It was somewhat criminal, the kind of hell I would put myself through, and in many respects it is a million miracles and God who kept me alive during those years.
It was a small wonder, that this particular morning and this particular headache were the last I was willing to endure. There was just the right amount of self hate and physical anguish that shifted me in a new direction. There are moments where God shows up in a whisper, in a decision that is different from others, and in this moment on this morning, I chose to never wake up with this pain again. I promised myself on this particular morning, that I would never drink again, and in fact, I would lead my life in a direction of self love. God cracked through the headache and heartache that morning, to give me a glimpse of something new.
Giving up my addiction to numbing pain meant that I had to start to feel it. No one really prepares you for this brutal truth, and it takes on a new level of learning how to survive the pain of life. Rather than numbing my pain while harming my body, now I was healing my body and spirit, but letting the pain of my past exist. I opened up the shadows I had so faithfully drank away, and held space for them to hurt. Memories of my childhood started to flood in, and I began the long and never ending journey of shadow work. Shadow work is when we turn towards the things we so desperately want to avoid because they cause us a degree of pain. Healing is extraordinarily messy. Even messier than the hungover woman with the cracking headache.
I placed my healing in newness. Rather than my typical choices of drinking and dancing, I instead spent endless hours roaming Mount Diablo with my mountain sisters. We poured our hearts out on the mountain, and the mountain, unphased and unchanged by our outpouring, held space for our healing. The mountain, and my sisters, began to raise a new woman. We would hike, regardless of weather, to reach new summits, discover waterfalls and explore new trails. We paused along each journey to simply take in the wonder of how impossibly beautiful this mountain, and life truly are. On many occasions we would stop at Twin Peak’s to marvel at the sunset and how our lives were changing, hear the wind howl through the canyon and whisk through our hair. I felt so alive, I felt like I could spread my wings and take flight, flight into the life I truly wanted. It was in these moments that I was shedding a skin of weathered and worn pain, and freeing myself of burdens I had held onto, unknowingly.
Right around the celebration of my first year of sobriety, I read an essay written by Cheryl Strayed from her book tiny beautiful things. In this essay, Strayed writes to her former self, “One hot afternoon during the era in which you've gotten yourself ridiculously tangled up with heroin, you will be riding the bus and thinking what a worthless piece of crap you are when a little girl will get on the bus holding a string of two purple balloons. She’ll offer you one of the balloons, but you won’t take it because you believe you no longer have a right to such tiny beautiful things. You’re wrong. You do.”. I read this essay three times in a row. In these words Cheryl Strayed expressed something so undeniably true that nothing could prevent the waves of tears that would release each time I turned my gaze back at the page. What Strayed reminded me of is how I turned away from loving myself all those years, not believing I was worthy of living a full, beautiful, abundant life. But I was wrong. I do.
Each day that I wake up, headache free, ready to live my best life, I remember the whispers of God that morning. That I deserve to wake up feeling free, feeling strong and alive, feeling worthy of all the tiny beautiful things life has to offer me. My life was not meant to be a constant stream of sad stories and torn apart memories. My life is meant for me to fully show up into the woman who not only survived all the hard things, but flourished because of the way she grew from them.
Works cited:
Strayed, Cheryl. Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on love and life from Dear Sugar. New York. Vintage Books Original, 2012.
