Stepping into the Unknown:

When I decided to go back to therapy and look into what was going on with my mental health. It was scary, I've battled with mental illness from a young age. I have plenty of experiences of going to therapy and treatments. It was something I was never vocal about. I internalized shame and judgement within me that projected as hatred for the world. For a long time, I've battled with Depression and Anxiety they are a hell of a companion during my adolescent years creating this facade of a happy little gal going with the flow with life. When reality I didn't see myself living through my 20's. I was impulsive, naive to the point that I didn't care about myself or my future. Transitioning to adulthood was rough and masking my mental illness through partying, substance abuse and sex (the rock and roll lifestyle) didn't make it easier. I was confused and was just a very lost soul. I was diagnosed with Depression, Anxiety and Complex-PTSD in the recent relapse. Which was a blessing in disguise for me as it was the beginning of the journey of self-love and living my authentic self.

I'm sharing my personal experience of my journey through the form of writing as this is one of the creative ventures I've embodied and love. This is how I can express myself in an honest and creative way. I know how difficult it is and can be when embarking in this new path. I want people to know who do embark in this journey and path that they are not alone. That those feeling of difficulty, uncomfortable, self-doubts and negative thinking doesn't make them worthless or broken. We all have gone through experiences and have many influences from our external environment that makes us question our own greatness. Having a mental illness is not something to be ashamed or hide for us to internalize it and deal with alone.

We all have a different perspective and ways of going about our own journey. We need to be more vocal about mental health journey and express ourself in a way that will encourage others to do the same with their own journey of healing. It creates a ripple effect. One person stands up for what they believe in and others follow too as they have the same idea just didn't know to put it out there. Going through mental illness alone creates an illusions on lonesome, that no one else in the world feels the way you do when reality many of us have felt some similar ways.

I am the walking example what healing and focusing on ourself does. We radiate like we have never been before. As we see our own beauty and greatness instead of relying on others to see it for us. We embark into the self-love and standing in authenticity. Mental illness is b*tch no doubt. I am a walking example that mental illness can be concurred. It's a journey but it is a journey differently worth embarking on.

Self-love intertwines with healing, it's a tool that is needed in the journey of life. I believe that we need to be able to learn how to provide love for ourself from ourself. It's a tool that helps us thrive in life not just in one area but in all areas. When we thrive and feel the love for ourself our self-worth and self-esteem begin to rise. It's just the process of the love we give ourself, we then begin to learn to embrace all parts of ourself creating unconditional love from within. Our standards and tolerance will change as well as how we view ourself and move through life. There is no need to feel guilty for not being able to relate to things that we use too, it is part of growth and maturing. We do need to process this guilt through grieving. We do feel that sense of loss and grief when we have outgrown certain things, people, environment etc.

Self-love is not a 9-5 job, it is a 24/7 work we have to do for ourself. It is a work that is doable and requires our attention. Self-love is not always easy and at the beginning of this journey requires a larger effort from us. From personal experience from someone who was never been great at providing self-love to themself, this process took a lot of energy to do in the beginning. Just like any habit and re-wiring our thinking pattern it will take time and effort for it to become second nature. There are many layers to self-love and different ways of providing that for ourself. Others will have different ways of defining and part-taking in activities that embody self-love. Although it comes from the foundations of love, compassionate, nurturing, caring and providing for ourself.

Harsh Truth(s):

From my experience of learning to love self, it's a continuous learning process. There are many layers to loving ourself and sometimes the act of self-love is not always easy and glamourous. Sometimes self-love is letting certain people go. Not because they are bad people because we are not compatible with them anymore. As life goes go and we grow older there is a shift of distance that begins. It's one of the natural processes of life and relationships, we tend to grow apart from people due from maturing and re-constructing our way of living. This isn't just with romantic relationships. This goes with all types of relationships. There are times we have to let go of certain connections in order for new ones to come in. - That's why there are times self-love requires us to stand in our own power and greatness alone.

Sometimes self-love requires us to let go of not just people, but habits and behaviours. As they are no longer serving us, they are creating more harm and anxiety than pouring into our cup of love. Letting go of habits and behaviours that have helped during the process of our journey can be difficult. Although letting go and detaching is a process we do during our healing but also in life. It is an important skill to have to be able to listen to our inner knowing when it's time to let go. - Reminder; it is not always because something is bad, it's the compatibility aspect of it.

When we are not compatible with (example) a social group, those relationships become forced and requires so much effort to keep up with. I'm not saying that relationships are smooth sailing and rainbows and sunshine 24/7, although it is not supposed to feel forced, draining or create anxiety. That's one indication that it might be time to let go.

We are not doing it out of spite, but out of love for ourself.

When I began to pull back my energy to heal and look after myself. I realised how much of my energy and availability I was pouring out to others because I was constantly trying to seek validation, acceptance, love and a way of escape of my own thoughts. I didn't come to any of these realisations until poured my energy back to me. That's the real harsh truth I had to accept and come to terms with. That I was embodied in a 21 years old adult running around with my blueprints and programming from my wounded Inner Child; wanting to be seen and heard by others who didn't even listen to their voice. Once we begin to lose the crowd and stand in our own we have epiphanies that will give us the courage to stand on our own.

Courage isn't gain without fear. There is a need for fear with courage. We transmute fear through the actions we take which then creates this new energy source of courage.

I don't regret any of my past decisions as they've gotten me to where I am today; the person that I am from within and it wasn't formed overnight nor was it done with no effort and work. I had to make to hard and uncomfortable decisions base on the love I had and desire for myself. With those decisions, I had to stand in them and embrace the Unknown. Because for me self-love was the Unknown, believing in myself was the Unknown, voicing my beliefs and sharing my work was the Unknown. Any time we step out of our comfort zone, whether it's embarking into healing our mental health, learning to love ourself or confessing our love for someone. Those are the Unknown, without us even being aware we step into the Unknown many of times without even realisations.

Don't lose faith in our journeys, it is a learning process and a process we will do our entire life. Which is why we have to faith in ourself. Each cycle and phrases are not going to the same what so ever. As we finish a cycle and begin to embark in a new one, we began to realise that we needed to go through certain experiences from the past cycles to have a certain tool, skill or a form of maturity to be able to embark in the new one.

HEALING AND SPIRITUALITY:

When we embark on this path of self-love and healing there is a need to practise patience, letting go, surrendering to the things we can not control. All of these aspects need practising.

That's why I believe and stand by the idea that healing and spirituality go hand and hand. When we do get that phrase of 'waiting' we practice letting go and surrendering. Something that is promoted within spiritual practises.

Our healing is something we can control. We make the decisions with the changes and how we perceive the things we can not control. Such as world events, others behaviours and other external things. With healing, because it is from within that is something we have control over. We have control over perception, behaviour, habits and opportunity we embark in, people we surround ourself, the content we are watching, listening etc. We have control over own on body, mind and soul. Once we learn to control all parts of ourself (body, mind and soul) we begin to fall into this contentment and peace. That even if there is chaos going around there is this sense of peace and contentment within.

When we feel like we have fallen back two steps down, it is not because we are failing but simply because we are needed to gain a different perspective on those levels we have fallen down on. Creating clarity and growth which then moves us up a different level of where we have fallen off in the first place.

This is a learning process and something we practise throughout our lifetime. That is what really life is about, which is this constant learning of oneself and the constant gain of different perspective which evolve our body, mind and soul.

**TERRACOTTA WARRIORS & CAI GUO-QIANG EXHIBITION AT THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF VICTORIA NGV**

Be Kinder, Less Critical

EMOTION: GRIEF

There are different types of healing and it will look different on everyone. Not many tell us this but we grief a sh*t tone during the healing process. We are grieving parts of ourself that we use to relate to and identified as. Griefing parts of our life that has helped us distract or escape from reality. Griefing doesn't have an expiry date or a timestamp on us, letting us know when it will end. Griefing has its own process and timeline. Not everyone will grief the same, just like healing. I do believe griefing is a need during the healing process.

Many of us have different things we have to grief for. Many that might be too painful to look into, creating a coping mechanism of escaping or repressing. We all have gone through things we don't want to ever speak about. That ignoring and denying is much easier than accepting the fact that we are wounded and hurting. Another thing not many will tell us is that healing can sometimes be harder than the experience. I think it's because when the event happened we didn't see it as a wound. We didn't anticipate the pain it would have caused or how much of an injustice it was. In our healing process, we are conscious of the wrongdoings or the wound it has created. That's why it hurts more sometimes because we can't wrap our heads around the creation of the wound in the first place.

Sometimes grief comes and go. Sometime we won't even feel the heaviness for days sometimes even weeks or months. Although it does pop up once in a while and sometimes it stays for only a day or two. Although there are times where it stays much longer, where we want to curl up in our bed and just lay there, till the heaviness fades.

Personally for me when dealing with grief I cry it out. I don't know how else to deal with it but with tears. I believe our tears are a physical manifestation of our emotions. If we notice that we can cry at almost any emotions. I also believe that there is no wrong or right way to grief or feel our emotions. As long as we are not harming others on the way, feel as you please.

Griefing is such a heavy process. Grief is something the majority of people don't feel comfortable speaking about. I believe that is because of how emotions are labelled as 'positive' and 'negative'. Which is absolute rubbish, as no emotions are ever negative or positive. I believe it's the intensity of the emotions that classible them as positive and negative. We also have been conditioned and programmed into thinking that our emotions are our enemy and feeling certain emotions makes us weak. When reality emotion is part of the human experience. Emotions are also an indication that we are a living being.

Emotions are not something to be feared or run away from, they are quite the opposite. They are something to embrace, whether it's a ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ emotion. They are just an alarm that is ringing that indicates there is a need we need to attend too. It could be a need to go to heal something within, or a need to take a break from our environment, work, relationships etc. It is up to each individual to determine what their own emotions are letting them know.

The teaching of repressing certain emotions, mainly negative ones is generally passed down through parental teachings. A type of tool that has been used throughout the generations on how we should handle and express our emotions. Which creates this intergenerational trauma that has been unconsciously passed down. There are plenty of reasons why this type of teaching was passed down, and it would lead back to survival reason. A majority of people have experienced events that have put them into survival mode and not having the right tools to deal with those events creates a coping mechanism of repressing emotions.

This was a way their body and mind keep them safe during those traumatic events. That is what initially what survival mode is. Our body goes into flight or fight response to keep us alive and safe. When we are in flight or flight response for a long period of time our way of responding and relating to dangerous events can be altered. When we are overly anxious or overthinking of the next danger ahead. Those anxieties and paranoia are actually a trauma response. When finding where those anxieties and paranoia stems from, we find the root of it all which was a traumatic event that has happened in the past, which created this thinking patterning and narrative of 'everything going wrong'. We anticipate things to go wrong or something to come up because we have conditioned into that way of thinking.

THINKING PATTERN

Our thinking pattern is so important that it doesn't phase us. It's just an automatic thing we do and the crazy part is that we don't realise that we are in autopilot. Where we are following a bunch of conditioning, blueprints, programming and beliefs that we have adapted and taken as part of ourself. We don't see this as an 'abnormal' thing, to be thinking negatively or in the state of constant self-doubt, because we are so used to it and conditioned into thinking we are our thoughts. When in reality we are more than our thoughts. Wild thing is that we can alter our thinking. We are able to reconstruct our patterning. We can change all those, although with this desire to change comes with work and effort. Work and effort that is needed to be put in an investment in our future self, which we will be thankful for when the future becomes the present moment. In the present moment of changing and reconstructing our brain patterning, it is uncomfortable and daunting, as it is the Unknown. If we have lived our lives through negative thinking and the constant state of self-doubt, having an optimistic outlook on life and ourself is the Unknown.

I was thrown into this whole ascension journey, unconsciously. I felt a pain that I couldn't understand why I was feeling it. I was very lost and didn't know myself outside my trauma. Which initially put me on the path of healing. I wanted to know who I was outside my pain, trauma, and my victimhood. I was done looking at myself as a victim or feeling like I was powerless. I wanted to know why I would still feel a certain way about an event that occurred so long ago.

I was seeking truth from within.

Coming to an understanding of what trauma is and the effect it has on our body system was groundbreaking. When I began educating myself on what trauma is and the short and long term effects it has, not only in regards to our body system but how it affects our livelihood. It removed this sense of brokenness within me. It removed the concept that I needed 'fixing' and that there was something 'wrong' with me. When reality all I needed and required was healing.

THERAPY/COUNSELLING

Seeking professional help in regards to therapies and counselling is not something to be ashamed or shame others for. The desire to healing is an empowering tool and a brave act to go within. To know and see ALL parts of ourself. Having the desire to seek the truth from within takes and gives you the power of bravery, courage, straight, resilient and love. Healing is an act of self-love. Having the desire to step out of our own programming and conditioning. The desire to want to know who we are outside of our pain, wounds and trauma is empowering. Our present moment self might be scared and unsure if this is a path we want to embark in. Although our future self (Higher Self) is looking at us and encouraging us to embark it, because deep down it's the way of experiencing the unconditional love, not just from others around us but from ourself. As within, so without.

The stigma and negative quantitation attach to counselling are around, not just within our society but our family and friends dynamics. Nobody can force others to seek professional help, that is something no one has control over. It's the knowledge that each of our healing processes is different and when we do embark into this path; we will be parting ways with people and have to make the conscious choice of detaching and letting go of that connection, because of compatibility reasons. Those people who don't want to embark in this path just yet. As nobody is ahead and behind with healing and we all have our own timeline.

Being compassion to those who we have parted way with and to the parts of ourself that we're able to relate to them. By accepting ALL parts of ourself, the decisions that have led as to where we are now. We have to hold ourself accountable, not blaming ourself or others. We are taking accountability that the actions we have taken were from a place of hurt and pain. That is/was the core root of our actions and behaviours. So please give ourself compassion and understanding, that concept of 'hurt people, hurt people'. Even if at the time we thought that was the right way of handling a certain situation. We know better know in our present time. So let our experiences and past be teaching that we can acquire lessons from. Lessons that are going to help us evolve, grow and heal to the person we are meant and destined to be.

Don't EVER give up on yourself, take a rest BUT NEVER GIVE UP