Let me start off by saying this one’s a ramble…. But I have faith that all of these words have come out of my fingers just as they were supposed to… so I hope you enjoy it!
Last week was hard. Really hard. I had all sorts of post-period hormones racing around my body, my body was unreasonably sore, I felt unmotivated to create, I felt unworthy and useless, and I missed my partner terribly (like, heart-wrenchingly badly). Nothing could shift the grossness that I was carrying around inside my soul all week. It sucked.
There was nothing I could do, except just BE, and I’m actually ok with that these days… I cried a lot, randomly, at the most random things. And I just let it happen. There was no point in fighting it. There’s a saying “the pain is in the resistance”, and even though I learnt it probably a couple of years ago and was instantly a fan of it, only in this last 12 months or so has it really sunk into my bones. I know that I can’t push anything else, or fake a happy day when I’m feeling like this. Could it be perimenopause? Could be – *shrugs*… Could there be something I could take to alleviate the icky that plagued me all week, often escalating to a dramatic climax of snot and tears? Quite possibly – *shrugs*… But was the best thing I could do in those moments just let my mind and body feel and experience all the gross and sad and icky feelings I was experiencing? Abso-f*cking-lutely.
You see, as humans, we’ve been given the wonderful ability to feel a wide range of emotions – a vast spectrum of feelings, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to deny any of them – no matter how weirdly or uncomfortably they manifest. When I was younger, I ignored a lot of these feelings and it made stuff so much worse. I experienced guilt and shame, and denied sad feelings over the years, which grew into bouts of depression. I pushed down and ignored concern and worry which developed skilfully into anxiety, and both afflictions would require medication for a stint, and a hell of a lot of work to kill the mould I had let grow in my soul. That’s how I sort of saw it – a stubborn mould that I let fester and grow until it was in the drywall of my very being, and I had to do some major renovations and overhauling to remove it….
I started doing personal development work about 4 years ago, after a particularly bad episode of depression, and a round of anxiety prior to that, and since then it has been a non-linear, but generally steady improvement for me. Of course I still occasionally get terribly, wailingly sad at times (I’m still human!), but I no longer find myself lost or stuck in the dark pits of depression where I used to hide and dwell. I still have concerns and worry for the future at times (because despite meditating now, I’m not the buddha yet!), but I don’t spiral into the turns of anxiety that I used to. I now catch myself when I’m sliding and recognise “oh hey – I’m feeling pretty sad at the moment”, and I can use the tools I now have to safely allow those feelings to come, and know I can self-coach myself through it – not OUT of it. Because we can’t avoid the feels. We have to feel them, or they’ll hang about, swirling and stuck inside our walls like residual ghosts of emotions past…
I’ve been separated from my partner for 8 months and counting now (f*ck you, Covid!). She’s in the UK and I’m here in Australia. It sucks – hard. We are missing out on being together day after day, week after week, month after month, of being able to create memories, have adventures, and enjoy the daily mundane tasks like going grocery shopping, or washing the car, or even just being able to make the other person a simple cup of tea. We have been apart for my last birthday, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, our anniversary, Valentines’ Day, Mardi Gras, and soon it will be Easter, her birthday coming up, and then my birthday again…. It will likely be over 12 months’ apart when we finally get to see each other in the flesh again. Woe is us, right? Well, yes and no…
You see, even through the really hard days, where our hearts physically ache, and the tears flow and we hold space for each other’s tear-stained faces and snotty noses (ok, mostly MY snotty nose), we have FAITH. Faith is what keeps us going through the shitty times, in all areas of life. Through loss, and heartache, and trials and challenges, through the unfair and the downright bullsh*t that life throws at us sometimes. Faith is that thing we need to have so that while it all seems like it’s hopeless, and nothing is working out, it’s that belief and knowing that it actually IS working out – it’s just the universe sometimes has a weird-ass way of going about it.
We look at this time of separation as a good thing. We have faith that the universe has a plan, and everything is happening exactly as it should. Do we LIKE it all the time? Hell no, lol! But some things are bigger than our little human existence… There’s some obvious things the universe had been plotting, which we can recognise already. By being apart, I believe we are forging a stronger relationship than most marriages I’ve seen, because we know in order to make this work, we have to be 100% honest and open with each other – all the time. We don’t have the diversion of physical presence, or tv, or jobs, or having to put the bins out or empty the dishwasher, or any of the other superficial distractions that can conveniently get in the way of a regular relationship. We have limited time each day to communicate, so we choose to make it count. We are truthful about our needs and wants for ourselves as individuals and as a couple, even when it’s embarrassing or uncomfortable. We have faith that this time is also for us to focus on starting our own businesses and getting them off the ground, so that when we DO reunite, we can hit the ground running with all the incredible plans and daydreams we have created in between the “I miss yous” and “Did you sleep wells” of the past 8 months… We compromise and collaborate, and we have FAITH that the universe has a plan…
So yes, we get bummed at times, because it really DOES suck that we can’t be together right now – because we’d give anything to watch a movie and have dinner together, to work side by side and bounce ideas off each other, to have adventures of epic proportions and also just do the day-to-day stuff. But we also have faith, and not just because a handsome young man in tight faded jeans and aviators told us to when we were kids…. But because it’s in these hard times that your faith carries you through, hinting that there’s better things on the other side… and to trust in the universe – because it has a plan. And I’m not gonna lie – life is way easier when you have faith, and you surrender to the plans the universe has already scheduled in its massive diary. Because the pain is in the resistance, remember?
NAOMI BATTAH COACHING 
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