Barbara Brown

“I never knew I could feel this way.”

“I never knew this wound could heal.”

“I never knew there was this much beauty inside of me.”

“I never knew I was loved.”

by Barbara Brown

These are Shalom words. They echo through the corridors and slide into the kitchen drawers, sneaking out unexpectedly during late night conversations over cookies, or creaking out of the old couch springs as someone falls into it, exhausted post-mat trip.

I have recently uttered these words myself, and although they didn’t come directly out of a Shalom experience, my story belongs here – amongst seekers and healers, mystics and wanderers – in this beloved community, a place that profoundly knows the mystery and awe of discovery.

Let me tell you what happened.

I have been on a slow internal journey of late. The kind where you think – is anything happening inside anymore? And why isn’t change showing up in my world? I’d made my intentions utterly clear to the universe about next steps and what I wanted manifest. It just didn’t (well, doesn’t) seem to be happening, despite my aching need for it. Waiting is not my strong suit. The powerlessness of it infuriates me – that I can’t just up and do what I want when I want to. Or that I have to rely on another who, I assume, most likely will fail me. But this time, the waiting has brought something utterly, deliciously divine.

Last week I went to my therapy session wondering why am I going? and perhaps I should just end until things are heating up inside me. I have been exploring my lifelong ambivalence in intimate relationship and the cost it is extracting, a cost I am less and less enamoured with having to pay. But I haven`t seen much in the way of personal results for all my effort.

I have also been reading Eat, Pray, Love (Elizabeth Gilbert), a book I wasn’t at all interested in. It seemed such a mainstream spiritual craze – everyone and their dog were reading it on the subway – that I’ve been purposefully avoiding it. Until my sister, whom I love and trust, gave it to me with a meaningful look and a serious tone saying, “I really want you to read this book. Happy birthday!” I had to. I now have so many pages earmarked it’s embarrassing, dark blue ink lines underlining quotes I go back and read before I fall asleep. I’ve been gobbling it up like a starved child, finding an invitation into myself again.

In my session, I was rambling to fill the time, finish and go to work, when I, perhaps not so accidentally, fell upon the nub of spiritual and energetic pain that has for so many years led me to believe ‘I do not deserve to exist.’ The beginning of a pain body from an unbearable abandonment that over the years has taken me to despair, self-abnegation, and manifested my inability to commit in a relationship. It is the piece of me that has thrived on fear and ambiguity, sought it out, chosen it, created it, and kept me in it – for its familiarity and high pitched intensity.

Thankfully, I no longer consciously believe ‘I do not deserve to exist,’ but here lay the remains, or rather the origins, deep at my center. Still painful. Still powerful. Touching this core wound, being witness to it, having a witness to me was indescribable. Leaving that session, I did not know what would change in me or how, but I came home and promptly called in sick to work, got in bed with chocolate, my journal, Perrier, and the near-finished earmarked book, profoundly tired of the hell of ambivalence.

Only a few weeks back I decided ‘the part of me that thrives on fear and insecurity must go. unequivocally.’ I wrote it on a scrap of paper and put in on my dresser. I read it in the morning when I’m dressing. Most days it surprises me, even though I put it there. It’s like I’ve forgotten that I wrote those words and put them in plain view. I think, somehow, it’s working, because, unbidden, in the midst of gobbling the last of Eat, Pray, Love an utterly new and unknown sensation in my heart arrived. Calm. Warm. Sure. With this gentle presence came these words, ‘I commit 100% to God’. A heart commitment. Unequivocal.

For someone who loves words, it was amazing to see that the words did not make the commitment, but rather, they voiced what my heart had just done. I made this commitment, or it came to me, because I realized that without doubt, I trust God’s constancy.

And you know what? The commitment felt easy. No agony, no tearing asunder of my psyche, no force of will. For this lifetime, commitment-phobe, it`s a miracle.

For many years I have kept my spiritual journey private, choosing to tell only a select few about my experience and understanding of the universal power or source. This is the most precious part of me and I have been afraid to share my heart in case of ridicule, scorn, jealousy, twisted grabbing greed, or other dangers. I needed to keep my most precious self safe so as not to lose it. Abandonment and violation taught me well. But with this surety of commitment, that perceived vulnerability has changed. All these things exist in the world and may well come my way, but the risk doesn`t feel so great. Which is why, after 43 years of hiding, I want to tell you loudly and boldly, ‘I am God`s’.

I am still waiting on those hoped-for external life changes, but truth be told, I have a sneaking suspicion that they, and God, have been waiting for me. I can be a slow learner sometimes. ‘100% heart commitment to you, God.’ ‘Same-same ‘ I hear in reply.

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Barbara Brown is a Toronto-based author, psychotherapist, and craniosacral practitioner.  Her practice and writing focuses on body-centered integrative healing, specializing in trauma, sexual and creative expression, and spirituality. Barbara is widely published, including documentaries for CBC national radio. She is author of My Breasts, My Choice: Journeys Through Surgery (Sumach Press, 2003), a book and exhibit exploring people’s experience of breast and chest surgery through photography and storytelling.