Two Wings: How Not Feeling My Pain Kept Me Flightless

We Shall All Be Saved
​In an Ocean Of Tears
Gordon Neufeld

Erin Dolan, NBC-HWC

National Board Certified Health and Wellness Coach, Certified Integrative Health Coach & AKA Your Loyal Knight

MUD TO MAJESTY
​Coaching for
the New Paradigm​​

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I got stuck on the ground. I was in my way but did not understand how. I was trying to get back to being in the flow, magic and manifestation. I had lived in true happiness for years.  Unbeknownst to me were the major differences between then and now, and there never really is a  ‘going back.’ 

In my twenties I had a handful of magical years. I tapped into the power of manifestation, participated in personal development seminars, became an Integrative Health Coach, reveled in inspiring community with sisterhood, art, nature, and a safe home!  I came to understand I could create things. I learned how to take responsibility for my experience, waking up from the ‘life is happening to me’ victim mindset for the first time. The more I tapped into what I really wanted, what lit me up with joy and excitement, the more easily it was to align with those visions. It did not feel like work, all the actions it took to make my dreams happen. I had a youthful innocence. I was not awake to the level of childhood trauma that would eventually have to come out and be addressed. I had not yet attracted heartbreaking adult experiences from that trauma body; to mirror the pain of my childhood. 

As I have shared in earlier blogs, my late twenties started my dark night. A series of traumatic events broke me. Everyone has trauma, some quite unthinkable, some so unconscious we are not even aware it was trauma. But one thing is for sure, trauma affects each of us differently. Not everyone gets lost and derailed. I had to love and forgive myself that I did, and accept coming back would be a journey. 

In the broken years, and on my way back from them, I had a 'shadow career' in the restaurant industry. While unofficially it involved some of my deepest skills and core values, it was not the most healthy environment for me. I kept my dream of returning to Health and Wellness Coaching alive through part-time work, staying in touch with my school and more than anything, believing I would circle back to my dreams of making a difference the way my heart longed for; through coaching, speaking and writing. 

Sometimes, when we are terrified of embracing our true calling, we’ll pursue a shadow calling instead. That shadow career is a metaphor for our real career.
Steven Pressfield

I was rose-colored when I left my last restaurant job, that I would jump back into the healing waters of my happy twenties, following my bliss right through every setback, making my vision board come to life a second time. Hec, I had done it before! And I am grateful  to say that since I relaunched, I've had consistent, meaningful work with clients. But in terms of how hard it was going to be to get back into 'manifestation mode', boy was I naive!  Something significant happened between my first flight into my dream vs. my second. I broke a wing. And flapping the broken wing in vain to just will my dream, desire it, manifest it, get excited about it (DAMMIT!), caused more harm than good. But I could not acknowledge or see the broken wing, or what it represented, let alone listen to it. It was in the way. The harder I tried to bypass it and fly anyways, the more I was actually 'efforting,' disconnected from and injuring myself. 

In all my glorious stubbornness, I tried harder. I learned more about what it actually takes to be an entrepreneur, and rolled up my sleeves. I sweat. I was no-nonsense. I strategized and when that didn’t work, I re-strategized. In response, my body shut down more, my health waned…. a resistance inside me escalated that I distrustfully accused of being self-sabotage. ‘I am not trying hard enough!’ Well, this approach wasn’t the magic I used to know. I felt like magic had left me. I tried everything to woo her back. This coming back to my dream was feeling more like a complicated mess, stalled out, stuck, heavy, forced. Would I ever feel magic again? 

As the universe so wisely brings us treasure in the places we suffer, (those wounds can be the very map to our healing and redemption if we let them), when I no longer felt capable or good about braking myself through walls as a strategy to move forward, I tried something else. I started to listen. I let myself see this broken wing. Focusing exclusively on magic and feeling good, or sheer entrepreneurial willpower, was insulting and cruel to this fractured wound. 

I started to make this wing my priority. I stopped saying ‘you should be healed by now.’ Instead I let go. Then I reached for control. And then I let go. Repeat cycle. Again, again and again. It became a practice to let go and listen to my pain, turning towards it instead of away.  It felt messy and unnerving, but it was better than body slamming through walls. Healers showed up instead of business connections. School showed up instead of teaching workshops. Grace had never left me, but the flow had entirely different plans than I 'thought' I had for myself. As always, Grace’s plan for me was infinitely more loving than mine, in this case my limited human demand of ‘returning to my old life or bust.’ 

Grace wanted me to heal. She wanted me to get to be a full human who matters right now, in my brokenness as much as wholeness. One who gets to take up space feeling what I never felt safe to feel. Grace filled me with healing and training opportunities I could not think to ask for in my limited Taurean-4-locked-hooves, stubborn approach. (Like astrology? Short lesson is Taurus = stubborn). New classmates enliven me with their courage to feel through their own wounds. In the safety and community of letting ourselves be real about what's hard, I release this store of stagnant energy every single time I give it a voice. 

Sacred Vulnerability is the biggest strength I know. 

The more I acknowledge and experience my broken wing, the more space I make inside where before was all that buried, unconscious pain. And don’t get me wrong, I have been ‘healing’ for years! But  love knows all. Over-intellectualizing or exploring my narrative, trying to ‘fix’ myself, even excessive spiritual practice, is not the same as FEELING. I am unlearning spiritual, emotional and physical bypass. I am being with my feelings as they come to be released. This makes space again. It feels like the  space I had in my youth to dream before I filled it up with the self protection of shattered trust.

In this space positive expectancy is a natural outcome. It's not forced and faked through the one dimensional laws of manifestation I clung to in my past. I am not resisting my pain. It moves like a river in me. A river is life, it brings me to hope and joy as naturally as sadness, anger and fear. I don’t have to fight the negativity anymore. I don’t have to treat any one part of myself as ‘in the way’. My authentic experience is the way. I am learning how to let go and surrender to this river.

My broken wing will heal in her time. It's not when I am yelling to hurry up, that is self abuse. I apologize for trying to leave her in the shadows. Her pain is the very path to my wholeness. She is my wholeness. And finally, stubborn horns pulled out from the walls of my recent past, I let my Higher Self reorder how my journey unfolds. I throw the outdated need to control, hustle, or try to be good enough away.

Spirit has been right here all along. This is my miraculous path, it's what is actually happening.  It leads to full recovery and wellbeing, as I stop wrestling, denying my feelings or thinking the plans in my head are far superior. Grace never stopped coming for me. I am just done blocking it. 

Love never stopped helping me with the easiest path back to itself.

I can say wholeheartedly, the foundation dreams are built on is a many factored thing. And yes, I still believe in the power of manifestation, a positive mindset and exalted emotions. But without the other wing, that focus can do more harm than good. For me, I affectionally call the balance I needed to restore, Two Wings. I need all of me, including the broken, forsaken, grieving and despaired, in order to come back to life and fly. I need to be with the full weight of my heartbreak. In the wake of resistance towards my pain, light and spaciousness can enter. I receive the FEELING of loving myself (and therefore others, life and my dreams) FULLY. 

Let's love with every feather, feeling and prayer.

I’ll see you on the way home, 
Love Erin 

Hummingbird stands for renewal -Ted Andrews