Learning To Find Peace

The chaos in my mind reached its crescendo last August making life feel unbearably hard. I knew that this cacophony of noise was unsustainable for a healthy life. I have lived with this tornado of thoughts, feelings, and emotions for as long as I can remember, and while there was nothing out of the ordinary that I can think of to cause it to get out of hand, it just did. If I am being completely honest, my headspace has gotten out of hand in the past, but I have always been able to temporarily fix things so that I could go on living the life of a homeschooling, homemaking mama and wife. 

Maybe everything came to a head because I was tired of fighting the warring thoughts in my head daily, hourly, minute by minute. I have been doing so for so long that I think my aging body and mind just said ENOUGH. And as hard as this process has been to begin to deconstruct all that I think I am and all that I think I believe, both about myself and the larger world around me, I know in the deepest parts of myself that this process is vital to finding peace within. 

I have often read that the mind/body connection is real and runs deep. While I could conceptualize that connection for others and maybe even myself, I truly did not understand this depth until my physical body raised some fire alarms almost two years ago. These external issues were the direct result of untreated internal issues, and I did what I have always done when a fire breaks out - I put the fire out but did not address what caused the fire in the first place. 

I knew last August, when a three-alarm fire started within, and I did not have enough water to put it out on my own that I had to find the root causes of these fires because they were only getting worse, and my ability to put them out was becoming more and more ineffective. I didn't want to burn anymore. I didn't want to feel the rising heat from the friction my warring insides were causing. A phoenix can only rise so many times from its own ashes before the strength needed to pull itself together - even just one more time - becomes an obstacle it cannot overcome. I did not/could not just exist as a shell of a human being because my insides were scorched. I wanted to heal. I wanted to grow beautiful things within, so that I could finally learn how to live and love the whole of me - mind, body, and soul. 

And so, last September, after burning out of control all August, I began the process of putting in the work to stop the fires and to start nurturing and nourishing the spaces in my head, so that it could help to heal my heart. I have a long journey ahead of me. What I thought would be a simple solution for the first few months of treatment, I can see now that this process is anything but simple. It is hard and complex. It makes me cry and rage and feel sorrow, but it is also healing me. I am just beginning to see some of the first sprouts of life within as 
I learn different techniques to understand my fires and why they happen. And this is good. 

I do not have blissful days every day...yet. The civil war inside has been going on for so long that it won't just stop with a trick or an easy strategy, and it might still rage for a long time before it subsides, but I do know that I will get there. One day the warring words and thought patterns will subside and there will be only peace within. That thought propels me through my hard days and encourages me to keep on putting in the work. 

Because I deserve peace.