This week I lost the battle with my self.

The one I have been fighting most of my life.

And it feels wonderful. Because my self has won. And surely that is what we are all here for, to set our selves free in this world.

We are taught to win, so we fight hard… but when we lose the battle with our selves, it means we have won our ultimate freedom.

It is surely the definintion of insanity to be at war with ourselves. Yet we are taught from an early age to do it, in order to fit in. We battle ourselves, judge ourselves, do origami of the soul to fit the world. The less normal we are the more we have to fold. Until we are constricted.

It was on reading this post by Leonie, that the pieces started to fall into place, like someone opening a window on my inner world. Every dot that had been scattered around like stars suddenly formed into constellations.

Everything I had been struggling with, wrestling with as I made my way in this world, fell into stark relief. Suddenly, for the first time in my life I fitted in somewhere.

I cannot tell you the relief. That I could lay down my battle with myself, that attempt to play normal, whilst knowing that normal people didn’t struggle this hard to do normal life.

Suddenly I got that I don’t need to make myself function in the way normal people can. I can just be myself, do the world in my way, because suddenly it’s not just me being awkward: it’s my body, my brain responding in the way that hundreds of others just like me do. This is a different normal. My normal. And it’s OK.

It has helped me to lay down my inner battle with my parents too, in the clarity of why we react to life the way we do, and the reasons we can drive each other mad. This is a paradigm shift and I have lived it. Going from partial, incomplete, I feel like Dorothy, home from the Land of Oz. Everything has fallen into place.

And this is just one significant layer in the sudden AHA which ended the battle. It was a birthing process of the soul which I had to take to be able to finish my next book, Burning Woman.

Each book I write brings with it a gift, a shift for me, a journey I need take. When I accept the invitation to write I know that I am accepting the invitation to wonder/ wander into the unknown and take note on the process. This is my commitment to me, and to you. Each time it scares me and thrills me in almost equal measure, because the journey will require that I unturn what has lain hidden, unblock what has lain blocked, and see what I have refused.

Each time it breaks me open. And I am deeply grateful for the gift.

Clearer and clearer my vision, as the misty veils lift.

The hazy island in the distance, suspended in the sea in the gentle morning light. The soft wind on my cheek, the bare trees, I am home, birthed to myself, I am in my homeland, in myself.

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