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The darkest hour is right before dawn

The darkest hour is right before dawn

Have you ever got to that point where everything feels hopeless? Where you can’t see the way out of the mess you are in and you just want to stick your middle finger up the world and shout FUCK OFF! That’s how I felt last week, I found myself completely exhausted, I just wanted to cry. I’ve been there before, a few times over the years, and I’ve learnt from experience that when you hit an all-time low great insights and growth are about to happen but I’ve also learnt that you need to go with the feelings, never shut them down.

We are so conditioned to be strong, be brave, to be grateful for what we do have, to hide our emotions and not show our true colours but this just makes the whole thing worse. Everything in this universe is energy and our emotions are just energy passing through us, they are literally energy in motion. If we ignore them and supress them that energy gets stuck within our body, it sits there deep within us until we release it. In time, if our emotions are continually supressed this negatively stored energy starts to build up, it turns into anger, resentment, fear, ‘pity me’ mentality and a whole host of other negative emotions we don’t want to feel. I’ve discovered that the key to releasing this is to allow our emotions to ‘just be’. Don’t fight them, don’t hold them in and absolutely don’t ignore them. They are energy which needs to be cleared and I guarantee you will feel a whole lot better when it is.

Last week I found myself at a very low point. What I’m about to tell you is extremely personal but I feel it needs to be shared. I’m not writing this post for now, I’m writing it for the future. This may sound crazy but my belief is so strong in what I share with you about how to live your dream life, that I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I will be a number one best-selling author. It’s been a belief, a vision and a dream I have held for longer than I can remember. Everything I’ve shared with you so far about following your passion, using your gifts, following the signs, trusting your instincts, letting go of perfectionism, removing the masks, accepting yourself, loving yourself and nurturing yourself and your dream like you nurture your children, it’s all part of living the dream, but there’s more, a whole lot more; more than I could ever share one blog at a time. This is why I need to write a book, it’s why I believe I am meant to do just that and it’s why my all-time low, my darkest hour, has spat me out so much stronger and a whole lot closer to that dream!

What I want to do is show you, and all those people reading this in the future, that no matter how low you get, everything happens for a reason and it’s what you do with those lows and how you grow through them that counts.

So, let me share my story with you about how I felt last week in my darkest hour.

I got up last Wednesday morning feeling completely exhausted, this is normal for me, I’m an insomniac and average 3 hours sleep on a good night but last week was different, it was worse than ‘normal’. I’ve discovered what I believe is the cause, I have a few health issues and I’m working on them as best I can but last week I felt helpless, like everything I was doing wasn’t enough and I just wanted to cry.

Financially we are desperate, in fact at the moment we are living off of a loan. I run my own business which I am very passionate about but the money is random, sometimes I earn well, sometimes I don’t. My husband lost a lucrative contract in February, and although he is back on track now, the effects were cumulative and they have now caught up with us.

Finally, it feels like my marriage is hanging on by a shoe string. With 2 kids, no babysitters, my husband working 6 days a week and longer hours than ever before, financial pressure, exhaustion and all the other things to deal with when raising a family, we literally get no time together. I’ve ‘confessed’ many times to not feeling good enough as a mother and here’s why; I shout at my children, way more than I ever thought I would or want to and my husband struggles with this a lot. He judges me and isn’t afraid to tell me what he thinks, but his disappointment only makes things worse. Whilst I’m trying to work on my health issues and my inner-self to bring more peace to myself and my home, these things take time and I need loving support. Every time I take a step forward, my husband drags me three back. It’s not intentional of course, in his role as a father he wants to protect his children, when he hears me shout he feels the need to jump in and defend them but he pulls me down and undermines me, time and time again. Last week we hit an all-time low and I literally couldn’t see how we could come through it. I am not prepared for anyone or anything to stop me on my path, anyone in your life that lowers your energy and self-esteem needs to be removed, it’s as simple as that.

So, there I was completely exhausted, ready to explode into tears at any minute, the kids fighting and screaming with all their usual demands, end of the month approaching with no income, my marriage in tatters and the thought of having to give up everything I have worked for in my business and go and get a full time job. It was bleak.

I took my youngest for her nap and lay for a while mulling it all over. I couldn’t see the woods for the trees, it all felt hopeless. It was only this blog that provided me with an inkling of hope but even those doubts started rising. I allowed the emotions to surface, I felt them all; the anger, exhaustion, frustration and sheer overwhelm of it all and in that moment I surrendered. I literally said ‘I surrender, I don’t know what else I can do, I’m doing everything I can and it’s still not enough, I’m sick of it, I give in, please just help me!’.

I woke up to the sound of my eldest daughter singing, I couldn’t believe I had fallen asleep but my god did I need it, my body was desperate for sleep and I felt so much better, in fact I spent the rest of the day feeling like Mary flipping Poppins! My energy felt high all afternoon until another disagreement with my husband left me feeling all tense again. Once the girls were sleeping soundly I picked up my phone and discovered a friend had tagged me in a post about the Transformational Author Event. I felt a little buzz of excitement run through my body and I slipped into the dining room to get my laptop. I could not believe what I was reading, the Transformational Author Event is designed to find writers, like me, who have a book in them that they need to share with the world because they believe it will help others transform their lives for the better. Every word resonated. Every cell in my body came alive. I was literally buzzing!!

I’d missed most of the free online event which takes you through a step by step process of bringing your book into reality but you could buy the mp3 package and enter into the writer’s contest which has 35 amazing prizes including the top 10 book proposals being considered for publishing by Eckhart Tolle’s publisher! OMG it was a miracle! Just hours before I couldn’t see how this could ever happen, it felt like I would have to wait years to get where I needed to be and then there, right in front of me was a golden ticket. The only thing standing in my way was the money, £180 that I didn’t have, but the energy coursing through my veins , that buzz in my body told me I had to do it, so thanks to Visa I did!

I ran into the sitting room buzzing with energy and at the speed of light relayed all the information to my husband. My energy was buzzing, I couldn’t speak fast enough. When I finished he said ‘good eh’ and looked back down at his phone. My shoulders dropped and my energy lowered. ‘Good eh! Is that all you have to say? This is my dream, it’s like you getting to race in the Formula one, it’s like an athlete winning an Olympic gold medal, this is all I’ve ever wanted!’ I said, not quite believing what had just happened and the tone in which it was delivered. He looked up and basically said he wasn’t happy about the earlier argument we had had. My energy dropped through the floor, it felt like a bag of wet sand dropping from my heart. Through my tears I said ‘there’s nothing left for me and you’ and I meant it. I went to bed and instead of buzzing with book ideas, I lay there crying my heart out, I could see no way back from this, how could I stay with someone who could bring me crashing down so drastically, who would rather hold onto a grudge over a petty argument than share in the delight of my dreams.

For the next 3 days my mood was mixed. On the one hand I was buzzing with ideas for my book, I was so grateful for the huge opportunity that I had been given but on the other hand I felt like my marriage was over, my husband hadn’t uttered a single word to me for 2 whole days. My wall was up. Then on Saturday, completely out of the blue he sent me this link to read; how to deal with a spouse who frequently shouts at the kids (I highly recommend you read it but if you don’t have time I’ll summarise it as best I can). Just to put this into perspective, my husband is not a reader like me nor does he have a deep spiritual connection like I do, well he does, we all do but he dismisses it. So the fact that he searched for an answer and found this article in particular was a true miracle. Not only did this article say everything I’ve ever wanted to say to him and have tried, but he got it, I mean really got it. He now sees that he is 50% of the problem and is prepared to do whatever it takes for our marriage and our children. I could sum the article up with this one quote:

“From the way you write the question, it appears that your wife has some understanding that her behavior is not the most productive, appropriate or most loving way of being. The anger she expresses toward the kids really has little to do with how your kids behave and most everything to do with how she feels about herself. She is, in the best way she can, asking to be helped. Her anger is an external call for help and healing. She is, in the most literal sense, yelling for help and healing”

Yes! A thousand times yes! I have said this to him so many times, I don’t shout because I want to and some may say you have a choice, you can pause in the moment and choose to act calmly but I disagree or at least partly disagree. Yes if you are feeling 100% happy, healthy and whole perhaps you can, but when you’re exhausted, sleep deprived and overwhelmed it’s not so simple, my shouting is a cry for help. It’s a cry from my soul. It’s my soul’s way of saying something isn’t right and I know that, it’s why I’m working so much on my inner-self to help heal what needs to be healed and to let go of what no longer serves me.

After reading the article I cried; I cried uncontrollably for quite some time, it was a performance worthy of an Oscar! It was tears of relief, of hope, of gratitude, of finally being heard and understood, they were tears of joy for what felt like another miracle, but his following message took me even more by surprise. ‘I tried to find your blog last night’ he wrote ‘I want to read it to try and understand you and your feelings more’ WOW! Isn’t that what we all want? To be heard and understood? For others to understand us we first have to understand ourselves, you have to be willing to look deep within and face all those demons you’ve never dared face, then you are ready to let others in.

I genuinely believe that these 2 miracles occurred because I surrendered. When you surrender you stop trying to figure it all out, you get out of your own way and allow for a force greater than yourself to step in and help. Surrender leads to miracles.

As this blog was unfolding in my life I received a message asking if I had read Eckhart Tolle’s book ‘The Power of Now’, which I hadn’t. I took this as the sign it clearly was and dusted off my copy which has been sat on my bookshelf for close to ten years, and on Monday night I read this;

“Surrender is not weakness. There is great strength in it. Only a surrendered person has spiritual power. Through surrender, you will be free internally of the situation. You may then find that situation changes without any effort on your part. In any case, you are free”.

That is exactly how I felt and exactly how I have felt every time I have surrendered in the past. As I said at the beginning, great insights and growth come when we hit an all-time low but we must learn to surrender.

If you are at a very low point in your life, if you truly feel you are at your darkest hour or find yourself this way in the future, surrender. True surrender comes from the depths of your soul, it’s a cry for help like no other. We’ve all had our fair share of tragedy but don’t let it consume you, let it change you. If you are truly at your darkest hour, surrender and know that the dawn awaits you.

I’m writing this for the future, so that one day when I ‘make it’, when I’m living the dream I envision for myself and my family, people can read it and see that I too felt despair, I couldn’t see the woods for the trees but all is not lost. The darkest hours are what push us further along our path, if only we allow ourselves to fully feel our emotions and surrender to a higher force.

It’s time to surrender, to let go of the struggle and the fight. It’s time to give in but not to give up, remember to trust that there is something better for you, you just have to be open to it, follow the signs and let your life unfold the way it’s divinely meant to do.

This week I would like to ask you a favour if I may. I’ve shared with you my deepest darkest secrets and my hopes and dreams and what I would like to ask is that you share these with others too. If my proposal wins the prize which I hope to win, the opportunity to have my proposal read by Mark Allen, the infamous Eckhart Tolle’s publisher, then Mark is going to check my blog, my facebook page and any other platforms I use to see how many followers I have, how many people comment on my blog and what they have to say. If he sees that I have few followers and comments he may love my book but he won’t believe it has an audience. So please, if you believe in me, if I have inspired you on any level to make changes, if my words get you thinking, then please follow me on facebook and twitter, comment on my blog and share share share my blog with anyone and everyone you know! I will be eternally grateful x

With love and miracles

Vicky x

p.s. Despite blabbering on about consistency in this post, I’m afraid I am going to have to be consistently less consistent if I am to write a book proposal and all the other things that go with it before my deadline of the 31st of July, so for now I will cut my blog posts to fortnightly, I hope you understand x

photo credit: mclcbooks via photopin cc