The Death of Sad Girl

Becoming YOU is no small feat. 


Letting go of the identities we take on who were created to protect us is terrifying. “But how will I survive?” is the nagging question. 


“How will I ever find love if I don’t need to be saved?” was my specific question. [heartbreak]


My main identity was The Girl Who Needed Saving. I call it the child of Disney & Scapegoat. Part Happily Ever After, Part the-only-way-for-me-to-fit-into-my-family-system-was-to-be-the-problem. The only way I found love/connection/bonding/belonging as a child was by abandoning myself. Mix in a little Feminine Shadow and being born into a world mostly concerned with profit and production (a world where I don’t fit in), and you have the reasoning behind my desire to be rescued.


Chiron in Gemini 


Intelligence was not highly valued in my home. Getting good grades, yes. Thinking for yourself? No. Questions were not permitted. “Do what you’re told because we said so” was the main vibe towards the kids. I learned that speaking my mind was the direct route to getting in trouble. Getting in trouble meant being punished. Being punished meant no love. I was a brave little girl but constant punishment wears you down. I’m only human. Teenage Rebellion got me out of my parent's house but into a long-held pattern of finding men who would “save” me. Turns out, I don’t like being saved. 

“I am out with lanterns looking for myself.” - Emily Dickinson 


“There are years that ask questions, and years that answer.” -Zora Neale Hurston  


12TH HOUSE PROFECTION YEAR

“Saturn matures at age 35.”- @umijenevieve 


Age thirty-five is not only the completion of a seven-year cycle (The number seven is big in evolution) but a 12th House Profection Year. 


“You'll almost instantly notice a shift toward twelfth house topics that will be present for the entire time you're that age.”


The 12th House represents the Unconscious. 

“The 12th house encompasses the accumulation of our souls’ experiences over many lifetimes. It’s the final house of our birth charts and holds the pain, karma, and unconscious memory from our past. By healing these wounds and surrendering our ego selves, we reveal the cosmic source of all things.” - tarot.com


“The twelfth house year. It’s just being with yourself. It’s feeling things inside of you that have needed your attention for far longer than you’ve known. ” - Alice Sparkly Cat 

“What do the Hermit card and a 12th House Profection year have in common? For starters, both the year and the tarot card indicate a journey of self-reflection that often takes place in solitude. This journey can feel as if we’re in a cosmic limbo as we navigate the intricacies of ourselves. The 12th house profection year focuses on mental health, confinement, and seclusion.” - patheos.com

I spent my thirty-fifth year isolated, living in a restored Gypsy Wagon in the west county of Sebastopol, CA. Mostly my time was spent listening to music, writing & crying. 

“I do declare, there were times when I was so lonesome

I took some comfort there, la la la la la la la”

- The Boxer, Simon & Garfunkel 


“There are parts of you that want the sadness. Find them out. Ask them why.” - Yrsa Daley- Ward

By this time I knew I had been running and that my time was up. I knew this was it. My last chance. I knew if I didn’t do this emotional work for myself then I would not be able to get my life together and I knew I would never be happy. I felt like I owed it to myself to give myself a happy life after all I’d been through and I knew I could do the emotional work, I just didn’t want to. There was a big build-up. I also knew by this point that killing myself was not going to happen. Turns out, it’s not so easy to die and I finally decided if I wasn’t going to die I was going to have to find a way to live. So I committed to myself. I never ever wanted to be a mother but slowly I learned how to nurture myself better through my years of being a nanny. My love for the kids I cared for showed me how to love myself. I utilized my old strategy of finding characters in books and movies and used words and phrases I heard them use that felt good to my system. Little by little, my inner child and inner teenager started to trust me. Gaining their trust is my proudest accomplishment. Their trust is what enabled me to sit with them and finally feel the desperate pain that had been nagging at me for my entire life. The pain that wouldn’t allow me to find happiness until it was seen, heard, acknowledged, held, and loved. What my pain needed was to be owned, by me and me alone. It was MY pain. I wasn’t making it up, I wasn’t being a baby, I wasn’t crazy, and I wasn’t overreacting. I experienced that pain at a time when it threatened my survival and pushed it away, trying desperately to forget about it. But my body didn’t forget and whenever I got myself to a place where I thought I could be happy, the pain stuck in my body would come up to be seen and I would fall back into old, self-destructive habits. I used to get so angry at my pain and from this angry place I would punish myself. “WHY CAN’T YOU JUST GO AWAY AND LEAVE ME ALONE”, I’d scream and cry. I didn’t realize at the time the pain was a part of me who was trying to tell me something. And that when I got mad at it, I was getting mad at myself, and when I punished it, I was punishing myself, and when I pushed it away, I was pushing away myself. I fought against myself for so many years and didn’t even know it because I had detached myself from my pain to such a degree. But I didn’t give up on myself. I kept reading about what to do with heavy emotions. Everyone says you have to go into them and let them consume you, feel them completely, breathe into them, and dance with them like they’re the loves of your fucking life, and only then will they move. So I did (and I do). I dance with myself, I breathe deeply, I scream with my rage. I sit with my grief like a best friend. I cry and cry and cry. I used to think that crying would kill me. I lay on my back and kick my legs and punch pillows like a child throwing a tantrum and sweet talk myself after. Sometimes, a lot more recently, I start laughing during the crying. Sometimes it feels as if I’ve just done some overly intense workout and all I can do is lay in my bed for the rest of the day, in awe of how much pain I’ve been carrying. Sometimes I wonder how many tears have fallen from my eyes, I wonder how many gallons I could fill, if my tears could create rain that covers the entire Earth. Sometimes I still fall back into old patterns of numbing and I let that be ok, too. 


I was so hard on myself for so many years, hating myself, hating my emotions. Why did everyone else seem so together when I felt like an uncontrollable fire tornado, spinning in every direction, destroying everything in my path? “Well, my sweetest girl, there are some very good reasons why,” I lovingly remind myself. 


“If it makes you happy then why are you so sad?” - Sheryl Crow 


“Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.” - David Foster Wallace 

I had been taking classes through Maryam Hasnaa’s incredible portal, New Earth Mystery School, and deeply resonated with what she was teaching. She created a new offering called Etheric Gardening and every cell in my being knew this is what my heart wanted. Etheric Gardening is all about connecting with the subtle realms, our Own Inner Guidance & Our Connection To All That Is. With tears in my eyes, I enrolled. When I decided to join Etheric Gardening everything began to change. You are gifted 12 different flower essences with the course and the flowers reminded me of The Real Me. After years of experiencing great loss, heartbreak & grief just for being myself, I felt alone and in despair. I had abandoned myself, pushing The Real Me far away, and Self-Hatred had taken over. I had forgotten who I was. I had forgotten myself. I had forgotten my own essence, my own love. The flowers reminded me how my own love felt. The flowers guided me home, to my heart. Flower essences work with you on a subtle level; they connect with your bio-energetic fields. When you work with flowers, they don’t have biases or projections or distortions of who you are like humans do; you can’t trigger a flower. They are completely neutral. It was the most transformative experience I’ve ever had, the most I’ve ever cried, and the closest I’ve ever felt to my True Nature. 

THE RE-OPENING OF MY HEART 


IDENTITY/EGO DEATH/REBIRTH

The identity who “got me through” (My Protector Identity) was also a destructive part; My Wounded Ego. An expert at creating thick walls to keep the pain at bay (and keep love away). A pro-runner. A game player. Someone terrified of True Intimacy. A very, very scared little girl. 


My death has been long, drawn out & resistant. Dying is hard. Letting go is scary. When you’ve spent your entire life being one person and then find another part of you who is so different, it’s jarring. “You” feels more like the part born from the wound because you’ve been her for so long. The Real Me is someone I am still in the process of remembering. What I do know, is that I will never stop choosing her. 


“My mama always used to tell me: ‘If you can’t find somethin’ to live for, 

you best find somethin’ to die for.” - Tupac Shakur


“The World breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong in the broken places.” - Ernest Hemingway