I was a caterpillar, crawling through life; when I found a beautiful plant and spun my cocoon. As I metamorphasisized and grew my wings, I thought about how grateful I was, for the hibernation. For I had only experienced life from one perspective. When my wings had grown, The struggle began as I broke free from the confines of my cocoon. I thought of how the fight and the change; no matter how hard it was, no matter how much it hurt, no matter how much pain it caused, was going to be worth it. I was no longer going to see the world just from the ground. When the time finally came and I spread my wings, I could fly. Bright, bold and rainbow I used my wings to fly high. I let the wind blow me around. I was happy. I needed to learn, and then when I established control, I could see from above and I could fly down below and I could sit on a plant like before. I could see the world from 2 different perspectives, and it allowed me to be free. The watcher and the experiencer. The best of both worlds. Once I could fly, I never once looked back on the struggle in the cocoon. I had a whole new way to look at everything.
I manifested what I desired
most when I was a child. I fell in love
with the tale of Sleeping Beauty and the little Princess Aurora. I wanted to fall asleep and get awoken with
the kiss of a handsome Prince and live happily ever after. You see Aurora was also the Roman name of the
Goddess of the Dawn and this intrigued me like never before. I wanted to be her so badly. I can remember listening to the record on my
tiny record player and turning the pages in the book when the little bell went
off. I dreamed of this, I escaped to it.
Books became my go-to. I loved reading and I loved to write. I can
remember the librarian telling me that I should never judge a book by its cover
and she would read the stories I wrote to the class during library time. When
things got bad I could escape into a book, become the main character and use my
imagination. I loved myths and fairy tales
and saw them as real, I never thought someone would spend the time writing down
something that wasn’t true in the past.
I could tell the difference between fiction and non-fiction. I knew from a very young age that even those
fiction romance novels had some basis and came from somewhere.
I suffered several splits
in my personality due to trauma at various stages of my life and when I was 19
I suffered a catastrophic split that essentially put me to sleep
developmentally. A fracture in my psyche
basically kept me at the age of 19 and I was going through life, learning,
living, surviving but never mentally growing.
I was attaining knowledge but storing it for future reference. I was functioning but not at the level I
always wanted to. I wasn’t excelling, I
was not growing, I was stuck, and I knew it.
I was in a prison in my mind just waiting to break out. If that prison
wasn’t bad enough I put my mind into a state of solitary confinement to protect
what was left of my innocence and my inner child that always seemed to get
hurt. I allowed people to hurt me but constantly broke free of them, just not
myself. I could not open the door to
that cell because I was not ready. I had
to raise my children. They had become my purpose, but I didn’t have very many
tools in my toolbox and I did the best that I could with what I had. When they were young it was easy because I
loved to do things that kids liked to do.
I took them to baseball, I had them in Beavers and Cubs. They both played Lacrosse. We often went
fishing and I took them to family gatherings with my parents. I carried a huge guilt because I was in
school full-time learning to be a Registered Nurse and I was working full time
to support them because my pension from Veteran’s Affairs was not enough and at
this time they did not pay for education. After I finished my education because
I was a Nurse I often had to work nights, weekends, holidays and my boys paid
the price. Because I was busy trying to keep the roof over my son’s head and
provide for them they became more dependant on their social circle and I then
became a street mom, which I did not mind because I loved the company and it
was like I had my own little wolf pack and I was the Den Leader. I got denied my chance to be a leader in the
Military but here maybe I could mould some young minds. What I didn’t realize
is when my children were teenagers I was developmentally still a teenager, sort
of frozen in time. I became a friend to my children instead of
their mother and there were major respect issues. I look back and I had been taught to not
respect myself so how could I have ever taught my Son’s to respect me. I had no
self-worth, no self-esteem and didn’t think I was competent or capable due to my
conditioning from my family, my teachers, and society in general.
When my youngest Son turned
18 there was an actual physical separation between my Sons’ and I which I
needed. A break from the teenage world I had been submersed in and was
stuck. I moved to the Reserve to be with
what I thought was my Prince Charming, the man who was going to ride out of the
sunset and save me and essentially, he did, but not in true story book
fashion. You see I had failed to read
Blackbeard or maybe I did and just never thought it would happen to me (although
it already had twice). I started to finally settle and feel safe and reconnect
with my environment. I started to feel
at peace and come out of my cocoon or self-imposed prison just a little bit. I started in a controlled environment of
going back to University again. I
enrolled in Indigenous Studies and I started to see my children again but began
to establish boundaries which they are still learning to adjust to and I began
by aggressively setting them.
My moment of waking up did
not come from a kiss by my Prince, it was a blow to the head via cell
phone. It was a culmination of all my
abuse and it was like a white light surrounded me and woke me completely
up. I could see again and feel again,
and I knew what I wanted, what I needed and what I would accept. I just needed to learn how to communicate it
as I still had the social skills of a child.
I had been asleep, and the world had really changed. It was different, I
saw it in a different way. I could see what was real and what was fake and there
was validation in it. My good friend said she had heard what I was talking
about referenced as “sleepwalking” through life. I had essentially learned the skills to
survive and cope during crisis, but I had stored the knowledge necessary to
allow me to grow deep in my subconscious.
I was awake but sleeping, what a concept.
When all of this came into clarity for me I was sitting with my psychiatrist Dr. Thirlwell and her friend Celyne and we were talking about how positive thinking really does change things and if we think our lives are shit, they will be and that every single person has the ability to manifest what they desire most but most people are veiled to this. Asleep. I had the good fortune of being able to wake up and see clearly. I then realized that I had truly manifested what I most desired as a child, I became my own version of Sleeping Beauty. I had gone to sleep and raised my children while doing this and woke up at the same age as them mentally, emotionally and developmentally. I am physically older than them, their mother but my brain stayed stuck. My youngest son says he describes me to his friends as “An adult with a child-like mind.” I see this as a good thing, not a bad. He sees me and accepts me even with all the mistakes I made. He understands so that cannot mean that I did a horrible job raising him. I never wanted my children to end up like me, just like I never wanted to be my Mom but honestly if they have a little bit of me in them, I will be very proud. I do have values and I cannot change the past, all I can do now is lead by example and manifest beautiful things with words of gratitude and thankfulness. I can live my dreams, I can imagine things into existence. I can make something (me) out of nothing (what I thought I was) which I have been doing since I woke up.
