I Crowned Myself: My Healing Journey

The trend for bloggers is to create an aesthetic that gives readers a world that is not necessarily real but hopeful.  When I first started my blog, I thought that was the goal.  However, I have realized that I cannot show the world of healing without embracing its messiness, discomfort, awkwardness, and authenticity.  Authenticity is not always pretty on the way to becoming beautiful.  True beauty is avant-garde—it requires interpretation and seeing between the lines.  It is the beauty found in childbirth—the ugly, messy, painful event of labor, overshadowed by the moment a baby’s skin touches its mother’s chest.  That is beauty.

I am currently working on healing my root chakra.  I feel tense in my lower extremities.  I am not free.  My creator breathed freedom into me at conception, but somewhere during the formative years of my life, it was stolen from me.  Through shadow work, I realized when this happened: Kindergarten.

I attended a Christian school with very little representation of people who looked like me.  No teachers looked like me, and the student body was primarily white.  In the ’80s and ’90s, beauty was defined as “white.” As a child, I would role-play with a towel on my head to experience the feeling of flipping hair off my shoulders.  I remember a defining moment during a bathroom break at school.  I walked out of the restroom, drank water, and noticed everyone else’s skirts had an even hem.  Theirs didn’t rise in the back like mine.  I walked back into the bathroom, looked in the mirror, and realized that my bum stuck out farther than everyone else’s.  I had a sway-back.  I didn’t have the words for my self-consciousness, but I knew I could change it.  At that moment, I “straightened” my back and unknowingly began a lifetime of tightening my body, restricting my natural form.

This was compounded by constant sermons and admonitions to prevent any “jiggle” to keep men from “lusting.” I sat under teachings that used harmful language—rhetoric like, “You wonder why women get raped…” This rapist mentality permeated the church, leading me to deny my root chakra any form of rest or freedom.  I was ashamed of my body—I didn’t want to be a victim, so I bound myself up.

With my lower body locked in tension, I opened myself up to anxiety, ADHD, food addiction, overthinking, fear, and low self-esteem—the very things that kept me bound to abusive “ministries.” I lived in a bubble, lamenting the years lost.  They lasted for 35+ years.  Each year, I added a new rule, a new Christian discipline, another routine.  I was in bondage, terrified of everything, depressed—ugly.

I had to set myself free.  It wasn’t lovely. I kept going to church, believing my healing was there.  I kept going to the altar, exposing my life to “prayer warriors” and waiting for “deliverance.” I read my Bible, fasted, prayed, gave, joined, wept, and remained uncomfortably authentic—no secrets.  I was desperate for healing.  But then I realized I had to do the work.  No one sat me down to tell me.  Everyone benefited from my desire to be free, so why would they point me in the right direction? Or maybe they were just as lost as I was, merely cosplaying a lifestyle of freedom.  I don’t know.

My season of healing and freedom was a testament to my courage and strength.  So much trauma had to be uprooted.  So many memories had to be revisited.  So many emotional bones had to be broken and reset.  I had years of bad habits, destructive thoughts, word curses, misguided teachings, warped perspectives, and deep brokenness to work through.  It was ugly, awkward, uncomfortable, messy, and dark.  The roots ran deep.  I needed professional help.  Emotionally, I was a dangerous landmine.  It took psychiatrists, diagnoses, medication, therapy, counseling, solitude, nature walks, and love.  I was messy and ugly.  My body physically fought the process.  My emotions were all over the place.  I am beyond grateful for the people who pressed in when it was necessary and gave me space when I needed it.  Like a woman carrying a child, each trimester of healing carried its own protocols and pains.

I would be remiss to call this my “new birth.” I don’t feel that yet.  I have not gone into labor.  My true self is still in utero.  There are still so many things that I need to simply let go! But this ongoing journey of personal growth fills me with hope and optimism for the future.

This trimester is a season of silence and blooming.  I am allowing my root chakra to blossom.  I am celebrating the sway of my back and letting my bum jiggle—it is my gift to myself.  This is true beauty: looking at the past, knowing I never want to return, but understanding that if it never happened, I would not be free today.  I am crowned with gratitude and love for realizing that my Creator had already made me strong enough to walk through devastation and come out feminine and free.  I have embraced my past and released the need for explanations or apologies. I stand in peace, adorned with a deeper understanding of my journey. My healing is my crown, and I wear it with grace....in silence!