Maelstrom

This year held tough times for me. My ongoing difficulties became snagged on the many branches of external circumstance, and thus tangled, they began to concentrate and crystallise. Over several weeks and months, they became encapsulated, solidifying into more thorny snares.  

But life didn’t stop rushing by, and as the weeks passed I found myself entangled in flotsam and stained with dirty foam, increasingly obstructed until soon I was washed against an impassable barricade while the rising tide became a torrent. And despite my sustained efforts to extricate myself, the water continued to crash around me, louder and louder until I realised I was clinging at the edge of a growing whirlpool.

The edge of the maelstrom is relentless. It never lets up. The danger is constant, and you can not relax your vigilance, not for a moment. But the only way out of a storm is through it. With the gale whipping around me, I barely had to energy to keep afloat, and not enough to propel myself to safety. So the only way I could escape was to let go completely, and allow myself to be washed into the vortex.

And in that moment of release I discovered that the thing I had been holding onto the hardest was my most tightly gripped secret – my disability.

To surrender, I had to make a stand, tell my story, speak my truth. And at the right moments, and in my own unconventional ways, I did. I did, with my intuition, and my presence, and my words. It was risky, and confronting. For a while the storm howled even louder, and the water kept rising. But the truth locked inside my body had its own power, and the kinetic force of its release ignited a fierce alchemical heat in me. For weeks my skin burned with it, and my hands shook with it, and my words grew stronger, and they did not stop flowing until that truth was heard and acknowledged.

I am so damn proud of the way I conducted myself in the middle of such a deep and all-consuming crisis. So, so proud.

Even in that storm-gouged space, with danger close and my strength failing, I responded from a place of integrity, and with compassion. When backed into an impenetrable corner, I reached first for my core values. And in that moment, in that clear space, I was blessed with support from people who met my truth and integrity and compassion with their own, and who helped me to higher ground. My impossible, impassable situation became navigable again. 

So, regardless what I’ve forgotten this year, what I’ve failed at, what I’ve been criticised for, or what people think they know about me that’s weird or embarrassing or hilarious, I have this: knowing that I brought my best self and acted from my highest values in deeply difficult circumstances. And by taking a stand for my own integrity, I’ve challenged other people to do the same.