When if ever have i felt whole?

By Ellie Brown

When hiking down a mountain trail my favorite parts are the curves up ahead on the trail. For a moment you feel this lovely sense of anticipation and excitement for what lies around the bend. I also love the sounds I hear along the path that may give me clues as to what is in store on this mini journey I have embarked on. Rustling in the trees may turn out to be a chipmunk or squirrel gathering edible treasures for a colder season, or maybe a lovely birdsong or the babbling noises of a brook can be heard ahead.

Life’s Twisting Path On our longer life journey we can at times live with a sense of excitement or adventure about the journey we are on with all its wonderful surprises. But if you’ve lived very long you will note that many of the surprises are anything but wonderful, and we can often feel devastated and broken from the unexpected setbacks that we encounter as we round the bends, twists and curves in life’s road. Death, heartache in romance, political unrest, personal failures, and financial setbacks etc can often lead to feelings of hopelessness and even fear to move ahead. So How Do I Move Ahead? We obviously have to move ahead, and we do, but in what state? When we feel in pain, or like a failure, or a plethora of other emotions that assail us in difficult times...and even when things are good do we really feel whole? When, If Ever, Have I felt Whole? Have you ever asked yourself that question? I did recently. Most of my life wholeness has been a concept that has eluded me. It was like those sounds around the bend in the road that beckoned me but I never felt I could entirely round the bend to make sense of what really was calling me in the first place. I can remember difficult times when I thought to myself that I needed to find alignment but I had never experienced what that might mean. I was never exposed to yoga, chakras, meditation or many tools that lead to alignment. I was taught to pray but mainly to confess my shortcomings and ask for things I wanted. Somehow that really never felt like a focus on alignment or wholeness. In fact I think I may have believed I could never really be whole. It would be arrogant to think so. Recently the idea of wholeness came up for a project through my work and I realized I never truly had felt a whole comprehension of it. (Pun intended lol) Attempting Wholeness In my first attempts at wholeness I focused on everything positive about myself in hopes of feeling more and more pumped and whole about who I am, but this never worked. I didn’t feel whole thinking like that. Something was missing. A hunger to understand myself and life has led me to read and research such things incessantly. Through this searching I came across information on the shadow side and mirroring in relationships. As I read I realized that I had been avoiding the thought of my shadow side or all the parts of me that weren’t my favorite. I decided that if I was ever going to figure out much about life I should start by taking an honest look at every part of myself. A Breakthrough So I took the plunge and I looked…. And it was like rounding that bend finally. I was being honest with myself and it was hard, but I was okay with it! I saw things that I really wasn’t thrilled about but as I looked I felt self-empathy. I knew it was going to be okay because I felt I had the space in my heart to hold all of these things with compassion and care, and because of that care I would grow in the ways I needed to in my shadow side and in my light. That was the first moment in my life where I felt a total healthy love for myself. My Whole Self Since then I have felt a much greater ability to love and accept others because of these genuine realizations of my wholeness. And when you are whole you are full, sometimes even full to overflowing. And my fullness and wholeness is overflowing out of me and into the world. You Really Can Find Wholeness I want to encourage you and inspire you as well to seek wholeness. Ask the hard questions about who you are and where you are on the winding path of life. It will be well worth your while!