My mind casts back three years to where it all began. Madly in search of something but never quite grasping it, I lost myself for a long, long time. Soothed only in moments by bursts of distraction, escapism and seeking thrills. The highs never matched the dark and desperate lows I met with year after year, and yet the perpetual outward search continued.

This seemingly never-ending battle with everything within and around me built and built, until there was not a single thing left to destruct. My inner world lay bare, weak in body I felt so desperately broken.

I won’t lie and say I bounced back and it all was up-hill from here, because it really wasn’t like that. In reality this was where I sat for months on end, in the dark depths of my pain. Afraid, alone, fraught, I was left with no choice but to sit with it all. Detaching, distrusting, diving into all the feelings I had never given a voice to. The unravelling began. I came back into my body as soon as I started to actually feel again.

Maybe this came when it was supposed to, maybe my soul left my body for a while until I was ready to face the many layers of trauma I had experienced over the years. Although the quest for the why’s will forever keep me curious, what really matters is how. And that answer to that? It’s love.

In those dark, dark times my heart was painfully (yet so beautifully) cracked open. I held myself in nothing but love, and the nights I thought I couldn’t go on I would look to moon and feel love. I prayed for love and saviour, only to come to learn I had to save myself.

Little by little I began to take loving steps somewhere other than backwards. Some days a simple nature walk was a big step and some days it was as mighty as leaving alcohol and my unaligned life behind.

I met with the most magical of divine interventions just a few months on, a day I will never forget for as long as I live. At a sports game illuminated by the summer’s sun beneath layers of make-up, alcohol and a forced smile, it was yet another one of those days I neglected myself for others, my inner world so painfully far from the external radiance I seemed to beam. And yet I carried on.

Until the moment when I came to find my seat and saw that somebody had taken it. I was left with no choice but to put my drink down and seek out another place to sit. In that moment, the kindest, radiant soul appeared to welcome me to their spare seat. That man of beaming love and light I’d go on to learn was Adam, a life coach! That man I thank the stars for still to this day. I became his client and his guidance and insight were the catalyst to changes in my life so far beyond imagination for my mind to fully wrap around, but that’s okay, my heart knows.

To both the simple and the magnificent, I thank you. To all the people and things that cracked me open, and all those that hold me as I heal, I thank you.

It is, and we all are, love.