Lost in the depths
Insomnia is one of my oldest friends. I had just as much trouble staying asleep when I was a child as I do now, but back then it was new, and therefore terrifying and lonely. One of my strategies as a little one, wide awake in the night, was to make up stories for myself. I’d use that exuberant imagination of mine to create a fantasy world, and sometimes I’d get lucky enough that the fantasy would slip into a dream and I would escape into sleep once more.
My bedroom was painted blue, with a white ceiling. Where the walls met the ceiling, the line of color was hand-drawn and a little bit wobbly. In the dark hours of the morning, I looked up at those walls and imagined that they were glass, and that the ripples of paint were waves. My room became a little island of air down deep under an ocean, and the walls that stretched so high above me were actually glass. I lay there imagining I could see the shadows of huge sea-beasts swimming past my little glass chamber. In some ways, I was like them: hidden away, down in the depths, where the sunlight didn’t reach.
In my fancies, I also saw great ships sailing on the seas above. Sometimes those ships were beset by storms and I saw tiny sailors falling into the vast water around me, sinking to their deaths. I wondered if those men had stories about me, the creature in the depths, watching them in their tall ships? Were there legends about me, just as there were legends about whales and sharks? A vibrant world floated way above me in those long, dark, nights. Sometimes is was fun and enchanting. Sometimes I felt so bereft and lonely that my chest ached.
I’ve been thinking about this memory a lot lately, mostly because the isolation of the pandemic dredged up that peculiar blend of wonder and loneliness. Living alone in these woods, without an office to go into, has led to one of the most productive and creative times in my life. My imagination has allowed me to create so many things: an oracle deck, two little books, and more than a dozen paintings. That little dreamer inside of me is making the most of her time alone, and part of me doesn’t want to lose that space for creativity when the world starts to speed up again.
Another part of me, though, feels that old ache of loneliness and longs for connection. She’s tired of doing it all by herself, of feeling like some inverse Rapunzel: hidden in dark, stormy depths rather than perched high in a tower. Or, perhaps the more obvious Disney-fied fairy tale reference would be to Ariel, The Little Mermaid. Girlfriend, I, too, “want to be where the people are.”
With the perspective I have now, as a coach and a student of Jungian archetypes, I see that it is no coincidence that little-girl-me saw herself submerged in deep waters. The ocean is a powerful archetype for our emotions. To grow up in a house where emotions weren’t allowed meant that she felt completely isolated and overwhelmed by them. She saw herself as strange and dangerous for having them, absorbing her parents’ fears of any emotional display.
I’ve since grown up to be a person dedicated to healing emotional wounding, in myself and in others. It has become the fascination of my life to learn how people become who they are, and how they can shed their early conditioning to become even more true to their beautiful selves. And yet, holding space for others during a pandemic allowed me to slip into a familiar, but distinctly uncomfortable persona. I felt like I needed to pretend I was fine in order to prove myself as a healer and a mentor. But in truth, I hit that pandemic wall hard in January and February. I had to break down and confess to others that I was struggling, that I felt lost and completely alone.
And so I met and embraced the little girl at the bottom of the sea. I felt that crushing pain of loneliness with her and together we tried to imagine a different ending. We took the terrifying leap of asking for help, and help was indeed there.
A very wise friend of mine told me that we do not go to healers or teachers who have always had it all figured out. We go to the people who have struggled and found their way through. I love my work with clients deeply — it has given me such a feeling of purpose, of connection, of joy. And I promise that each time I sink into the depths once more, I do my damndest to come back with more hard-won wisdom to share.
