The Long and Winding Road

Have you heard this beautiful and haunting song by the brilliant Paul McCartney? It called to me as a child, I would listen to it over and over again without realizing it, I was on the Long and Winding Road.

The road to healing, recovery, becoming, or finding home is not a straight or simple path. It is a long and winding road. 

My good friend Michelle Frink, who is an energetic wizard calls it the “Spiral of Growth”, because energetically it is exactly that. We follow a spiral path, around and around gaining perspective with each cycle. 

When I was a young girl I would listen to this song on a record player at my neighbors house. I was drawn in my the melancholy melody and lyrics. I would sing along and feel the underlying sorrow and longing to find this place, your door.

At the time, for me, it was a love song of longing for a lost beloved who was far away. I didn’t realize it was the cry of my heart to find myself. I didn’t realize I was the lost beloved of my own heart. The longing I felt was for myself. The desire and cry within was to find the inner door to Home. 

The bible calls our body a temple. (1 Corinthians 6:19, John 2:21). It also refers to our bodies as earthen vessels or jars of clay (2 Corinthians 4:7). I like this reference more because it indicates our connection to earth. But both are symbolic of our human body being the house or container of something sacred, divine, light, spirit or other. I call this part of us our Essence. Many refer to it as our Soul. 

We have this tension between being human and being “god”. As a person who has deconstructed out of evangelical christianity, I like to refer to this as Consciousness or Life. I use capital letters to denote that it is the something larger, infinite, powerful and intelligent. It is the Creator and Source. It is outside of us, inside of us and is us. It is the Observer within that lives through us. In this Consciousness we live and move and have our being.

I do not see myself as “god”, but as one with

Consciousness and all that is. I have had experiences that I will share in coming blogs that affirm this to me. I see us all as co-creators, divinity living in a human vessel.

Finding home took me a life time. I share my story to help those who are looking for home. Perhaps they do not know, I surely didn’t know until I found it. Then, I knew, ahhhh, home, this feeling, this since of peace and safety, is what I have been longing for.

For years I thought it was love, and love did lead me to where I needed to be, but love was only the key to the door of home. Home is a place of sanctuary and belonging.  Belonging, firstly to Life, then myself , and now I am working on cultivating a sense of belonging with others.

This long and winding road, as you will read, for me was a path of tears and pain, but also joy and victories. It has been a journey of shedding skins. Like a snake growing and transforming I slithered along slowly.  I felt blind and lost much of the time, but I saw wondrous sights along the way. Received divine and supernatural encouragement. People came along my path at just the right time, playing their roles perfectly to remove my blinders, so that I could see more clearly.

My story unfolded as it needed to. My path led me to where I thought home was for me, Yeosu, South Korea. It was there that everything crumbled. My hopes, dreams and desires for what I thought was home disintegrated before my eyes and there was nothing I could do to stop it. It mirrored my worst trauma and made me face my deepest fears and grief. I was wrong, it wasn’t home, but I was on the right path, it was the birthplace of Home. It was here that I arrived at the door of my own heart and knocked. I arrived and said, “I will love you more, I will love you the most. I will love you more than the others. More than family, friend, husband or child.”

Do I detect a silent gasp at these words?

Love yourself more.! The MOST! How selfish! Women have been taught to sacrifice themselves for everyone else to the detriment of their own well-being. It is time to stop. It is time to create change. It is time to leave the sacrificial system behind. We can be in service to others and fill our cups. 

In fact, it is not selfish. It is necessary. To be a good mother, wife, daughter, sister or friend, I first need to love myself fully, unconditionally and consistently. To know myself, my needs and boundaries is hugely important in my being able to properly show up for others without giving too much of myself away. If I give too much, I am not helping them, I am damaging their own ability to create home, boundaries, healthy love and belonging for themselves. It becomes a dance of co-dependence that keeps all parties involved hindered in their ability to regulate their nervous systems and to feel the stability of self love and boundaries that honor one another.

When we give too much of ourselves away through poor boundaries or not knowing our own need we loss pieces of ourselves along the way. Loss of self creates a sense of being alone in the world, longing, feeling lost, stuck, miserable, and depressed in the dark and murky shadows of self defeating beliefs. I spent a lifetime in the shadows and acted from a dark place of desperation to be normal and to belong.

In finding myself, I awakened to the remembrance of who, what I am and to my purpose. I am Love and Life having a human experience. I am a powerful co-creator of this reality. I am here to love, learn, grow, evolve, expand and mostly to enjoy this life experience.

On my path toward home I had so many difficult feelings to experience. These sometimes exquisitely painful experiences propelled me forward on my path of becoming whole. They were guideposts screaming “something is wrong, there must be more”, find your way”.

When I used to listen to this song as a young girl, I longed for this love. I thought I would find it in another person. Now, when I hear the lyrics, I see my young self waiting at the door of my heart. She was waiting there patiently for me to find my way back to myself, to home and wholeness. 

Now, I can clear, clean and claim my life in a new potent and powerful way. Before I built from fear, lack and love for others. Now, I build from strength, joy, love of self and others with intention. This is a powerful shift of being. I look forward to watching my Life unfold from this new perspective.

Is it perfect? No, I am still wobbly. My trauma still gets triggered, my nervous system activated and I have fairly strong emotional flashbacks. I am practicing; boundaries, self love, compassion and care, communication, gratitude and joy. Perfection is a myth that I chased after. I am so much more at ease and happier with my imperfect self who loves her imperfect, but magical life.

I have found home. It was a long and winding road.

Are you finding home?

Please share your story with me.

 

Lyrics to The Long and Winding Road

By Paul McCartney

The long and winding road

That leads to your door

Will never disappear

I’ve seen that road before

It always leads me here

Lead me to you door

The wild and windy night

That the rain washed away

Has left a pool of tears

Crying for the day

Why leave me standing here?

Let me know the way

Many times I’ve been alone

And many times I’ve cried

Anyway, you’ll never know

The many ways I’ve tried

And still they lead me back

To the long winding road

You left me standing here

A long, long time ago

Don’t leave me waiting here

Lead me to your door

But still they lead me back

To the long winding road

You left me standing here

A long, long time ago

Don’t keep me waiting here

Lead me to your door

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah