I know where you’ve been. Those darkest nights, when it felt like the world was caving in on you, when every sense of hope had fled, and darkness seemed like the only game in town.
Sometimes the slightest shift in the ground that you stand on can reveal the cracks in the foundation of all that you hold dear, and you find yourself lost in a never ending sea of nightmares and maybes.
Those are the nights that reveal the very depths and damage of our souls.
If you’ve ever had that experience, you know exactly what I’m talking about. My guess is that you’re here in this work because you’ve been there… lost, knowing only that the here and now that is doesn’t serve you anymore, and that you had to find a new way to exist, to live, to be.
It hurts, doesn’t it?
And what seems to cut the deepest is how you begin to feel about yourself. Because rather than understand that you’ve never been taught how to handle this, chances are you probably found an outlet for all that fear, turning it back in on yourself. Distrust, frustration, loathing and anger. All directed back on yourself because at least feeling something that you could handle was better than feeling something that felt so completely out of control.
And in doing so, do you began the slow, silent, sequential destruction of your soul.
Maybe you’re on that pathway downwards, maybe you’ve hit the bottom and stayed there, or maybe you’re slowly trying to claw your way back up. Where we are at doesn’t matter, the only thing that matters is the direction you’re going. But when you feel so bad about yourself that nothing feels like it will ever be right anymore, it’s hard to find the energy and the courage to stand and start again.
That’s where I come in.
Because I know what it’s like to be there. To feel alone in a world full of strangers, to feel lost and without direction. To have given up trusting yourself, and to be subject to a thousand screaming voices of shame. Maybe it’s gone on so long that you have no idea who you are anymore, and you’re faced every morning with a stranger in the mirror who couldn’t possibly be you.
But you’re deeply afraid that it is.
Truthfully, you don’t know that person anymore. You’ve been there all of their life, but it feels like it’s been some kind of dark fantasy, some twisted fairytale that’s broken into a million pieces, and you have no idea how it all goes back together. Sometimes the tiny remnants of your soul feels like a shattered mirror that will never be whole again.
And you have no idea where to start.
Which is why I do what I do. When I was lost to myself, I was blessed to find people who could shine a light on my journey. Sometimes just having some random person on the Internet who I had come to trust tell me that they believed in me gave me just enough strength to get through one more day. Sometimes what they said helping me understand where my feet were to follow.
And slowly, step-by-step, I began walking out of the darkness.
The sad part about our society is that we send children to school and teach them all manner of wonders, yet never what to do when nothing makes sense, and when it feels like a very principles that you lived your life by no longer work. We learn how to solve equations, but nobody teaches us how to find ourselves when we’ve lived so long away from the truths that make us who we are.
Which is why I do what I do.
Because let me be completely honest with you. There are very few experiences in the world that match up to that moment where somebody gets it. When something you’ve written, or said or done for them helps them see a pathway out of their own despair, there’s a moment of synchronicity that is beyond word, beyond understanding. It’s the most beautiful thing in the world.
That’s why do what I do, that’s what I’m chasing.
The world in which we teach children how to find the truth of who they are for themselves. The way in which we respect and uplift each other, knowing that the divinity of the human soul is worthy of our respect, our admiration and most importantly, our love.
That’s how I feel about everyone of you.
You’re worth every word I write, every podcast I labor through. You’re worth the nights when I can’t get this right, and I’m awake way longer than I should be. You’re worth every hour sat at this keyboard and this microphone, trying to pour all the love and wisdom I have into your soul, so that you might come to see you as I see you.
And maybe, just maybe, show you the light out of your darkness, and help you find a way home to yourself.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings