Darkness to Discovery and Divine Timing

From Darkness to Discovery: A Journey of Growth Through Creative Healing and Trusting the Process…

“Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light: I have loved the stars too fondly, to be fearful of the night”.

Sarah Williams

It’s Been a While…

Coronavirus overwhelm. Lockdown. New passions. Old habits. Social distancing. Physically closer. No travel. Yes, travel. Green countries. Red countries. Vaccinations. Repatriation flights. Christmas cancelled. Party-gate. Let’s go for dinner? Oh, wait, rule of 6. Do I need a mask? Can I sit there? Socially distanced drinks in the park? Oh, I don’t know anymore… I’m just going to stay home and avoid the world and its problems. Now I’m lonely. But I like being at home. I love reading The Artist’s Way. This feels good, solitude. I can paint, I can write with a cup of tea and more time to myself. More time to think. Space to breathe and realign. Pause. Okay, let’s go see the world.

In other words… Sometimes difficult paths lead us to the most beautiful destinations.

Four months ago, I landed in Faro, without a job or a plan of where my life was going next.

I’d quit my tech job just four days earlier… Taking a leap of faith, I arranged to volunteer with a disabled author in the remote mountains of southern Portugal. A bit random I know, but all will be explained…

At the airport, I reminisced on the last time I stood waiting for my Osprey backpack at baggage reclaim in New Delhi airport two years prior. Fresh-faced and excited to travel the world, after five long years working in corporate London.

Then the pandemic obviously hit, just as I started travelling. Where had those two years gone? I was 26 yesterday! I’ve gone from travelling to India to lockdown in India to lockdown in London to now travelling again! The pandemic really brought a tasty concoction of pain and beauty to the party.

How do we find peace in such turbulent times?

By trusting the process and acknowledging how growth blossoms in our darkest times. I’m finally in a much happier place than I was last year. So in today’s post, I want to share my story about darkness, discovery and divine timing.

Darkness: Goan Beaches to Lockdown London

Like most of us, the last two years have changed everything for me.

As the world entered 2020, a rollercoaster of life-changing experiences chewed up and spat out any plans we had for our lives.

I myself ended up locked down in a hostel in India with sixty strangers. During this, I fell in love, rediscovered myself, and experienced a major personal transformation. While being locked down in India in 2020 with limited water, food, and no freedom to wander the streets was hard, lockdown in 2021 London was even tougher…

As they say, you get a culture shock going to India, but even worse for me was the lifestyle shock of returning to England. After living slowly in India between silent mountains and on idyllic beaches. Now I was back in a world of fast fashion, fast food and, sales, sales, sales…

After 9months abroad, I felt completely out of place in my home country…

Have You Ever Been Through a Dark Time?

I forgot how the western world tells us we are inadequate.

Subtly reminding us every day; “you need this makeup, order this food, those shoes”. To look good enough, to be good enough, to fit in.

Lockdown in London feels like endless days flicking between work and travel plans from the 4-walls of my childhood bedroom. For one year, broken and trapped in a world I didn’t connect with any longer. I disconnected from close friends and shut myself away from the outside world. Work slumped, as my mind was drowning in a sea of confusion and questions about who I was or what I wanted to be. Day in and day out, I played the never-ending guessing game of when travel would return.

Was this really the be-all and end-all until travel returned?

Yet, returning to England in January 2021 held a bigger transformation than I’d expected…

Discovery, Creativity & Staying Present

“In times of pain, when the future is too terrifying to contemplate and the past too painful to remember, I have learned to pay attention to right now. The precise moment I was in was always the only safe place for me.”

Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity

In this darkness, the light at the end of the tunnel started appearing in the form of a book. Given to me by my good friend Helen who I met in India. It became massively popular during the pandemic, so you may have heard of it…

‘The Artist’s Way’

‘The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron is a spiritual 12-week course in discovering and recovering your creative self. In the midst of exhaustion, this book gave me new energy to discover creative passions and recover old ones buried.

One day, I played meditative tunes on my laptop, picked up a pen and a book and started to write. Words of pain and anguish flowed out of me with ease and soothed my mind.

I found fun in making jewellery with friends. Or painting a piece of art using watercolours or acrylics.

Looking through old memorabilia at my mother’s house one day, I found childhood paintings tucked away in the family loft. Which included books I’d written as an ambitious 7-year-old, and notes scribbled with silly poems and funny limericks.

A creator had always existed in me and I’d silenced her for too long…

“Creativity – like human life itself – begins in darkness”

 Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity

“Where had that fun and playful child gone?” I thought.

That creative and playful child had no one to impress. No one to say what was good and what was bad. What was right and what was wrong. My mother simply applauded everything flowery card I made or short story I wrote.

That creative child loved being creative, simply for the fun of it.

Darkness to discovery and the divine timing of life. The Artist’s Way came into my life just when I needed it most. Starting the recommended ‘Morning Pages’ where you write 3 pages a day of whatever is on your mind or however you feel. This began a journey of healing through journaling.

Consequently, I started discovering who I really was, rather than who I’d been told to be. In addition, I started a morning routine, so after taking a meditative walk, I’d come home and write whatever messiness was going on in my mind out, and onto a piece of paper.

Above all, it felt as though my pain was being given out to the universe to deal with. Like I no longer had to deal with this headache all on my own.

I loved the quotes, and how the book highlighted creativity and writing as a journey back to self. I’d become lost in all the noise of the Western world after a year of peace and silence in India.

Julia Cameron spoke beautifully of realigning with your values. And for the first time, I stopped worrying about the past and future. I started to discover how being present with the creative flow allowed me to quiet the demons in my mind.

Divine Timing- New Beginnings

The place where light and dark begin to touch is where miracles arise

Robert A Johnson

This period of self-recovery was crucial to the next stage of my journey to self.

As travel restrictions eased in the late summer of 2021, a girl in a random Whatsapp group had posted saying she was planning a trip to Crete.

Close to my birthday weekend hey?

I jumped at the chance to get abroad for the first time in 2021, and I had no idea how desperately I needed it! My shoulder’s loosened, and I took a deep breath being close to the ocean again. My heart warmed seeing life moving again, feeling a new culture and tasting new foods.

This trip spurred a new abundance of hope in me. As a result, I started to believe that the travel lifestyle was possible again.

Maybe as a Digital Nomad, perhaps as a volunteer, who knows?

What mattered was that this trip to Crete with 3 complete strangers gave me the confidence to realign with myself. The courage to go after what I wanted again and make some changes to my (unhappy) life.

And I made some biggies…

Finding Peace with Darkness, Attracted more Light:

Change is scary, but as I write this, I’m filled with joy from the last few months.

I’ve quit my job and started volunteering abroad. With more time and space for myself, I’ve found a new confidence. I’ve been to Portugal to volunteer with a disabled author. Held 2 gardening volunteer positions in Bulgaria to learn about nature. And, working with an autistic child in Croatia to work with special needs children. Each experience, allows me to learn new passions and recover the creative in me.

So despite the downsides, the past 2 years have been the most transformational years of my entire life.

In Summary:

If you take anything from this post, please remember that darkness is the birthplace of growth.

It is in the darkness that flowers grow, darkness is the soil. We are born in darkness, in our mother’s womb. It is in the darkness that stars are born.

As per this blog post, I’ve discovered that I want my writing to be more vulnerable. I think we all need to embrace the darkness and share our vulnerability a little more, so we can truly see the light.

I want to change the style of writing on this blog. To be more truthful and honest about my experiences. I’m not trying to fool anyone with the glitz and glamour of travel and my life.

The darkness can teach you so much if you choose to see it. Each experience leads us to the next, be patient with the process and trust all is working in your favour. This way, you can harness our power and embrace the divine timing of life.

What do you think you could discover if you embraced your darkness?