When the Last Straw Happens
We’re all familiar with the “last straw” metaphor, right? The camel is at capacity. Not even one more straw will be okay.
What’s on my mind today is this: I have experienced the “last straw” in my own body/mind, and have witnessed it happening for so many of my clients. It is at once both a challenging and delightful experience…well, on second thought, maybe the challenge part comes first, and then the delight!
A couple of months ago I had one of these experiences. I was very stressed. I’d co-created some horrid relationship stuff in my life, followed by very, very stressful website-building events. And still, I’m tough. I was “okay”, as they say. I was getting it done. I was getting by, if not thriving. And then the last straw happened. A young, inexperienced driver hit me in the snow, hard. Hard enough to cause significant damage to both my car and my body/mind.
It took a while to sink in. It was hard for me to acknowledge, even to myself, just how “not okay” I was after that. About six weeks after the accident, I finally followed the breadcrumbs to my truth: I was traumatized by so many things I’d created in my life, and I literally did not feel safe in my own body. It’s not that the accident in and of itself was so terrible. It was the accumulation of stuff from earlier in my life, plus the last few months, that had yet to be released + the accident that equaled too much. I was unable to receive the full benefits of the treatments I was getting because my body was too hyper-vigilant to accept the healing that was being offered. It was waiting and bracing for the next trauma. I’d gotten a chakra balance treatment from a healer friend of mine and she told me she could literally feel my body pushing back when she tried to give me healing. I knew I had to do something more. The standard chiropractic and massage therapy sessions weren’t enough to get me where I needed to be.
Using my intuition (it wasn’t that hard, the breadcrumbs were almost like loaves this time), I found the person I needed to help me release the traumas from my body. After the first session, I already felt great relief. Now, only three weeks later, I am light years ahead of where I was physically, spiritually, and emotionally.
Wait a minute. That made it sound like I had this magical experience and a rainbow unicorn came and there was glitter, and now I’m all better. It wasn’t quite like that. Some of it was. And some of it involved pain, and detoxing, and moodiness, and release of toxic sh*t, both physically and emotionally. That, and those first six weeks, those were the “challenging” parts.
And now, I’m on the other side of it. This is the delightful part. I feel more joyful and hopeful and energized than I have possibly ever felt in my entire life. (And that doesn’t mean I’m stopping on this upward spiral!)
What I know is that many of us are being called to have that last straw experience of late. We are in a rapidly changing time on the planet. It’s exciting. And, yes, it’s confusing and painful and terrifying when we’re in the midst of it.
If you are there right now, know that although it feels like something bad, it’s something good in disguise. Trust. Have faith. Don’t be fooled. It’s transformation, baby.