(Chapter 9) The Secret Garden of My Soul: Reclaiming a Childhood Spirit

Through the depths of unacknowledged anger, was buried more emotion and unexpected pathways to peace

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⚠️ Potential Trigger Warning

I do want to provide a potential trigger warning for this letter. Within it, I’m sharing my story of domestic violence as a child. I don’t go into graphic detail in this letter, but I do mention certain aspects of my experience. I humbly provide this warning, as if you don’t wish to read this at this moment, that is absolutely okay. I appreciate the opportunity to share my story.

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This is part of a “live unfurling” series of my current life journey.
If you’d like to catch up on what’s unfolded already, check out these chapters:

The pre-story (unveiled with my 41st Birthday)
Chapters 1-4 🪷 Chapter 5 🪷 Chapter 6 🪷 Chapter 7 🪷 Chapter 8

I woke up Friday morning (the 16th) with a surge of anger: frustration, stubbornness, and a feeling of just wanting to lash out. I also noticed I had a full eczema rash breakout across both my collarbones, as well as pain under both. Thinking, 'Did I do something in my sleep? How the heck did this happen?’

As the emotions continued to amplify as I walked through my usual morning routine, I thought to myself repeatedly, ‘I don’t want to feel like this! What am I doing? Why am I feeling this way?’

I knew this was my cue not to go down the judging track, but instead, to take a moment to be curious and discover what I could uncover. I find that allowing myself to get curious gets me out of judgment and more into exploration, which anything related to exploration or adventure speaks deeply to my soul. (Anyone else play Minecraft and adventure around the vast landscape, looking for new discoveries and fun things to find? Just me?! lol)

I chatted briefly with my husband, sharing (and starting to spill) some of that raw emotion out. He’s been a true gift in allowing me space, and in this instance, was more than I ever could have asked for. He took our doggies into the other room so I could have some space alone.

I decided instead to go eat my breakfast on the back patio while sitting in my hammock, and figured I could journal some of this energy out in the sunshine.

As I sat down, I took a deep breath. I felt like I wanted to take a moment to breathe and then enjoy my breakfast. And I decided that I’d watch a YouTube video or two while I did so.

The Video Gateway

As I pulled up the YouTube app on my phone, the first thing I heard was: ‘find a video on what the void feels like to others.'

Hmm, curious? I decided, 'Why not, let’s see what I could find.'

(NOTE: I am including my whole journey through these videos. These are actual links of what I found — I'm sharing them because they might be helpful for someone experiencing a similar journey, and to show how this beautifully all unfolds).

I discovered this one first: a YouTube Shorts video was called: What an EGO DEATH feels like (The start of spiritual awakening)

From the moment Rei started talking, I got sucked in. Her overarching experience started in college and lasted about 10 years. But what she illuminated was the concept of “The Dark Night of the Soul”.

Then I watched her full video on it:

I was feeling a bit in a state of awe, yet as I invited myself to continue to be more curious, I started to open up and dive in even deeper. I then clicked into a recommended video from Eckhart Tolle on the Ego Death.

This led me to conduct a quick search and discover the Inner Researcher and her videos. She shared first the history as well as the stages of the Dark Night of the Soul:

My goodness, this vibrated as the truth within me. I was navigating my own Dark Night of the Soul…

Feeling like I was hot on the trail of discovering and uncovering something, “The Most Powerful Practice to Help You With Spiritual Awakening — aka, Stop Meditating” video caught my eye. So I clicked into it.

I sat there for a moment, dumbfounded. I felt like I fell into a hole that was perfectly equipped with everything I needed to absorb all of it. A comfy chair, a convenient notepad, and beautiful background music made the whole experience inviting, although many of the emotions I was feeling in waves were…not.

After watching the Inner Researcher videos, I invited myself to try out her technique on how to connect with our inner child. I figured I didn’t have anything to lose, and at this point, I could feel something behind a door, awaiting to be revealed.

This is where my whole Friday shifted.

I was able to connect with my approximately 7-year-old self, picturing and feeling deeply into who she was and what she would express then.

Now, transparently, what I find in these moments of intense emotions, yet balancing and continuously inviting myself to go deeper, to inquire deeper, to seek deeper, is that there is a sequence of events that just “happen”. I do believe they are Divine, and members of my SSS (Soul Support Squad) are all around me, empowering me with the information, the data, or the “ah-ha!” connections that suddenly illuminate my whole inner room.

This is how it unfolded…

Suddenly, I recalled my collarbone rashes and pain.

I conducted a quick search into the spiritual meaning of some of those physical symptoms and discovered that the emotional and spiritual weight of both worlds being out of balance is a likely cause. That and trying to carry too much without expression (or expressing or releasing those emotions that are coming up and are ready to be set free, instead of holding onto them or worse, pushing them back down). Resistance to embracing change, and the challenges in my current experience of adjusting to maneuver with flexibility and adaptability.

It was like the truth struck me in that moment.

I was carrying this burden of job-or-no-job, and then realizing that in continuing to release more and more, more and more was coming up to the surface, but it meant me needing to sit with all of it. Meet with it at the table. Hear it out. Be present with it…and to set it free.

It was incredibly overwhelming at multiple moments, because the variance of emotions I was feeling and experiencing was so very much all over the place.

However, in the “The Most Powerful Practice to Help You With Spiritual Awakening” video, the metaphor she shows on screen with the glass — it’s at about the 1:44 timestamp (link enclosed) — made something instantly click.

As I sat with those emotions, actively listening and being present with all of the things they were sharing, I suddenly made a connection with this video timestamp. The “anger” emotions I was feeling were not really anger. Anger was the mask, if you will, or even the first defense. Deeper down, the “root” feelings were vulnerability and fear. But they were coming up and out as anger, out of sheer protection of not wanting to feel the vulnerability and fear.

I knew instantly this was my inner child, and she was hurt deeply.

A Brief Rewind to My Childhood

To provide some context as I continue to share the rest of my experience, I’d like to rewind briefly to share a bit about my childhood.

(NOTE: I plan to expand on this further here on my Substack, so if you find it helpful or healing to hear more, please be assured of my intention to do so. 🙏✨)

I was raised in one of the most affluent cities in the United States, yet I lived a polarized life of hiding and shadows. My father was an NFL football player for a short stint of his young adulthood, but it became his beacon of identity. My mother bought into the image, but also brought her own expectations around this beaconed image that was set by our family within our community.

From what I have understood from past stories shared with me, my parents tried for five years to conceive me. And from these same stories, I was also told that once I was conceived, things “got real” and “got scary”, pretty fast. I was told my dad was physically and emotionally abusive from the earliest days of their marriage. Yet no one could know, and we lived under the image of a happy, cohesive, affluent family. I was raised to be as perfect as could be. Imagine, when I was about five years old, I attended a “manners class” so that I knew how to use all 4,000 forks and knives on a 5 course meal table, as well as how to address any person in any room. I had nice clothes, and was expected to be proper, prim, and silent in restaurants “where other kids couldn’t go because they were wild animals” but “I was well-behaved”. Control, constraint, and image was the rule of the land.

Years and years later, I saw a reply of my first birthday video. As I sat there, I watched a little one-year-old blonde baby girl, gleefully pulling on the string of a birthday balloon, bouncing it up and down in the air. Quickly, almost like a pin dropped, I quickly watched her reactively snap her head to the left toward the open doorway. What came over her face was absolute fear and terror, her smile turning into a frozen face of pure shock. Her arm frozen mid-air bouncing, fixating over my dad who was just entering the room. I have never “seen” or watched a confirmation of the existance of abuse until that very moment (and looking back now, that was over 12 years ago).

I’ve never interacted with a one-year-old, who can’t talk cohesive words, express so much emotion on her sweet face, in a mere split second.

Truthfully, my dad physically and emotionally abused me from the earliest age I can remember. He would chase me and my sibbling around the house, yelling, screaming, and throwing furniture. I remember him hanging me by my feet over our grand staircase, threatening to drop me (or worse, throw me) down them. I recall him throwing me into our clothes dryer and trapping me in there, asking me how “sorry I was” now that I “had no air”.

When I turned thirteen, he ended up going too far. He chased after me, down a hallway in our house, between two bedrooms. I tried to sprint away from him (coming out of the first bedroom), but I didn’t have enough time to turn around, so I ended up running backwards all the way into the second bedroom. This left the front of my body exposed to his lumbering body and brutal hands. Doctors estimate he hit, punched, and slapped me somewhere between 12 and 18 times in the face. As a guy who was somewhere near 300lbs (~136kg) and over 6’4” (~193cm) tall, the pure pressure and force coming through him was not enough to be sustained by my face as a teenager.

He ended up completely shattering my septum (the piece of bone that is at the utmost part of your nose, connecting to your skull). It was in more pieces than could be counted on a later xray.

When we made it to the second bedroom, he picked me up and threw me onto a bed, hit me a few more times, and then ran out of my room and lumbered all the way down that grand staircase.

As I sat there, I miraculously experienced no pain, no bleeding. I looked up that night and saw an angel above me who told me “everything is going to be okay”. There was no call to the police, and he ended up staying in our house for another two or so months while my mom navigated keeping this all a secret. My soccer coach was the one who ended up reporting that I had “hand-print bruises” across my face. And by the end of the week, I demanded of my mom to take me to the doctor, as I found I could no longer breathe through my nose.

She took me to my childhood pediatrician (the only one I had ever known) and when he looked up my nose, I saw the fear of God was in his eyes. I felt compelled to tell him I did it in soccer, as to try to keep my family’s secret. Later, it came out that soccer was not the cause, and pending my dad’s arrest and my reconstructive surgery, he abandoned our house in the middle of a school day. Once my dad was out, my mom picked up where he left off. The physical and emotional abuse would continue until I left the house for college.

The miraculous part of this portion of my story, to me?

Before I even understood the importance of releasing, rather than holding onto (or clasping) onto the narrative of being a “victim”, I had begun to release the details of this event almost immediately…at the young age of thirteen. I truly believe this is what helped me navigate this time, and truly (to this day) not hold onto the pain or the trauma I experienced then. I navigated the following court appearances with grace and bravery, and despite my dad getting out of most charges (and years later expunging his settled plea), I don’t hold onto what happened. It is part of my story, absolutely! However, it also taught me a great deal about people, relationships, culture, laws, family dynamics, and the power of truth.

Fast-Forwarding to This Friday

Now, fast-forwarding to this Friday, filled with deep emotions…

I didn’t realize that in this moment of sitting and really, deeply connecting with my inner child, I started hearing—and more than that, feeling—an undercurrent of deeper emotions. Of course, what was (and has always) been interwoven into it all was around my dad. But now, it was at the depth of the abuse I had suffered at the hands of my mother. And since I was also sitting with my inner child, who was about seven years old, this was even before a lot had escalated (just nine or so years later).

I could almost smell the emotional layers of control, lies, pretending, and confusion that were all rising up from deep within. I gently walked through the step-by-step practice that Inner Researcher shares in “The Most Powerful Practice to Help You With Spiritual Awakening” video (this time, starting at timestamp 7:17).

It freed something in me that I had never known was possible to feel. 🕊️✨

I sat in my studio crying, holding my inner child; I realized how much of the anger that wells up in me was trying to protect her and her emotions, instead of navigating through those with her. The anger was directed inwards, toward the fear, sadness, and the absolutely terrified and vulnerable feelings of being alone. Physically and emotionally terrified.

It was me, trying to protect myself from those feelings, which was expressed as anger.

My goodness, even writing this makes me teary…

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I don’t have many childhood photos, but this is one of me around this age 🪷

I’ve included a photo here, so you can ‘meet’ her too! This is a photo taken by my school teacher that I scanned years ago. It had dents on the photo itself, which just happened to land right across my nose. How humbling that is, now looking back on it…

How would I describe her?

A wild spirit who is incredibly dynamic and sharp. And way too intelligent for “her age” at any given moment. She is highly intuitive and could sense when things weren’t right. She developed exceptionally sharp skills in reading people and their emotions through her home life. Alcoholism, narcissism, bipolarity, manic depression, rage, deep-seated fears, control, and abuse interlaced many of the interactions she experienced, and continued into my adulthood. A life of living by the image of what others expected, and living a “perfect” life, with a “perfect” home, and a “perfect” scenario, constantly. She wanted to be a doctor when she grew up (but that was derailed when the sight of blood, following my reconstructive surgeries, made me instantly pass out).

And a Beautiful Parallel

I realize now that despite having things to let go of with the sight of blood (and learning how to let go of those things now, to not clench, but release and free myself of the restrictions), I made a connection.

I wanted to be a doctor because I really wanted to help others by providing solutions, diagnosing deeper challenges, and providing options that could empower their betterment. And fast forward, here I am on Substack, sharing my stories and helping the communities I’m in, as well as the people I touch every single day, see the connections in what they do and how it impacts their world, and our greater Now. I lived through that promise to myself. It just morphed into something even more incredibly beautiful…

I could feel her start to relax. And a little bit of playful energy started to spark and gently emerge. I began to hear her whispers, expressing now her favorite movie, “The Secret Garden” (from 1993).

To be honest, I had not watched that movie since before the year 2000, but it was a movie I watched repeatedly during my childhood. But as I sat there in her gorgeous presence, I promised her I would get a copy of the movie and watch it with her. I could feel the joy billowing from within…

Following this session, I shared with my husband all that had happened. He looked at me with such gentle and wholehearted joy. I also shared with him what had come to me additionally (from my SSS): ‘Leverage Substack as your diary to document your unfolding journey.’ And here I am now with you, recommitting to this. I know this is the way to share this and provide visibility to how much healing can happen, even though none of this is easy. But my dearest friend, I feel freer than I ever have before. So, alongside the gorgeous content I already share (and with much more planned!) I will always share the “Stories From My Own Life Journey” with you, as I truly feel it’s critically important to express all of it.

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As a small note, I had mentioned in a past Chapter that my Human Design Bodygraph encompasses Gate 51, which is the Gate of Shock. I will share with you candidly that I know, shocking and absolutely unbelievable events are part of the natural unfolding of my path. I am aware, though, that these things may be absolutely unbelievable to consider from your own life experience, but for me, these are just the way it (shockingly) and magically unfolds. This does not discredit or downplay any of the experiences, as I don’t believe we can compare our experiences in any capacity “apples-to-apples.” Each of us has an incredibly unique life journey path, similar to the uniqueness of our fingerprints. Please be aware that you may feel a range of emotions in response to this letter (or future letters). And if so, I apologize in advance. I am hopeful that by sharing my journey transparently, I can empower others who may be walking similar paths or have faced similar challenges to know that there is light at the end of the tunnel. There is hope folded into the fury and the fire.

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Now My Secret Garden

Later, I found and purchased the movie on Apple TV (so I can watch it again and again with her!), and then I watched The Secret Garden movie that night with a big bowl of popcorn.

From the moment the movie began to play, a rush of emotions and memories began to flood the screens of both my heart and my mind.

I also took gentle notes as things came up while I rewatched it, to continue my healing and share more of my experience with you.

A Glimpse Into My Gentle Notes

• I have a deep connection to Indian culture and many folks from India. I have for years, and have no idea exactly why. Recently, I have also been exploring spiritual Yoga practices, learning from Paramahansa Yogananda and walking through the Bghdavad Gita. As the movie opened, there was an immediate connection (the setting of the first scene). Wow. It was a delicate moment of connection, making me feel like I’m home…

• Mary (the main character) is misunderstood by almost everyone who surrounds her. She is one whom many wanted to control and silence. She continued to be her resilient, wild self. I could see myself so deeply in her.

• Mary helps others see things in themselves they couldn’t see. She empowered others by helping them improve and uplevel their own life experiences into ones of joy, laughter, and love. That desire to do so for others has driven me for as long as I can remember, and now I got to see that this was the message I was programming into myself with each rewind and rerun of this movie. It’s like the moment you realize something resonates with the truth within. I’m sure replaying it was an immense sense of comfort because it was the truth resonating within me.

• I have always wanted a garden. Interestingly, when I was around 8 or 9 years old, during recess, I started making a garden at the far edge of the soccer fields. I would (literally) transplant weeds (they’re all flowers, right!?) from one corner to the other. The ladies who were watching over us (we called them “Duties”) were not a fan of my new hobby. I’ll never forget the one Duty telling me, “Girls don’t play in the mud! What are you, a boy? Put this down and stop this IMMEDIATELY!” This earned me a call to the Principal’s office, who was one of the most lovely ladies I’ve ever known. My parents didn’t like her much (calling her a “wild liberal”), but I loved her dearly. She was wild like me. She called me into her office and asked me what I was doing with the weeds and the mud. I shared with her that I dreamed of having a garden. She asked if I, in fact, was transferring weeds. I said yes. She laughed and said, “Under my watch, my dear, you are allowed to do this anytime you want”. I was then permitted to have my garden. Also, wildly enough, she was the same Principal I had in Junior High when the police came to investigate the allegation of child abuse (with my dad hitting me). I’ll never forget her face when I went into her office. She has been interlaced throughout my life story, across many years, and was the one who wrote me a beautiful recommendation letter for a scholarship I received to attend college. I don’t know where she is today, but she changed my trajectory forever, and she probably doesn’t even know it. I am hopeful that I will reconnect with her to share that with her. She believed in me, and she had a profound impact on my life.

• One of the main boy characters (Dicken) had a rich Irish accent. I’ve always had a thing for accents, and I’m pretty sure it started with this movie 😆✨! He was also deeply connected to nature, and her rhythms, including her sweet animals. I shared with my husband that this was one of the things that I connected very early on about him, and I know this is what helped empower me to know he would be my chosen partner. What an incredibly beautiful and sweet parallel.

• Mary fought all odds, despite her parents not wanting her, and her uncle not wanting her, to bring magic into this world experience. I can relate to this so very deeply.

• The lotus flower at the end: I had already believed the lotus was going to be my spiritual symbol for all I’ve encountered across the last couple of months, and more intensely in the last couple of weeks. Seeing this at the conclusion of the movie moved me to deep, welling tears. It will forever represent this transition I am navigating through now, and as I share them here through my Chapters.

Through the mud, I will blossom and bloom. 🪷✨

Until Chapter 10,
💜 Lavender

Hello, sweet friend! 👋 Yearning for connection and deeper meaning?
I'm Lavender, and I have a deep passion for unearthing the wisdom woven into life's tapestry. ✨ My own Life Journey, from navigating childhood complexities to an over 20+ year corporate career with 55,000+ hours of interviewing (deeply studying humans), has honed my ability to discern human potential. Now, I share stories (past to present) that illuminate our paths, exploring resilience, transformation, purpose, and connecting with the magic within. Your deeper exploration begins here.✨

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My last Stories from My Own Life Journey post, if you’d like to wander through it:

(Chapter 8) The Unseen Hand, The Inner Song: Channeling Wisdom from My Runner Guide

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💗✨ If the content here at Life Journey: empowered has resonated with you, if a story sparked a moment of self-discovery, or if the shared wisdom illuminated your path, I welcome your kind support. Creating this space is a heartfelt endeavor, fueled by a desire to connect and empower. Your contribution, be it the cost of a tea 🫖 or the joy of a new book 📖, directly nourishes this work and allows me to continue sharing these soulful explorations. 👇