Long before becoming a student of Universal Medicine, when I was in my early 30’s, I embarked on what I called at the time my ‘healing journey’. Abuse had featured heavily in my younger life and I longed to understand WHY (?)
It was not that I set out with these intentions exactly, but I had a deep inner knowing that the abuse was somehow still running my life, that even though I had moved thousands of miles away and started a new life in another country, the abuse continued to be the leading character in my life and I had had enough of sharing centre stage with this life experience that I couldn’t seem to shake even when being far from the scene of the abuse.
I saw three therapists. The first was a woman who came recommended by a friend and when she felt she could take me no further she put me in touch with a second therapist, a man who I was in therapy with off and on for a number of years. He helped me identify sufficient layers of hurt, anger and pain to enable me to get to a place where I was able to accept what had ‘happened to me’ and I was feeling less angry and in somewhat less pain which allowed me to function at a higher level than before.
Eventually I stopped seeing him. I felt I needed a break. Life was pretty full on and I just wanted to make life about other things, and so I did. For a while.
During these years of therapy, I clung to the belief that I was a victim. Being a victim answered the limited questions I was willing to ask at the time and made it possible for me to not look any further or dig any deeper. I became comfortable with the victim belief and I wore the cloak of victimhood well.
In my 40’s I saw a third therapist for about a year. She helped me identify a few more layers but I still felt I wasn’t moving on. I felt stuck. Perhaps less stuck but stuck none-the-less. At the same time, the life that I had been choosing to live was beginning to feel distinctly…. uncomfortable. I had a deep knowing that there had to be more to life than the way I was living.
It wasn’t until becoming a student of Universal Medicine that I finally started becoming un-stuck. The teachings of the Ageless Wisdom offered me the tools and support to not only peel back the crippling layers of hurt, pain and anger I had been living under for so long, but to address, understand and get to the root cause.
It was miraculous to finally address and be free of the debilitating energy I had been living in. However, Universal Medicine and the teachings of the Ageless Wisdom didn’t just stop there…. I was willing and open to continue to support myself in evolving further and because I was willing and open, the Ageless Wisdom was able to offer more. And then more and still some more…
As I gradually return to living in the exquisite new level of harmony I had been keeping myself disconnected from for lifetimes, I am continually bringing long held beliefs to the fore to be pondered on, examined and released if I find they aren’t serving me or anyone else for that matter.
And so, the unfiltered questioning of what role being a victim was playing in my life.
In the process of considering this question I reached an understanding that the belief that I was a victim was exactly that – a belief. A belief I chose to sign up to at the time to keep me on the carousel of victimhood.
What???
I was like a horse ready to bolt, feeling horrendously exposed and wanting to crawl back under the blanket of comfort I’d wrapped myself up in to keep me in and the world out. I could feel a part of me saying and then shouting, “I do not want to go there!!!”
Which helped me to understand that this was exactly where I was going. I have come to know that when I am feeling exposed it means there is something I have been hiding behind to keep me in disconnection from the Divine love within and to keep me from evolving. It is at that point that I have a choice: to either keep hiding under the blanket of comfort OR gently and tenderly hold myself in such a way that I can fully embrace my next evolutionary steps.
The more I started letting go of the belief that I was a victim, the more space became available for the Truth to reveal itself in the form of a few questions: In the very moment I chose to disconnect from and deny my own sacredness, was this not first and foremost an abuse of myself in the most profound, even if at first not the most obvious, sense of the word?
In choosing to walk away from what I know is my innate sacredness have I not forsaken myself as the beautifully tender and nurturing woman I naturally am?
And in choosing to disconnect from my sacredness, what have I been choosing to connect to instead?
Any disconnection from my inner most being opens me up to destructive and debilitating energies that leave no space for the beauty of sacredness and, in fact, keeps me in an energy that is as far removed from sacredness as one can get. These destructive and debilitating energies are what kept me contracted, disconnected and in avoidance of the true love I naturally am and that we all come from.
By contrast, in my ever-deepening connection to my inner self I am discovering a sweet, sentient and sacred part of me I had long been oblivious to. It is only in the peeling away of all the layers I had carefully and strategically put in place in my misguided attempt to protect myself and keep myself ‘safe’ that I have been able to connect to the courage and willingness within to reclaim centre stage and reconnect and return to my inner heart, my inner most…..the ultimate sacred space so worthy of cherishing.
In returning and reconnecting to my untouched, Divine essence, there has been a beautifully loving allowing to feel the consequence of the crushing depth of denial of the same, and the effect it has had not only on myself, but on all those around me.
As I reclaim that which is at the core of every woman’s being, I bring myself back into alignment with the Divinely gracious being I naturally am, therefore offering this reflection for every woman. In so doing it brings the balance of outwardly-looking power back to where it truly belongs – within. The unfolding of this magical and majestic process then creates the space for men to return and re-align to their natural tenderness, sensitivity and yes, sacredness too.
Reclaiming our sacredness brings us all back to who we naturally, tenderly and innately are, and once we do so the honouring of the sacredness within, honours and holds all others equally so.
By Brigette Evans, UK
For further inspiration…
Do we learn to mask a lack of self-worth as we grow older, or take the steps to address it? Natalie Benhayon writes..
What does it mean to have a sacred relationship with yourself?
Women in Livingness Blog 
In this sacred space we all have within, we can find the answer and the healing to address whatever experience we had in separation from it. In coming back to our profound and truly wise nature, we understand. This path is not something we can intellectualise or done by any effort, but it can be walked back along with someone who knows it by their own lived experience.
Reading back again I’m reminded that sacredness is natural and innate to us – we just live in a world that is set up to make us think it is not. It therefore requires clarity and commitment in us to cherish it and see through all the lies.
Thank you Brigette for an inspiring sharing. We barricade ourselves into into the idea that ‘life just happens’. To suggest that we actually have a big role in what plays out is often received like the biggest insult there is – when in fact it simply reveals our huge power we’ve dismissed.
Sacredness just keeps unfolding itself and unfolding itself, it has me totally on my knees, I am in many ways baffled by it’s beauty even though I do know that sacredness is something that we all know inside out.
We can use beliefs, behaviours and patterns as a means to hold onto what we deem as being ‘normal’ and ‘familiar’ to us, even if this is abusive or harming to us. So the real thing is to be open to what is outside of our belief of ‘normal’ and allowing oursleves to explore that in terms of experiencing a non-abusive way of doing things – this then exposes to us if we are attached to the former way of being, just like Brigette has shared in this blog.
Choosing to be a victim is a way to not take responsibility for our share of what is happening. Clearly an abuse is not ok, and this needs to be stopped immediately, however, we can only stop that level of abuse that we recognise as abuse at that time. As we grow and learn to love ourselves more and more, the different levels of abuse get exposed for us to see – and it is at this point that we get to realise how we can raise the standard not just for ourselves but for all.
Brigette, thank you so much for your sharing – there is so much in what you have shared that any woman can relate to in some way and it is a blessing to realise that there is a way to get un-stuck and make a choice for true change.
Stepping out from the victim is not always comfortable as it exposes a lot about our individual self and all that we have invested in it. However once we let go the pride and be honest enough to recognize this game of irresponsibility for what it is…we start to experience a true liberation and an empowerment to return to our worth and dignity as women. A woman who holds herself in such a tender way emanates a natural beauty, a steadyness that is very needed and may support others in their own healing process as well.
The honesty and realness you shared from is what makes your testimonial so inspiring. I appreciate what you brought up about the fact that sacredness is naturally within in every women and men. We just have to align to it and let go all the beliefs we held on and the games to resist the purity we actually come from.
What a beautiful example Brigette for others to read who are in a similar victim mentality to be able to know they can let this go. Knowing it’s a choice allows us to stop behaving in that way. It feels a huge but very simple journey you’ve undertaken to return back to your sacredness that was always there.
Well said Gill, and the beauty is that we can all feel like victims when we give our power away, so it is a great reminder to stay connected and see where we have given our power away…and then reclaim it again.
A beautiful unfoldment and self-discovery of the inner sacredness.
Every layer peeled back allows us to access that much more of who we are to live in full.
“Any disconnection from my inner most being opens me up to destructive and debilitating energies that leave no space for the beauty of sacredness and, in fact, keeps me in an energy that is as far removed from sacredness as one can get. These destructive and debilitating energies are what kept me contracted, disconnected and in avoidance of the true love I naturally am and that we all come from” Brigette you have summed up in this one paragraph what has happened to pretty much everyone on the planet. Yep sure there’s probably a handful of people that this hasn’t happened to but literally only a handful. We are living within the sacredness of life without hardly ever experiencing it. We’ve veneered an ugly great layer over the top of Life’s majesty.
We HAVE ‘veneered an ugly great layer over the top of Life’s majesty’, Alexis. And in so doing we have painted ourselves a picture that may, at first glance, look polished, shiny and finished but that in truth has sealed us in to a breath-less, 3-dimensional life of blurred vision that feels impossible to crack open. The beauty is that we ARE ‘living within the sacredness of life’ as you say, and it doesn’t require having to crack anything open. We simply start the re-connecting process of self-care which builds to self-love within this picture we have painted, and the power of self-care/love simply begins the process of melting away the layer of veneer we have painted ourselves into until we are ready to start experiencing the beauty of the exquisite sacredness of life.
I said that “we are living within the sacredness of life without hardly ever experiencing it” but it’s more accurate to say that ‘we ARE the sacredness of life without hardly ever experiencing it’.
Brigette I feel so deeply touched by what you have shared, not so much by ‘your story’ but more touched by the depth of the life that is within you. And as a result of feeling the depth within you I can feel the same depth within me, a wordless place of indescribable beauty. A truly beautiful sharing Brigette that does what so few writers are able to do and that is to connect the reader to the sacredness within us all.
Loving this, Alexis: ‘….a wordless place of indescribable beauty.’ Because the indescribable beauty speaks for itself not in words but in the vibration of the heavens.
A very inspiring read Brigette. So we are born with this innate sense of sacredness and preciousness, and for many reasons we feel we have to give it away. I love how you expose this part – because this is it, we don’t have to give it away ever for anything. And in holding our sacredness we are holding everyone. It’s interesting isn’t it, what makes us give it away when it’s the very thing that holds us, without it we are harmed.
Spot on, Amber. As a child I sensed, rightly or wrongly, that it was the truth of my sacredness and preciousness that the adults around me could not cope with, making me feel that I had to give it away as a means of survival. But as you say, it was in giving my sacredness away that the floodgates to harm and abuse were opened.
Beautiful Brigette and very inspiring. A lot of food for thought for me in my own life. You describe the therapy process well, there is something missing, maybe because counsellors often only can support us to disentangle ourselves from our past, but not assist us to reconnect to the absolute beauty of our essence, which you share is that sacred part of ourselves – and it is untouched by our experiences. Welcome back Brigette to yourself and to the home of your inner heart.
Thank you, Melinda, it feels good to be back. I am finding ‘being back’ in these early days requires being very gentle and loving with myself as and when the last vestiges of self abuse rise to the surface to be addressed and cleared. But whereas it used to be that being gentle and loving was an unfamiliar and at times uncomfortable way of being with myself, I now see it as a welcome opportunity to deepen my connection with my inner heart and all things sacred.
Thanks Brigette, I realised reading about how the ‘last vestiges of self abuse rise to the surface” that this is actually happening to me, and I’ve been disconcerted about it as it’s now so out of place with my level of self-love, but I realised as you say it’s more coming to the surface to be dealt with honestly and transformed back into love by continuing to be super gentle with myself, and re-imprint the self abuse back to self love.
If a counsellor, therapist or practitioner of any kind is not connected to their own sacredness then where can they lead/invite another to go? Answer: Here there and everywhere but in truth nowhere, nowhere at all.
Brigette, thank you for such a valuable blog – it’s something here for women everywhere, regardless of whether they have experienced abuse in their lives or not. As you point out – when we honestly step back and look at how we are living and what is going on in our lives – the beliefs, the patterns that we have absorbed along the way, we can see how pervasive abuse is. Whatsmore, we discover we actually have a choice as to whether we stayed locked into our hurts and protections as a way of living – or if we connect to something else much more solid and precious inside ourselves and use that for our life compass.
‘….or if we connect to something else much more solid and precious inside ourselves and use that for our life compass.’ I love how you express all that connecting ‘to something else much more solid and precious inside ourselves’ entails, Helen. The joy of re-connecting to our life compass cannot be underestimated; it is the gentle breeze that fills our sails as we come about and sail with the wind after slogging it out trying to make headway tacking against the current and headwind. We still have to be at the helm and adjust the sails, but the compass guides us as we gracefully navigate through this thing we call life.
So beautifully expressed Brigette. Truly.