I have waited a full year to tell you this story. It’s a personal one, but I hope a good one, and please do bear with the length of it, grab yourself a coffee or tea and strap in.
Maybe many of you have been reading my work for a while, if you go back to youth work days, maybe its 2013…and some of you will be friends I haven’t seen for a long while, and some of you might be readers from across the globe who I have no idea of, but what many of you will know about from reading is some of my story. Some. not all.
So, this is a little bit about the story of James, of me, in 2023-4. Actually come to think about it, there’s a piece about stories I want to share soon, but this one comes first.
You have heard so much about the pain I have had to face. It won’t be repeated here.
In early 2023, I thought, I thought I had got to a good place in how I had recovered. I thought i could leave stuff behind.
I was wrong. Deep down I knew it, I knew I was faking it. But I did try.
But it didnt stop me trying to believe it.
What I thought was the end of a story, in which I stood up to my abusive parent, actually hadn’t ended, they had in fact been validated, protected and also given a powerful role.
This I discovered in June 2023.
And then I crashed, big time.
Summer 2023 was a blur.
Of despair, bleak, blackness, and every childhood voice of defeat rang squarely in my head.
Nothing made sense, I was unsafe, and I was defeated.
I gave up everything that seemed to be creative, positive or constructive, self belief, and confidence shattered, so no camera, photography felt useless, or video chats, or anything.
I had to dig deep. I wanted to hide.
Yes I could have fought the battle more, but I had no energy.
I was exhausted.
And I was about to quit.
Just wanted to run. hide and even considered taking a job cleaning northern trains, and if you know anything about the level of alcohol or vomit stains on northern trains….
I knew there was stuff I needed to face and deal with
I also knew I needed help
I also knew, again, that I was going to grow and learn and get better.
A number of things happened.
Firstly, I had to get vulnerable, and firstly with my new line manager, given the complications of it all. She was and has been immense in all this.
Secondly… She ensured I got therapy paid for.
Thirdly. I started to write my book, August bank holiday 2023, i wrote and wrote, stories of, words to and learning for my childhood self, this has subsequently been honed and developed and sent to an editor. However… this is the current story, not the past one.
In and amongst all these things I maintained my reading, with not just John O’Donohue, but also Michael Singers book ‘The Untethered Soul’ was read on repeat for about 6 months.
And I was starting what felt another rebuild. A rebuild I wanted to do as completely as was possible. Rock bottom and upwards..again.
Nothing left unturned.
So I got a therapist.
I got journals
I got myself back to work on me.
Slowly does it.
There were a few sessions in which I caused my therapist to cry.
There were a few sessions in which I told him about how I was re writing my childhood story, and healing that neglected child that was close to suicide at 9.
There were sessions of therapy in which I didnt always know what to say.
Slowly by slowly.
Until, one weekend, around the middle of or end of November I was reading the following section in John O’Donohue’s book, Anam Cara;
The first step in awakening to your inner life and the depth and promise of your solitude is to view yourself as a stranger to your own deepest depths (p81)
then going on to say
Each inner demon holds a precious blessing that will heal and free you. To receive this gift you have to lay aside your fear and take the risk of loss and change that every inner encounter offers (p88)
And this struck me.
Because there were ALOT of voices in my head, self sabotage on autopilot most of time.
For a number of years you will have realised I have been a fan of the ‘self love’ / ‘self compassion’ brigade (if there is such a thing), this I needed after starting from a very low point (see here), and so I had to be loved and safe in order to believe and be able to love my self.. I had to even think I deserved this.. this has taken a long time.
And in the process I have been able, slowly to trust myself to love myself in this way, and it’s taken a long while.
But I hadn’t considered what it might require for me to be a stranger to myself, and these words in the book were plainly what I needed to do.
So thats kind of what I did.
On a Saturday in late November last year, I sat and metaphorically took myself for a walk on the inside.
I imagined it like Frodo (me), Sam (friend) and Gollum (enemy, but guide) going for a walk, having to be taken to the scary places (by the guide/stranger) and have a friend go with me, and encounter what I could find.
And so I wrote this out, and mapped some of it.
And noticed what I found.
The voices that were telling me not to do this, were first.
Fear. Ego. What was terrified.
Then Self blame, self criticism and self loathing
All voices that I had listened to for so long.
All sensed, listened to, loved as a friend, and given the opportunity to leave, to not be needed anymore, and definitely not to protect me.
It was mostly the voices of internalised darkness, rather than the behaviours, because these were the roots, caused from birth, and from my mind that had been overworked for my survival.
In effect I ended up doing shadow work, without realising it.
And after a few hours of writing, of wrestling, of tears, of less a fight, but more gentle releasing these things of the jobs they do not have any more.
I stopped. I stood up.
I felt light.
I cried
I danced in the kitchen that evening, for the first time ever. My legs felt light, as did my shoulders.
I felt free.
It was a lightness I had never experienced in 45 years.
It was over. And I was free.
On the Monday, I think, I then had a therapy session.
In which I shared what I had done over the weekend with him.
The notes, the reading, what I had done, how I felt.
And. In a moment I think I will never forget.
He looked me in my eyes, with tears streaming.
And said.
‘James, you are Incredible’
and… looking back I said
‘I think, for the first time, I think I believe you’ with tears in my own eyes.
And, the session ended, it wasnt the last one, for, I wanted to keep the ongoing therapy conversation going, as I began this new found freedom of being and sense of lightness, wanted not be on my own as I started it.
I then went to the Waterstones cafe that afternoon I think, or definitely the next day, and instead of writing my book, I began writing the same words, over and over and over again, ‘James, you are incredible, you are incredible, you are incredible.. and for about an hour told myself all the amazing positive things, over and over again, from my own heart, from my own soul, to myself, loving me after the loved shadows had been released.
This was from that day:
And I did it the next day. And the next.
But told no one.
It’s like I didnt know what to do with what this felt like. It was so new. It also felt so ridiculously simple, but also so transforming.
A few weeks later I bought a journal for 2024, because I wanted to keep it up.
It was as if my competent unconscious voice needed to be trained to be positive, thats what I thought, keep the positive voices, positive messages every day, to replace the 45 years of self doubt and negativity.
And so, every day of 2024, that is what I have done.
I have written positive words to myself, every single day.
And maybe the odd positive quote, but no ‘reflecting’ , no ‘wrestling’ or trying to understand, I had done enough of that, and that can stay elsewhere, this would be a daily journal to write positive things about me in it… the TRUTH stuff.
the truth that isnt the lies about self doubt, shame or lack of self belief.
The truth about the love that I actually am, and the heart I actually have
The truth that I am loved and deserve to be
The truth that I am..I just am
And so much more, whatever I hear my heart say, or the angels, or the magic… whatever… message if for me for that day, sometimes short, sometimes its a repeat, sometimes its just the truth of what I need to hear that day.
Every single day in 2024.
And it’s been utterly life transforming.
A year, of feeling in the main, incredible.
Light, whole, true
and smiling, joyfully, and feeling whole, safe and able to feel an be open to enjoy all life has for me.
Its been described as ‘post traumatic growth’ to me, it could be said to be ‘life in all its fullness’…I dont really care too be honest… it just feels so so good, it is like life beginning at 46…
You dont get to see the journal aside from a few pages above, a few close friends have, they’ve been close, and seen the James transformation.
I know, that until I had faced the shadows I wouldn’t have been ready to hear what I was told. I know that that because it arrived from someone whom I could trust their opinion of my journey, I could take it. I know it was something I could believe.
That was the beginning of my incredible year. A year in which I faced the life time inner demons of a year ago, and began to believe the truth about me.
A day by day rewiring of the brain, which began over 5 years ago, the task of trying to survive and understand, and after being given tools of EMDR and inner child work, and then last year, day to day rewriting my own voice, rewiring my own self talk.
Some you have seen me glow this year.
Some of you have seen me smile.
Some of you have told me I look 36 (not 46)
Some of you have commented that my writing is from a place of healing.
Thank you, Thank you for noticing, it has been amazing for me to hear this, to sense that the lightness and joy is infectious.
The true me, has been beginning to emerge.
And I am so proud of me.
If you read my last piece, then you have an idea of how incredible all this feels, feeling alive, from this point 6 years ago.
Thank you. Thank you for reading, for encouraging me, for your support. You have heard my pain often enough, I hope you smile as you read this.
You are love too my friend x
James Ballantyne 
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