I love this time of the year. Its the time of year when I wake up and drink coffee looking out of the window and see how the dark blue early morning light changes through the colours into the sunrise, admitted today it is just a grey light giving tree branches a dark effect. I love this time of the year, because this all happens at a reasonable time of the morning.
Yet, I do the same thing every morning
I turn on the light.
I flick the switch
So I can see.
So that I can get on with..whatever the day brings, requires light
Coffee, breakfast, reading, work….
Its as if the darkness of the night needs to be escaped from, obliterated, and eyes drawn to the comfortable of the kettle, the sink, the phone, the laptop, the busy, the things, the activities..
Night Walking with Scouts when I was 13 taught me about not using the torchlight until it was impossible not to see with my own night vision. My eyes could adjust. At 13 I would need lights for my bike on early morning paper rounds, so cars could see me, but I could see ok. ‘It’s not as dark as we make it out to be’ when we step outside light infused buildings into the natural light of the streets, the parks or the moonlit infused sky of the open field.
‘The people in darkness will see a great light’
I used to the love the darkness of the streets, the towns the cities, as I walked them, as I had conversations with young people as a youthworker in them, the darkness often meant more interesting conversations than in the summer time, the dark autumn and winter nights full of adventure, adrenalin and unpredictability. That was a darkness, that was a terrain I was comfortable to explore in, and rarely needing a torch.
Far easier to explore the outer terrain of the darkness, than explore the terrain within.
The terrain within, the darkness within so full of shame, hurt, pain, not to be touched, not to go there. To be afraid, to let it have power.
To be afraid of the dark.
To become aware, is to see the light (John O’Donohue)
Yet that often truthful voice of darkness remains, at times shouting, at times cajoling, at times fearing, at times reminding, and for so long it dominated my everything, and it may do you too.
I thought I could maintain appearances
I thought if I could just do something everything would be ok
I thought if I did the right things, other people would change
I thought that ……
Yet the ache of darkness pained within, prowled, festered, and was fed daily. Telling me truths, that I tried to block out, cover it with busy, distract with drama, soothe with food, fill that aching pain of darkness. Pretend it wasnt there, false masking in life, the energy it took to keep the James show on the road, numbing the pain.
Afraid of the inner dark.
The inner dark maintaining its place, loving the self destruction, never wanting to be exposed, never wanting to be seen, self torture and blame its oxygen, self destruction its goal.
Morality is often the enemy of growth (John O Donohue)
We dont want to go there. It feels painful.
I didnt.
So accustomed to the light, so sometimes spiritually accustomed to God being equated with light, that darkness is shamed, darkness is rejected, darkness is suppressed, darkness is moral failure. Darkness is to be avoided.
Yet, thought you and I may walk in the shadows, I will be with you, you will not be alone (Psalm 23)
He will be called Emmanuel, God is with you….and with you always…
In the dark, and not just to transform it, but walking with you through it, through the torture of trauma, through the torture of the voices that dont go away, through the torture of daily abuse, the self soothing and addiction, through the torture of feeling small, trapped, alone… through, with, alongside.. In…yes in the darkness
About three weeks into recovering from my emotional breakdown of 6 years ago, I was reading the Anglican Morning prayer with my friend, and though I cannot remember or find the exact passage, it was something about ‘God appearing in the clouds’ it was in Isaiah somewhere, I can’t find it. And my anglican priest friend just said to me, ‘James, God will meet you in the cloud, whatever path you need to go on, God will be close, even when the cloud mystifies, hides, soaks the path, God will be there, and will appear to you, in the cloud itself’
It gave me ‘spiritual permission’ for want for a better phrase to continue the very tentative process then of the inner walk, revealing and uncovering, that God, that I believed in was light, love and joy….was also in the darkness, also in the bewildering hidden space between. Also in the cloud.
Like today. No mystical sunrise beyond the blue. Just grey light as grey as this screen is im typing on.
In the darkness we are confronted with the unknown, peering cautiously around the corners, tentative steps with tiny courage, falling at hurdles never seen in the light… but thats ok.. its where courage gets tested, its where resolve gets made, its where, honestly, its where love finds us. The more we shame the darkness the more it destroys us. Thats not the path of the God of the bible, its not the path of love, its not the path of healing, its not the path of joy.
That darkness is not us. It is not your identity. It is not who you are.
The darkness might help us, in ways we are unable to see…yet.
The darkness might be shielding us from too much shiny light (s) that seem false, seem unreal, seem artifical
The darkness might be reminding us of part of our truth, a truth to be be faced, faced so that it doesn’t continue to have power over us . Faced so that we can realise that we are bigger than it. Faced so it’s a friend and loved, not a prickly pain in the corner, festering, faced so it has the possibility of transformation.
The darkness helps us to grow, if we have the courage to turn, to, like my eyes on scout trips, adjust to it, feel our way around it, become friends with it, accept it, and love it. Slow, eye adjustment, not blinding torch. Darkness needs hugs and warmth, and whilst it tells you otherwise, you have more than enough love to give to it.
The people who walk in darkness will see a great light… They will, and you will, and I will..and from the shadows light will emerge.
Something happened to you…that wasnt your fault….and you had to do something as a result that you cannot talk about.
Something happened to you..that wasnt your fault…and you coped in life with self soothing strategies…that you cannot talk about either.
Something happened to you….that wasnt your fault….and everything since has been about staying silent about it…silent….and hiding all traces….protecting it….protecting yourself…from what happened to you.
Something happened to you, by someone who is dominant, powerful and sometimes insane, and bewilders you from any kind of action, and you can’t share it, for recrimination.
Something happened to you…..that you dont think anyone will believe.
That wasnt your fault.
That wasnt your fault.
(even if their insanity causes you to take the blame)
It was something done to you, when you..when I.. was a child, when I was powerless, when I was dependent…
That set so many patterns of life in motion….
And a story that had to remain silent.
We live by stories.
We all have a personal narrative, a myth, a sacred story to believe, a story to live by.
David Macadam says in ‘Stories we live by’ that by having this personal story we then accept, reject information to fit it, or expand our story to fit the new information.
That was one of the things I learned when I was doing my Masters in Theology and Ministry at Durham, the psychology elective that I did with Dr Jocelyn Bryan.
In 2017, doing my Masters, I didn’t have a story I lived by, not one I wanted to talk about, it was far easier, a defence mechanism, to use my brain to disect and critique the process of story making, story telling and consider how theology, story and drama all fit together, whilst I was feeling, well, I wasnt feeling anything, just dying inside. Even the Christian story that I believed , I had critiqued and was full of doubt of it.
Yet.
That sacred myth that I doubted had to do a lot of work, to hold me somehow when my psychological self was a scared, wounded, abused little boy.
The story that I was actually living by, twas a story of shame, a story of abuse, for fear, a story that I didn’t want to acknowledge.
That was the story I was actually living by…
Because it haunted my every step.
It was the story that had power over me.
It was the story that consumed.
It broke me into a thousand pieces every day, causing…
One trip to eat extra food every day
One more hour watching TV news
Three more glasses of wine
One more hour on twitter staying distracted.
One more week watching Friday night soothing comedy.
One more piece of bread, then another, and another, and another
One more football match to overlay drama with drama
One more piece to write to stay busy
Another long bike ride.
More work to do, fill the diary.
One more anything
To run…
Filling an ache.
Because I was so not actually ok, that I could barely say the words, let alone say I had needs, because, that would mean being in a safe enough place where my needs were validated, even if I could articulate them.
One more coping mechanism
One more denial of my self
One more day to mask and pretend.
One more day when I couldn’t share, just keep going.
Survival isnt a story, its fragmented existence.
One more self soothe
One more ‘fix others, im not important’ moment
One more hope of change, living a story of ‘conditional okayness’
Fear, alone, isolation.
The story I lived by, for too long, was a story of shame, fear, anxiety and survival, and masking this so that no one could ever know.
Shame.
Ends.
When stories
are told
in
safe places. (Brene Brown)
Yet.
Shame stories
Held
me
for too
long.
It was a story I couldn’t tell.
It was a story I held in silence.
It was a story that I had no control over.
It was a story that wasnt mine.
It was a story of what someone had done to me.
It was a story of my coping mechanisms because of that childhood abuse and the follow up behaviour, including relationships.
My life, was someone else story.
My lifeless life was someone else’s story.
How I had adjusted to be for someone else.
How I had given away myself.
Actually thats so not true. Because I had never had a self. Self was broken from birth.
When real
stories
of us
being alive.
get hidden.
There was a story I was living by. But it wasnt a story about me. It was a story about how my life was orientated around the fear of someone else, and that I was a bit part player in my own life.
It takes so long for someone to feel the main player in their own story
Spiralling into an anxiety I couldn’t never acknowledge. Tears hidden, as breakdowns occurred in car journeys all alone to Coldplay songs, and reduced priced Tescos wraps scoffed.
In avoiding the negative, we only encourage it to recur (John O Donohue Anam Cara)
I look back and realise how barely I even existed.
To do self care, to have needs, to accept love, to do quiet, to give myself any permission, to feel power…all deemed unimportant, selfish or impossible, so invalidated all of them.
So that story began to change.
Or, my relationship to my story did.
As i began to realise what was done to me, wasnt my fault.
As I began to realise how I had been trapped in emotional contagion.
As I realised that change on the inside brought a sense of worth, and change on the outside…
As I began to realise how I hadn’t been loved, just stolen from.
As I began to realise, how I had survived
As I began to realise the damage, yet also the inner strength and resolve I had to get myself to where I have got to.
As I began to work through every brave step, and own the bravery of it all.
As I began to realise who I am, and who I am not
As I began to connect with my story, to dig deep into it all, and realise myself in it all. I had ran from a past I had to connect with, to face, to love for my self strength in it all.
As I took loving myself seriously, and self compassion, and self care, and just undoing the critical voice of inner torment. I had to love myself in a way that I had only been able to love others.
As I began to realise my own…sense of worth….sense of love…sense of being me, wounded in many parts, but not entirely broken, and capable of love.
As I started to be my own story. I started to be able to own the story, to make this story about me, to connect the dots, and also now, to be able to be excited about the blank pages ahead, waiting for their colours to emerge.
As I started to write it down, and realise I wasnt alone.
As I realised that there was life beyond it, beyond it all.
But at the time, the story I wasn’t able to tell was the story that I was living by.
What if the story we live by is one of abuse and the shame of what we do to cope, and the silence of both of these things?
For, It’s not what happened to us often…it’s the silence and hiding for so long. It’s navigating a life around the shame. Thats draining and energy sapping.
Yet, it doesn’t have to be this way, not forever.
Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is to stop living the story that others wrote for you.
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.
I have written before about a certain pink coloured book (link here to that post) that I consider to have changed my life, in terms of how I could see what had happened to me, and the behaviours of others.
However.
There was another book that I had read 6 months previously that had as profound an importance.
At the time, my bookshelf was a mixture of Youth work, Theology, Mission and Social Justice books.
My head was full of ideas.
My life, however, was, and had been falling apart and I was in denial.
I felt completely alone, no where to go, emotionally or physically.
With no one to talk about what was going on.
I was already unemployed at the time, what I didnt know was that I was about to be out of the family home, with no family support, and about to battle to save a marriage. I had barely any friends, and had at least 1 breakdown in that summer.
I have no idea when I bought it, or how it got there, but there was a copy of Richard Rohr’s book ‘Falling Upwards’ on my bookshelf. I may have read 1 RR book previously, but I can not for the life of me remember when I bought it. However, I do remember picking it up to read from my bookshelf in about the April of that year (2018), and thinking to myself that it was a bit ‘woolly’ , a bit not ‘academic’ enough, for the James that wrote blogs on books and theology, this wouldn’t cut it.
In August of that same year, with cracks opening wide, beginning to expose the fragility of my situation, I noticed it on the bookshelf. It was more that likely that with no money I could only read the books I had, so it was this books turn.
To Summarise, Rohr outlined the two halves of life. The first he said was about achievement, making it, ego, and accomplishments. The second, he said was about becoming real, about to being true to the person who was actually inside, and not the masks, identities created for those accomplishments.
He said that to get from one to the other, there is often something seismic, the wake up call, the breakdown, and this could appear/be in a number of ways.
It all depended on how we responded to it.
If I’m honest, I didn’t recognise the first part of what he described, even if I did see bits of me ‘being an internationally known youth worker’ or ‘well known for writing’ all of these things seemed even at the time, I didnt feel like I had achieved, or made it, or anything, I was full of shame, fear, self doubt, and emptiness, trauma I hadn’t dealt with and running away from and bottled up for a day I never wanted to arrive.
But.
I could recognise the middle bit.
The breakdown. The situation of desperation. The need to be vulnerable. When everything that I even thought I had did begin to be stripped away.
And as I picked up the phone to a friend to ask for a place to stay, and cried in relief when he said yes, I kind of knew.
I knew that I was now in the beginning of this phase. I knew, and I could choose how I would respond to what was going on.
I knew it was time.
I said to myself on that very day of that very call,
‘I do not know what is going to happen now, but I am going to learn, I am going to face it’
It may well have been the words from a book.
(and there’s tears in my eyes today as I write this, recognising my journey in all this)
It didnt matter. Because, ‘Falling Upward’ gave me a roadmap, it gave me something to cling to, it gave me a sense that it will be ok, and a sense that what I was about to go through wouldn’t destroy everything (and at that point I needed to know that there was something theological/spiritual about whatever was going to happen). I could hang what was about to happen on a process, (which has subsequently included amongst other things, 4 separate sessions of therapy, a considerable amount of time seeing, understanding and processing and healing from deep psychological childhood trauma, my own coping mechanisms from this, and facing the inner demons, all over the last 6 years). In short, it gave me a structure, and it gave me hope.
Hope because at that moment, and had been for a considerably very long time, life had been dark, shadowed, avoided and I was in perpetual survival mode feeling trapped. But now I had hope. Hope that there might something beyond what I was about to start the process of going through.
Hope because I knew of no one, and heard of no one who had walked a similar path, yes I had heard of ‘mid-life crises’ but I was already in crisis, but no one who shared their story, it felt as though I could hope because the path wasnt completely unheard of, tiny, frightened alone me, walking, falling, held with hope from a book. But it was hope none the less.
Hope, because at that point no one had told me I was going to be ok. I just had to believe it for myself, and now this book shone a light on the possible future.
But that I had to face, encounter, deal with, and not avoid everything that was about to arrive. For though much was taken, and I had to cling on at times, in a way, I started from a very low point already.
And as I walked on the top of Roker cliffs a few weeks later, having received two weeks of safety, and care, that learning process was starting. It would do, and continues to this day.
Where did that resilience come from James?
Asked a friend of mine a few weeks ago when I was telling them this story.
I think it came from when I was 12.
When I told myself the same thing.
I knew that that point that if I am going to make it in life I am going to have to do it on my own. I could not ask for help, have needs, have dreams, ask for money even, or support, I was alone and had to make it. 28 years later, and with the framework of a Richard Rohr book and a safe place to sleep in I dug deep into that survival and determined resolve, the lowest point had been reached already. I was broken, but not beaten, and that moment of vulnerability and seeing the path, was already a very small, but significant positive fall upwards.
Richard Rohr, Falling Upwards, Thank you. Actually, you probably did save my life. You were probably my first Angel on this path.
James Ballantyne 