Nicole Update and a Pep Talk!

“I do not think that there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.”
~ John D. Rockefeller

Hello, Lovelies!
Thanks so much for all the love and positive energy that has flowed my way the past week or so. I’ve felt it, and it has helped.

Firstly, for everyone who asked, the dogs weren’t in the car with us. Thank goodness, because they would have been squashed. The other driver has cracked vertebrae but will be okay. I am stiff and sore but getting better. Ben’s even been back to our wrecked car and retrieved all our personal effects. So that chapter of our lives is over and it’s time to think about new cars, new directions and new eras.

It has been a strange week since the accident. Useful, but strange.

I found that there is a place inside me brimful with fear and memories of prior trauma. It came very close to the surface a few days ago. After seeing the doctor we stopped at the coffee place we had originally been heading to before our car crash. I sat with my coffee in front of me and as I picked it up my hands began shaking so much I had to put the cup down.

My heart raced. My eyes filled with tears. Suddenly, every shitty awful thing that has happened in the past came rushing forward. So many. Too many.

Oh my God, I thought. I’m having a breakdown.

Ben put his big hand on my leg. You okay? he asked.

It broke the spell and I half-laughed with tears running down my face. ‘Just peachy’ I told him. ‘Really, I’m fine.’

Of course I am. I’m still here. Life goes on. Sh*t happens. I roll with it.

It made me see how I have stuffed certain emotions deep down inside me as a coping mechanism. Each time I did it consciously and mindfully so that I could keep existing in the moment – through pain or illness, horror or exhaustion. At each instant I talked to myself (often out loud) and said ‘Come on, Nicole. You can do this. You’ve got this. You’re okay.’ Always at a time when I was most definitely NOT okay.

And do you know what?

Every time I did this I truly was okay. I got through things I never thought I’d survive. I managed. Not always gracefully. Sometimes limping through with no style at all. But I kept going. I kept saying to myself, ‘I’ve got things to do. I’ll deal with this later’.

People have been saying to me lately that they don’t know how I have coped, with so difficult many things one after the other. But the truth is that when you’re deep in the middle of something you find a way through.

Am I going to sit and explore all that pain and trauma stuffed down in me? I’ve already done that on many occasions. I’ve done more self-work and reflection than anyone I know. This is what I’ve discovered. If I endlessly replay all the old hurts and traumas I get stuck there. Instead I always look to HOW I COPED and WHAT I LEARNED.

All that pain in me is actually a strength. From it arises a wild and ferocious warrior women who will carry me through any fire and emerge me out the other side. Sure, maybe battered and singed and partly broken, but still here.

When I came home from the coffee shop I sat in meditation and reached into that place of pain. I saw that beside it and equal to it was a place of calm and wisdom and compassion. That tranquil inner place in me was born of the fire. It didn’t come first, it came as a response. It came BECAUSE I had suffered.

I’m sharing this with you because you may have forgotten that you are stronger than you know. You are stronger than any obstacle, any current circumstance. You’ll get through this too.

Holding you, as ever, in my prayers and meditations, Nicole ❤ xx