The Search

“Adulthood is the time to be truly born, and a time to nurture this newborn self” Alannah Dore Breakdown or Breakthrough It was a special day—the first time my elder daughter would see her newborn baby sister. I could see a mass of wild curls bobbing along the bottom of the window near my hospital bed. Into full view, taking enthusiastic, tiny toddler steps, our 16-month-old entered the room. She didn’t care that her socks were pulled up over the outside of her pants or that the top she had found for her dad to put on her was in fact a pyjama top (and you might have guessed by now that her father was definitely not concerned). When we introduced this little girl to her gorgeous new baby sister she just fell in love along with us. Ooohhh—family bliss. Six months later I found myself crawling across the floor, unable to support myself. The pain in my legs unbearable, the fogginess in my head debilitating, yet while my partner was exhausted from working seven days a week, I was having to get up on average eight times a night to a distressed baby with no support. The depression in my heart was as thick as the walls of a fortress. Have you ever felt the total let-down of an unrealised dream? Great expectations shattered! It stinks doesn’t it? Well, half way to my patient little second child, who was lying waiting to be changed, I reflected on the not-so-joyful message that yet another doctor had given me just the day before. “You will never get better, it will just get worse. Learn to live with it.” With chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, postnatal depression, chronic joint pain, severe leg pain and many mysterious symptoms that were later discovered to be due to hundreds of food intolerances and chemical allergies, my immune system was breaking down. I felt like I was allergic to life itself. In fact my life was full of antis. There was anti this and anti that with anti-inflammatories, antibiotics, antidepressants and a big bag of anti-anti-fun. What happened to the dream? During these early parenting years I wondered how I had gone from a carefree, independent single life, to finding myself plagued with problems—and I was only 30 years of age. The problem list had been growing: Illness Insomnia Stress Anxiety Depression Relationship problems Parenting issues Addictive behaviours Financial stress There was no mistaking that my problems loved to attract more problems. Then my lowest point came that day on the family-room floor, when I collapsed, feeling defeated and crying my eyes out. Motivated by my Children Though those days were dark, my two gorgeous girls could lift my spirits in an instant. Their need for a happy, healthy parent, and the fear that they would not have one, scared me into a search for answers: to find light in my life so I could shine it on theirs. As an early-childhood teacher for the previous eight years I had been trained differently from the regular school teaching system. Schools, as we know, rightly or wrongly involve education en masse. A teacher has to deliver information while maintaining quiet behaviour from many children; individual attention has to be limited to get the learning tasks done. My experiences as an early-childhood educator allowed more freedom and more opportunities for children to receive individual attention. We had a full-time assistant educator as well as parental support. Learning was mostly experiential and interactive. Rather than academic performance, my primary objectives for each individual child were based on emotional, physical and social development. The children’s progress in each of these areas was closely monitored. This was quite different from the prescriptions and directions that were necessary for a teacher managing a classroom, whilst teaching the “three Rs” through what was then formal learning. The later school success of a child, from my perspective, depended on these pre-requisites to all learning—formal and informal—emotional, physical and social development. Of particular importance is the need for a child to have sound emotional development. If a child feels emotionally safe, happy and loved in all areas of their life, they will thrive. Applying my professional awareness of what all children on the planet need, emotionally, alerted me to the lack of healthy input my own children would continue to receive from me if I did not get well. Breaking Through Having hit rock bottom, I became my own Sherlock Holmes and doggedly searched for answers. I intended to leave no stone unturned and, unbeknownst to me, I was beginning to create a holistic living system that could be used by anyone to find the silver lining in any thunderous cloud and become a better person. This is how my discoveries evolved and when my life as an experiment really kicked in. Learning from the experience I gained by experimenting on myself, I personally explored and tested new methods and modalities for self-healing, self-awareness and self-esteem. Amazingly, with each new discovery, ancient or modern research eventually presented itself to me, backing up what I had already experienced. One of my favourite and most important of these findings, which is an umbrella for all the others over my life, is the meaning behind the following statement: “Pain is inevitable but suffering is optional.” Buddhist proverb We all have painful problems but it’s how we respond to them that makes the difference to whether we suffer or succeed as a result of experiencing them. Honestly Natural, Truly Holistic The illness and depression I was experiencing made two things clear to me: Treating the symptoms was not going to fix the real causes of the problems. Treating the problems required getting to the natural underlying imbalances that caused these issues. I needed to find this imbalance and fix it. Artificial means, like drugs and surgery, were not going to bring back my original, natural, healthy balance. If I could find where the original problem was and fix it before it was too late to fix, I thought I might be able to save myself the pain of either of these artificial options. So for me the first answer to try had to be natural. Also, it was more than just one part of my life that was being affected. My body, mind, emotions, relationships and finances were all struggling. I wanted all these parts back in balance, not just one or two. Like melding the sounds of the different instruments of an orchestra to play beautiful music, I set out to pull together the different parts of my life to create a beautiful existence. What I wanted was a package of information and strategies that would do this for me. What I discovered was that this did not exist. In the 1920s, American president Calvin Coolidge said “The world is full of educated derelicts.” He observed that there was so much information available to people but not enough application. In his opinion they were not putting into action as much as they could have with the knowledge they were gaining. I imagine he would roll over in his grave if he had any idea how much information we have at our fingertips today and did not put into action. Once we get quality information, if we don’t use it then it is of little or no use to us. It is in the experience of taking action that true wisdom and understanding occurs. I needed the information but, more importantly, I had to take action. The pain and stress I was experiencing, in myself and in how my children were being affected, motivated me to take action.