It wasn’t too long ago that I believed, if I had a strong enough faith and a healthy spiritual life, that was enough to get me through just about anything. My spirituality, including deep inner work, meditation, and prayer, is what helped get me through the horrendous and painful divorce and ugly custody dispute between my ex-husband and myself. It began in 1993 and didn’t end until the spring of 1997. That was a long time to endure the kind of trauma and fear that I did. I remember actually trembling in fear throughout my days, just waiting for, and trying to anticipate the next bomb that would explode in my life. Yet, focusing on my soul and the inner power I had, pulled me out of many dark corners, as I cried devastating tears of blinding confusion, and excruciating pain.

Once the ordeal was over and I was awarded full custody of my three children, I used the spiritual principles I learned to help me raise my son and two daughters. I assumed that once the trauma was over, and I moved on, all of the angst, stress, worry, and fear that I suffered through, during that time, were gone along with my dysfunctional marriage. I did feel quite broken and exhausted, but I figured that was normal after what we all went through. Yet, I had three children to care for, and I had no time to explore the trauma, that I just might still be holding inside, so that I could heal from it.

The years went by, and my spiritual life and the work that I did with others to help them navigate their own spiritual paths, were both rewarding and exhilarating. I loved being a part of moments, when someone I was working with opened to their soul and felt the electrifying energy that comes with it. I felt such joy watching people awaken to their spiritual consciousness and remember who they are. I was making a difference and I felt so grateful that I had been entrusted with such a holy mission and life purpose.

The years continued to pass, and my children grew into beautiful adults. With less time spent raising my children and more time in silent, still moments of contemplation, I began to feel anxious and fearful. Anxiety had never been something I experienced before. I had little time to focus much on myself. I was too absorbed in helping my kids and other people. Yet, there it was, intense anxiety, rising and falling unexpectedly, over what I considered to be absolutely nothing. I was happy. I had met a wonderful man who eventually became my husband. We were in love and planning our incredible life together. The kids went off to college and were, for the most part, doing well. Yet, the torturous anxiety and fear would still come and go with the wind, it seemed.

Then in 2015, right after my older daughter got married, I fell ill with a ventral hernia that caused an intestinal blockage and was threatening my life. I was rushed to the emergency room and had surgery the following morning. That began a long journey of illness and recovery that lasted for several years. In the midst of that, I had a car accident in which I was broadsided, and my seatbelt fractured my sternum. It seemed as if one trauma after another kept crashing into my life from all directions. I tried to use my spiritual tools to help me find my bearings and make sense of it all, but I couldn’t.

Finally, I decided that maybe I was missing something. Perhaps, there was more to being a healthy, functional, and peaceful human than simply relying and focusing on the other side of life, the world of spirt, and my soul. My husband encouraged me to “talk to someone” about my pain. I resisted for a while, still believing I was strong enough to go it alone, until I couldn’t any longer. Something was wrong! I felt incomplete and fractured. Why, I wondered, was it so easy for me to help others heal, and yet couldn’t help myself? So, I sought out a trauma specialist and began exploring all of the traumas I had faced over my lifetime. It was a lot to process, and my therapist was astonished and a bit flummoxed over how detached from it all I seemed, and how casually I described the suffering I had endured. She said it sounded as if I was talking about someone else, not myself.

In a very short period of time, and with the help of a very talented young woman, I finally allowed myself to feel the difficult emotions and painful feelings I had suppressed for so long. I learned that traumas that are not dealt with and processed build on each other until we, quite possibly, reach a breaking point. I realized this might be happening to me. Traumas can also change our brain chemistry, and all kinds of physical, bodily changes can occur that may lead to the very symptoms I was experiencing. I began to put the pieces together to understand why, with all of my spiritual understanding, I was unable to fully heal.

The answer was simple. I was a spirit, a soul having a physical experience. My soul was housed in a biological form that was influenced, both negatively and positively by the experiences I had during my incarnation here on the earth. If the traumas I had faced were not processed, my soul would have a difficult time breaking through the barriers of my damaged psyche, in order to fulfill its full life purpose here.

I had been so completely focused on my soul, that I had not been honoring the wonderful body my soul had chosen in order to complete its work here successfully. I began to understand that our soul must fully integrate with its physical form in order for us to be healthy in our mind, body, and spirit. We are both human and divine and must live our lives from that perspective. That was the very important and crucial piece I had been missing all along.

Therefore, the point here is that we must honor our mortal humanness as much as we do our Immortal souls. We cannot do the spiritual work we came here to do without a physical body to assist us. Trying to accomplish our soul’s purpose on earth, is not possible from the spirit world. That’s why we came here. It is not a sign of weakness, as I thought, to seek help from a licensed mental health practitioner. In fact, it is a sign of strength, and an act of self-love.

I finally cried the sorrowful tears that were locked inside. I faced the terrifying fears that I held deep in my belly that led to the hernia. I fully embraced them and allowed them to, simply “be.” I mourned the passing of unfulfilled dreams and grieved the loss of a life with the father of my children that I had once thought was mine to keep. It was not! I chose to release the vision of a cohesive family unit with a white picket fence, out of sheer self-preservation.

After months of intense therapy, I was actually “let go” from my weekly counseling sessions, because my therapist told me I no longer needed her. I was finally free to live my life as a courageous, fallible, and sometimes fragile human, as well as a powerful, wise, immortal, and fairly enlightened child of our infinite, loving Creator.