Healing Through Meditation

Hey all, it’s Nini, an aspiring former people pleaser, scapegoat, and black sheep. I wanted to write a blog about my personal journey and all the lessons that I have learned along the way. My hopes are that you find this blog impactful and relatable. I hope that somewhere along the way you can find a little piece of me in you.  If you’re just joining, be sure to read the first two blogs to get a better understanding of the journey we’re on.  

Content Warning: This blog does have mention of self-harming.  If this is a topic you cannot or do not want to read about, I do understand and hope to see you in future blogs. 

I mentioned in a previous blog that meditation has been one of the key components along my journey. I began meditating at about seven years old, it has helped to calm me when nothing else would.  Meditation has brought me clarity, comfort, and growth.  Along with keeping me calm, it’s helped me step away from situations when I feel like I am going to lose my cool. There have been times when I walked away from meditation due to just living life but any time I’ve hit rock bottom, it's always been right there waiting for me with open arms. I remember always telling myself that I was afraid of the silence because it would make me confront everything that I was avoiding in my life, so I would only meditate to stay calm and forget.  Eventually that wouldn’t be enough.  Meditation actually opened up and revealed so much trauma that it led me to the journey I am on today.

I remember my mother being upset with me over something, I can’t really remember what it was, however, in my mind at the time, (because I was not a bad kid), it wasn’t anything that deep to warrant a 3-hour rant. This rant consisted of name calling, promises (because lol we all know that our parents made promises and not threats) and just a whole lot of unwarranted verbal abuse, my mother also had some unresolved anger issues, so when she was upset, she was harsh.  Keep in mind, I wasn’t good at showing emotions at this age.  A lot of my feelings were invalidated, and I never had anyone to help me express my emotions in a healthy manner.  I grew up around a lot of anger from everyone in my household, and all I knew is that anger never solved anything.  All of these things contributed to me bottling my emotions up inside.  I had been sitting there listening to her call me out my name and complain for hours and I was getting angry, my head was spinning, and something told me to just meditate. So, once she was done with her rant, I did. I shared a room with my sister, and she had the TV going, but at that moment it was okay.  I sat on my bed, closed my eyes, held my palms upwards facing the ceiling on my lap, and connected my thumb and pointer fingers together.  The same voice that told me to meditate started guiding my breathing telling me to inhale and exhale.  While following the directions of this voice I felt everything that surrounded me in the physical world ‘disappear’.  The sounds from the TV were gone, and I no longer felt my bed beneath me, my mind was quiet from all those angry thoughts.  The next thing I felt was the presence of my mother when she came into the room.  When I was finished, I felt calmer, to my surprise my mother was a lot calmer as well. She actually asked me what I was doing, and I told her that I needed to meditate. She didn’t say anything else to me and we went about our evening.  I wish that I could safely say that I developed a habit of meditation after this, but I did not.  I didn’t fully understand what I did, and how impactful meditation could be.  I was young and simply followed the voice in that moment as it was guiding me to the better option.  

Through the years I continued to hear this voice but as a kid of course I wouldn’t always listen I continued to bottle my emotions inside, keeping… well attempting to keep a low profile and you know, I just had to survive until graduation and then to college.  After a while, I replaced meditation with razor blades.  I felt as if the razors were my safety for a while. I would get so overwhelmed and upset that in that moment, that's all I could think of.  Each cut represented why I was upset, for my birth mother not being responsible, my father not being here and getting his green card (I was young and did not understand the process as I do now), for being adopted, for even being upset, and for not being good enough.  Like I said I was never taught to deal with or express my emotions healthily so as long as I was feeling better at the moment in my adolescent mind, I was okay.  It wasn’t until my brother moved out of the house and I finally got my own room and was a little older that I started to make what seemed like healthier choices on the way I handled my emotions…. Sort of.  I felt like I could breathe a little more.  I had more privacy, so If I needed to cry, I could do that, still silently but it was a little easier. I fell in love with yoga and during my senior year in high school, I decided to take weightlifting in school. I really started focusing on my fitness a little bit more.  At home, my mother calmed down a little as well. I found myself cutting less and just figuring things out.  I made a personal goal my senior year to smile more and to focus on being happy. I was controlling my emotions by working out, doing yoga, singing, enjoying my friends, and at home things were a little smoother.  I had been surviving and it was almost over. 

I only had a few months until graduation then I was off to college, and I thought I had the hang of things, until I didn’t. I read somewhere that if you cut as a child and don’t seek help, chances are you are going to be cutting well into your adulthood. I was in college when I read that, and I had thought about myself. Somehow, I had gotten back to a place where I was cutting myself again.  I talk a lot about my aspirations to not be a people pleaser, a scapegoat or a black sheep, it wasn’t until college that I really realized I was all these things. It was when I started realizing I was letting other people validate all the things my mother and siblings had done to me by letting them do those things too.  I wasn't confronting. I was hanging around people that I knew I couldn’t relate to.  I wanted to fit in, so I would often find myself pleasing people and still being the end of people’s jokes, they knew they could control me because I wanted to fit in. I would smile during the day and cut when I was alone. I struggled with the statistic that I read at the back of my mind, constantly replaying as I would hurt myself.  I didn't want to be that statistic, but I didn’t know what to do. Eventually, I would harm myself, and hate myself for doing it. The thing that helped me through college was the ability to be everywhere else but by myself, I was literally only in my room to sleep and prepare myself for the day. I knew the moment I was alone for too long; it would force me into my thoughts, and I would be crying again, and I was over crying all the time. In my mind I was weak, because that’s all I ever did when I was by myself.

This cycle would continue and stop, I would also add in the pattern of turning to mediation sometimes, just to calm my mind.  There was never any actual healing taking place.  The self- harming didn’t stop until I got with my Fiancé, it was something that he helped me with.  I remember both of us sitting there crying, through his tears he reassured me that life for me was going to be different.  I finally had someone I could talk to and a space where I could express myself freely and have those feelings acknowledged.  During this time, I began to write a little more. Not as consistently as I should have, but it was relaxing. I would also start meditating a little more.

During covid my anxiety was at an all-time high.  It was at this time that I was forced into my awakening that I began to meditate regularly.  This regular meditation led me to sitting in the silence I once avoided, this was the start of my healing. I began to meditate with a purpose to heal things that were bothering me.  I will say that in the beginning, although I was setting my intentions out loud and subconsciously, I still wasn’t sure how meditating would help me.  For a while, I let whatever came to me during meditation come.  Once, while meditating I spoke with my adopted mom and was able to understand, we had come to an understanding with each other, and I was able to forgive her and begin to put behind the childhood trauma.  Little by little I started to shed things and people that no longer served me. Eventually I was meditating everyday but somewhere along the way something got lost.

I was getting back to the point of just meditating.  What was I needing to heal? I didn’t need to calm myself, my root chakra was opened, I felt myself being balanced and grounded. Why was I still meditating? It felt weird not having a focus for my meditation even though I was being pulled to continue.  I had to stop and listen and pay attention to what was triggering me.  Meditation revealed a lot of triggers that I never paid attention to as well as a lot of events that my mind had blocked out and bottled up.  As all the revelations began to happen, I understood that there was still work to do and began to focus and do my shadow work. It was a rough time for me.  I sat in silence for many dyas, reflecting on my life. One of the biggest revelations was that my mothers’ problems were projections of unresolved trauma from her past.   Realizing that and having a daughter myself I knew regardless of how scary this darkness was I had to go in and face it, solve these abandonment issues.

Meditation has helped me to survive through a lot of my life.  It showed itself to me even before I really understood what I was doing.  It helped me resolve and confront some personal and traumatic events and has revealed some vicious habits and cycles. It has and continues to help me grow up and take accountability. The power mediation has is amazing and I hope you give it a try. 

Stay blessed, stay grounded and stay protected

- The Spiritual Strategist 💗