From Grit to Grace

In the 1990’s, I wrote stories about my life from a symbolic perspective. It was a very cathartic process as it allowed me to look at my experiences through a mystical lens versus one of victim consciousness. The mystical lens allowed me to see the truths that would serve my healing process. After I wrote the stories, I put them in a file and didn’t think about them again until recently, when I heard one of my teachers use the analogy of life as a train, and I remembered the story I wrote using a train to symbolize my family.

The train was an important part of my childhood. The farm I grew up on was approximately five kilometers from the train track that passed through a very small community consisting of no more than a train station, gas station/garage, small general store, post office and a two-room school house. This small community served the farmers and the people who lived in the rural area surrounding the community. Very few families lived in the community itself unless they offered a service. In my early years, everything that was shipped to the community, including the mail, came by train. The train was a vital service for all who lived in this rural area.

The train also played a very important role in my own personal life. It allowed me to nurture and grow a powerful imagination as well as develop my inner visionary skills. It also fostered a love of travel and adventure. I loved nothing more than to hear the train whistle and fortunately that distinctive sound was carried over the pre-cambrian shield that lay between our farm and the train tracks. As soon as I would hear the train whistle, I would imagine that I was on that train. Sometimes I would be arriving home from a wonderful adventure or I would be leaving. When I was at a railway crossing or at the train station, I would imagine myself being on the train impatiently waiting for the screeching of steel against steel as the wheels of the engine started to roll, then the familiar rumble that vibrated through the train and my body as the wheels on each car began to turn, one after another, until the whole train was moving and gathering speed, and I was off on another joyous imaginary adventure.

I was about five years old when I had my first real train experience. Our family adventure was approximately 700km return. During my train adventure, I was allowed to walk through the cars as long as I didn’t touch anything or bother anyone. The conductor was very kind and was happy to allow me to satisfy my curiosity as well as share his love of the train. I was in awe. My imagination certainly had not done the interior of the cars justice. They felt so grand compared to anything else my five-year-old eyes had seen or imagined. That train adventure was one of my most loved childhood adventures, and my love of trains continued to grow after that experience, as I could now imagine in so much more detail.

My favorite car on the train was the caboose. Even at that young age, I identified with being the caboose in my family. Being the youngest, I was always behind everyone else in the family. In the story I wrote in the 1990’s, I associated each family member with the function of a train car that symbolized their behavioral patterns, their values, their personality and their role in the family. My father was head of the patriarchal family symbolized by the big black shiny engine. A great image of strength and power — a role of importance as it pulled all those cars to and fro. My mother was the dining car, as her life seemed to be centered around preparing food and preserving food for her family — a role of tending to other’s needs before her own. I saw the car that was stacked with cars and trucks being delivered to dealerships as symbolic of my brother who continuously flexed his muscles to demonstrate his male dominant power. It was the perfect symbol of his male ego. My one sister was symbolized as all the passenger cars, as she was dedicated to people pleasing.  My other sister was symbolized by the baggage car.  She carried a lot of baggage for others in an effort to show how important and valuable she was. For me, identifying as the caboose of the train was very symbolic of the way I lived life, as I could not see where I was going. I only saw what was behind me. I was looking at my life through the lens of all that has passed by. Like the conductor, the brake man and the flagman who rode in the caboose, I felt responsible for the safety of the train. If my train family was safe, I was safe. Despite my efforts to keep everything under control, it felt like there were frequent unexpected derailments.

Running parallel to the image of my family as a train, was the knowing that each train car also represented intergenerational trauma that needed to be healed. I had come to a point in my life where I knew that creating my future through the lens of my past was not working for me. I knew that I needed to walk through every car with the intention to clear it; I trusted that when I arrived in the engine, I would be healed and making choices that aligned with my true self. In my story, the engine was the story car. It had all the power, as it carried the core story of the patriarch — the ‘not enough/too much’ story that has been deeply internalized within my family. The story had been passed down through each train car in the form of thoughts, beliefs, actions/behaviors, emotions, expectations and relationships until it all accumulated in the baggage car that was bursting with overstuffed bags.

In my story, the caboose sat behind the baggage car. To make my way through the train to the engine, the first car I entered was the baggage car. I was overwhelmed, as it was stuffed and I couldn’t see a way through. I desperately wanted to bypass this car. I dreamed up all kinds of ways to do that, but in the end, the only way through was to clear the baggage. By that time, I realized that I needed the guidance of others who had mastered this train journey, and when I felt worthy of guidance and released the need to prove I could do it in my own way, the healing journey began. All the cars needed to be walked through and I was guided through them separately and simultaneously in a way that was perfect for my unique human soul. During my journey, I visited all the cars many times and with each visit, I walked through each car at a deeper level of awareness.  The cars revealed many surprises as I journeyed.

My first surprise was in the baggage car when I discovered that if I just opened one bag and emptied it completely, it prepared me for what needed to be cleared in the next bag. The overwhelm lessened and in time I trusted the process and the clearing of the bags unfolded with even greater ease. My story of life being hard was unraveled in the baggage car.

When I got to the passenger cars, I was surprised to learn that I carried the ‘responsible for’ pattern which is the core pattern of the ‘not enough/too much’ story. I felt responsible for all the passengers riding on my train. It is a pattern of co-dependence. If they are okay, then I will be okay. If I care for them, then I will be cared for. If I love them, then I will be loved. The need to control, manipulate, meddle, and fix were all unconscious behaviors that came out of this pattern. These behaviors were all enacted to serve the illusion that I would be safe. The most painful part of this experience was realizing that I was making life about me while I thought I was caring for others. I was being exactly what I judged others for being. It was in these cars that I learned how to be ‘responsible to’ myself and to others and then my behaviors were rooted in love, compassion, kindness and empowerment.

Being responsible to, I saw the passengers on my train through a new lens. If I was no longer able to serve their needs in a way that honoured my truth, or if they were not able to accept and honour my truth, then they needed to get off my train. As relationships ended and the passenger cars emptied, I felt lonely. I feared that living my truth equated to being alone. I was now face to face with my deepest fear, and it took courage and strength to stand it in and trust my path. The gift of the empty passenger cars and facing my fear of being alone, allowed me the time and space to shift from believing my truth to knowing my truth.

In being with my deepest fear, I learned that I had the power to create and experience connection by becoming one with the light, and when I stepped out of the light, I created and experienced separation. Living my truth aligned me with the Light. I am now choosing to walk with people who share my spiritual values and behaviors, who are kind, loving, caring and accept what is. We raise each other up and as we do so we are expanding the light.

The dining car held the biggest surprise. As I explored my relationship with food and how my beliefs regarding food and eating habits had been conditioned by my parents’ and society’s beliefs, I realized that I had no idea what was best for me and my body. All I knew was others’ ideas of what was best for me, including what professionals said and what science had proved. Over my years of serving the birth community, I witnessed the miracle of the human body time and time again, in both the birthing mother and the newborn, yet, I had a belief that it was possible for others to have a miraculous body but not me. My mind and body were both stuck in the past, in intergenerational conditioning and as I walked through my train, I liberated them. Now I am aware of my body’s wisdom. Every day my body is demonstrating how miraculous it is and every day my trust in my body deepens. It knows exactly what it needs to be its highest potential and it has the power to heal itself. This new relationship with my body has been instrumental in me remembering the power of living my truth.

I have written extensively in my ebook, Birth Your True Self: Weaving a Story Web of Love and Joy, and in my blog posts about how fear-filled my life once was. In my new relationship with my body, I learned that the fear was predominately generated from my mind. There was a time in my life when I defined a crisis as something a trivial as a bad hair day. I laugh about it now, but then, I truly believed it was a crisis. When I was living in survival consciousness, the fear of being judged, being rejected and feeling that pain of being alone felt like a crisis. I have compassion for my younger self.  In liberating myself from survival consciousness I have redefined a true crisis as my life being at risk, and in making that change, peace has replaced the fear. In practicing brain and heart coherence and being aware of and working with the sacred Masculine and Feminine archetypal patterns, I have learned that I can trust my heart to know when there is a true crisis. If there is a true crisis, my heart will communicate with my brain and my mind and body will respond in a way that serves my highest good.

The most challenging part of walking through the train was allowing myself to feel fully. I have always been extremely sensitive and as a child, I didn’t know how to work with the intensity of what I was feeling. I learned I could avoid the physical pain by leaving my body, but the emotional pain and suffering remained, so I resisted feeling it and did my best to block it out. As a young adult, I learned how to become one with physical pain and to work with it. I had tremendous fear around emotional pain but as I walked through the train, I learned to let go of my resistance to feeling emotional pain and allowed myself to feel fully and accept what I was feeling. In doing so, I learned that my body was very capable of transmuting the emotional pain, just as it does physical pain. This process required practice and trust in my body. It has been liberating, as being sensitive is one of my greatest gifts and serves me well at many levels. I now experience the freedom in trusting myself to feel fully without fear.

My walk through the train has been a life long journey. Since writing my ebook in 2023, the remnants of the ‘not enough/too much’ story that were present at that time have dissolved. The story of ‘not enough/too much’ has been healed. The wound that generated the story has been healed and my heart is opening to experience love and joy in unexpected ways.

As I step through the door and over the threshold of the engine of my train, I experience the knowing of an ending and a new beginning. This new engine is gold in colour and expresses the frequency of wholeness/oneness. As I look out through the massive crystal-clear windows, I am viewing an unknown landscape. I feel the awe and wonder bubbling within and remember feeling the same feeling as child when I embarked on my imaginary train adventures. I feel unbound, just as I did on my imaginary train adventures. I know that this unknown landscape has endless timelines to choose from, and each timeline holds unlimited possibilities. I know that I am guided one step at a time, as I always have been, and I am listening.  As I look back, the train that I walked through is no longer there. Through the eyes of the crone, the unexpected delays, the countless sidings I have waited upon, the unexpected change of tracks, the frequent changes in the cars and the unexpected derailments have all served my path. They were simply experiences and do not define the truth of who I am. The journey was literally one of grit to grace. The wound of separation is healed and no longer influences my choices, and the feeling of freedom abounds.