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July 20, 2019

How I made Friends with my OCD. ~ Sophie Haber

 

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There are these thresholds, these invitations, that lure us into a place of coming home to ourselves.

Yes, there is a choice here as to whether or not we are willing or ready to listen and leap into the arms of what’s calling. I have danced with “disorder” and you could say woven my own braid of bravery, of stories to tell.

There’s a sacredness and a lot of charge around this word, as well as this sort of mystery. There’s an invitation behind the word, a quest, and a curiosity.

How does one find bravery through disorder? The quest is within the question.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder was my invitation to seeing the world in a new way. It is the loyal soldier within, knocking on your doors to awaken and step deeper into the life that awaits. It is a crossroads, a dance with the dark goddess, the persistent gremlins in the road of trials inviting you to listen.

How and when might you be ready to listen is the place of pure potential. I like to think of this place as the void, this place of tender awareness and fertile seeding. It is the energy of the dark moon, the descent, the place in the heroine’s journey where you are tested over and over again until you reach the vast forest of handing it over and surrendering.

The stories from my past are woven in this braid of mine, yet I have found a new way to braid this braid. Yes, a reweaving, I might call it. Seeing OCD as my ally and as a compass to shapeshifting my life, was where the new story seeded. This ally is always a reminder to relate to this world with sacredness. What if your story, your disorder, was told as a myth? Had a name? Had a gift? What might that be?

The first step to braving your own inner wilderness is awareness. Something is calling for attention—it is the lightbulb to becoming ever so present and noticing of the world around you.

What are my feelings telling me? What might I do to comfort this frightened essence of myself? What are my tools that will bless my journey through this threshold? There is a gift behind every experience and that is our quest to discover the pearls deep within the caverns of our beings.

There is beauty even in the tides of infinite fear.

May your own braid of bravery bless your journey and welcome you home to remembering.

~

I ran my fingers through my hair and long, distant dreams began to move my hands, future tales and stories from my grandmothers…

She stood there in front of the green mirror in her room next to the chicken coop, her hair long and unevenly cut, she remembered her friends at school braiding each other’s hair—they all knew how and would sit every recess to braid and talk about the boys playing football.

And there I was, swinging from the monkey bars and throwing apples across the gates into the road. I wasn’t alone, but just curiously in a world of my own.

“You have everything you need,” I heard within the face in my green mirror. “You long for connection and you dream to braid like the girls at school but there’s more weaving to be done.”

I ran my fingers through my hair and long, distant dreams began to move my hands, future tales and stories from my grandmothers moved through me, began to cross and weave, under and over.

“I hear your prayers, I feel your feelings, keep weaving, keep braiding, don’t let your fingers stop you.”

I touched the tail of a storybook, an ancient braid of courage and bravery. To my surprise, I stood peering at a braid I wove myself.

It was always within me, I just needed to remember.

~

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Sophie Haber  |  Contribution: 760

author: Sophie Haber

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