Soulshine

“Loneliness can only be understood, never escaped or overcome—except temporarily.” Darlene Lancer , Conquering Shame and Codependency Loneliness and codependency often go hand-in-hand. For years I tried to bury my loneliness through losing myself in other people. I thought that if I could just fade into someone else, all of my emptiness, all of my loneliness would dissipate. But it never did. When fading into someone else wasn’t alleviating my inner-emptiness, I tried to escape my loneliness through other addictive behaviors. Shopping always worked best for me. Buying anything gave me that TEMPORARY respite from my loneliness and my emptiness. But it was always TEMPORARY—very temporary. The problem here is the solution we addicts so often use. We want to escape from our uncomfortable feelings. Escaping is a solution that never works. Instead of trying to escape from difficult feelings, like emptiness, loneliness or anxiety, we need to welcome these feelings. We need to...

Sometimes I feel very fragile inside. My soul feels like it’s made of the thinnest layers of glass. Inside a heavy sludge is pressing against its every angle. I feel the layers of my soul cracking as the sludge is propelled against them by the pounding of my heart. I feel the voices in the sludge welling-up into my consciousness: “I’m worthless shit,” “I’ll never make it in this life,” “No one really loves me and no one ever will,” “I’m destined to failure,” “I never should have been born.” The pain of the past comes roaring back and I realize that I have many areas in my soul still left to heal. Awareness is my saving grace. I know I need to sit with my fragile feelings and allow them to simply be. They are valid and they need me to learn from them. They are the walking dead, mirrors of the past, and I must walk with them throughout my day in order to release them, free them and their horrors from my soul. This is how I reclaim my life from them. I am intent on honoring ...