The Gold Is In The Grit

A few nights ago, I attended a friend’s film screening; it’s a raw and beautiful short about her experience of post-partum depression. During the Q&A, she described how creating it was cathartic, as well as an opportunity to be honest about a subject that’s still, too often, shrouded in secrecy and shame.

Having shared some of the darker stories from my own life too, this resonated. As it happened, that very day, I’d finished a piece for a magazine on something I’ve yet to speak about publicly.

Writing the piece brought up discomfort, on several levels: there was the intensity of reliving the experience itself as I put it into words, along with the question of how exposed will I feel when, in time, I see those words in print? There was also the struggle to find the right words: did I have the capability to craft all the thoughts and images swirling round my head into a story of sufficient eloquence?

There were moments I told myself, this is too hard, I’m too tired, I don’t have enough time. Perhaps I should just pull out.

I didn’t, of course. Partly, because experience has taught me discomfort isn’t necessarily a bad sign. In fact, it’s often a compass showing us we’re going in the right direction: the direction of growth, learning and developing new facets of ourselves. And, along with the discomfort, writing the piece was enlivening and interesting. Exciting, even, to see what unfolded from my efforts.

There’ve been so many occasions I’ve felt uncomfortable and anxious about stepping into something new. Be it teaching my first public yoga classes, where each time, just before class began, I longed to run away. Yet, terrifying as the teaching was, it was also exhilarating. Or when I met my now husband, the excitement of finding him online was matched by a terror that if I dared go all in with this gorgeous stranger, I’d end up heartbroken. But it was through showing up to teach, that I learnt to become a yoga teacher, and through showing up with my boyfriend that I learnt how to be in a long-term relationship.

I always remind myself that it’s under high pressure and temperatures that the molecular structure of black carbon is turned into a diamond. And that fear is a natural and perfectly healthy companion when we’re challenging ourselves to explore new things. One that says, ‘This really matters to you, doesn’t it.’

What about you? Is there something that really matters to you right now? Something that’s asking you to sit with the grittiness of the experience, and trust that’s exactly from where you might unearth the gold.