I got a coffee cup as a gift from my mother-in-law recently. It has the image of a long-necked bird facing backwards upon it called a sankofa, a word from Africa. It is meant to symbolize the fact that sometimes, in order to move forward in life, one must look backwards upon where one has been, if for no other reason than to gain perspective upon where you actually are. This has been my primary internal activity as of late as I move out of a very difficult period of my life towards what will hopefully be the establishment of nothing less than a new life.

A great deal has happened over the last four years, beginning with what I call my ”awakening”, an internal event that kicked off a still-continuing exploration of spirituality and philosophy that I have found extremely illuminating. Other things that have had to be endured included my husband requiring life-saving emergency surgery, me requiring gallbladder surgery, me suffering a breakdown and subsequent hospitalizations, COVID, my husband losing his job and finding another one only barely in the nick of financial time, the 2020 Election and surrounding madness, and dealing with my ever-increasing PTSD symptoms as well as having to prepare to move soon.

Amidst all this, I was experiencing something of a ”dark night of the soul”, during which I spent a great deal of time just sitting, listening to music, smoking, and thinking about various events in my life. From the outside, it probably looked like I wasn’t doing much of anything, but on the inside, I was very busy identifying and working out problems. The ones I couldn’t work out became the things I would bring up in therapy, and in that way I slowly made my way forward, or at least further away from my bigger inner pitfalls.

Which is where I am now: trying to take stock of and evaluate the past for its lessons without getting stuck there in constant rumination. Or as a friend quoted from an unknown story, ”Don’t look back, boy, you’re not going that way.” It’s easy to get stuck in the trauma of a past event, to swirl around and around the black pit that represents it, struggling not to fall in and occasionally failing. I feel I have now spent more than enough time swirling around these pits. I have gotten what I need from doing so, because I think contemplating shocking events has its merits, and now it’s time to move on.

I had to spend some time thinking about what precisely that means, as well as how to do it. After all, wherever I go, there I am: how do I ”move on” from a past event that really only lives on inside my mind? That was a complicated, multidimensional process that involved acknowledgement and understanding of stumbling blocks, which enabled dismantling or transforming them, a process that itself required more than a fair bit of honest but non-judgmental self-examination and self-compassion, something that doesn’t come easily to me.

I feel as though the ”dark night” is nearing its end, though I can’t say exactly when dawn is coming. I feel a sense of completion of whatever began in my life four or so years ago, but not yet of closure. There are still a few aspects of what I consider to be Old Me to put to rest so that New Me can truly live. That’s what I consider these last few years to be, a transitionary phase from my old, less kind, very inauthentic self to my newer, kinder, more authentic self, whatever that is. I’m still not sure yet.

Carl Jung would say I’m still ”individuating”, his term for the mid-life process of discovering one’s true self. It’s a rough journey, particularly for those like me who never had a chance to figure out who they really were in the first place and became something other than who they were truly meant to be. I’m grateful for the chance to discover this new person, though it is fraught with acknowledging who I once was and having to deal with any natural consequences.

Yet this is all also replete with opportunities to acknowledge my progress, which both my husband and therapist say has been quite phenomenal. If my inner journey can be represented by climbing a mountain, then when I look back to see my progress, I can no longer see where I began. It is obscured by clouds and the natural ups-and-downs of the foothills and mountains slopes. I can only tell it is a long way back and down, much further than the remaining distance to the summit and down the other side to what I know is a lovely valley filled with trees.

I will get to this inner place eventually, and hopefully when I do, I’ll find myself waiting there patiently, ready to move forward.