I used to think that tipping the balance of my recovery involved staying unfailingly on the positive side of a tug-o-war that had me desperately pulling every experience to the 'positive side', the most 'optimistic' interpretation, giving everything the 'happy' spin. All that did was give me rope burn. Lately, I've gone into myself and said very little rather than admit how much I was suffering. When we mute ourselves in our times of need, this leads to a sort of malignancy where we turn everything inwards and gnaw away at our own centre, our very life-source. It happens for a variety of reasons, perhaps to protect ourselves or others from hearing 'our stuff' - which amounts to an almighty blockage on our ability to self-express, which is the crucial first stage of any sustained healing process. There is no place for pretence or politeness where avoiding malignancy is concerned, we all deserve to be heard - both when things are going great (yay, lets celebrate) and when they have become an almighty struggle. Enacting this process is - quite simply - an example of unconditional love in action; delivered as love and honour of self and in the form of the reciprocated love of anyone who takes the time to hear you when you are in your darkest place. Let it all out and love yourself, love yourself and love yourself a little more for all you have been through and let that knowing empower you as you realise you will never abandon yourself, come what will. This exercise in 'saying it like it is' was a powerful one for me, it brought a lot of positives to the surface and turned into a ceremony of honouring, releasing and healing some very deep trauma from my cells - the process of which I share in this week's blog.