Shake It Out

Before motherhood, my intrusive thoughts were harmless little gremlins—mostly work-induced paranoia, oscillating between the fear that my last ‘as per my last email’ was going to get me fired, the existential dread of knowing I wanted to do something meaningful with my life but having the motivation of a sloth, and the slow, soul-draining realization that I was getting paid peanuts to explain for the tenth time to a 40-year-old making triple my wage how to upload a damn PDF.

I’d stare at job listings for dream careers, imagining myself in some shiny new existence—successful, put-together, effortlessly passionate about my work—before reality came crashing in. That would require doing things. Effort. Consistency. Probably waking up before 10 a.m. on a Saturday and answering emails without needing to pace the room first. I’d close the tab and go back to pretending an Excel spreadsheet was my life’s purpose.

My personal life wasn’t much better. I wanted a relationship, but I also knew that meant letting someone actually know me. Which meant, at some point, I’d have to sit across from them, muster up my best casual tone, and tell them I had herpes. And wasn’t that just the cherry on top of my tragic little existence? I used to think that was the worst thing about me. The irreversible, deal-breaking flaw.

Funny, considering the herpes was the least of my problems—just some microscopic inconvenience that flared up once a year, if that, compared to the unhealed, unchecked trauma that had settled into the foundation of my personality like faulty wiring, sparking and short-circuiting everything I touched.

And I was still years away from realising I’d never had sober sex—not even once. Hadn’t even crossed my mind that I had no idea how to be intimate without chemical assistance, that every touch, every kiss had always been buffered, dulled just enough to keep me from actually being there. My body present, my mind elsewhere, hovering outside of myself, watching some stranger’s hands on my skin like a scene in a film I wasn’t sure I had consented to be in. I thought I knew sex. I thought I liked it. But the idea of doing it sober—fully awake, fully seen—was more foreign to me than the guys I was hooking up with.

And even if I did find someone who could look past the herpes, there was still the constant terror of queefing at the worst possible moment, or having the sudden urge to go to the bathroom after I hadn’t gone for 7 days full knowing I’d be on the toilet birthing a dried out rock for 45 minutes at the absolute minimum. Or the tiny, inexplicable pimples on my ass from sitting on my arse 40% of the day—just a cluster of blind pimples appearing like a cursed omen, reminding me that no matter how much I exfoliated, some parts of my body were determined to betray me. It took me years to figure out they weren’t some cosmic punishment, just the inevitable result of polyester underwear and spending my waking hours bouncing between an office chair and my couch like a domesticated blob.

But still, I’d swipe through dating apps with the enthusiasm of a prisoner scratching tally marks into a wall, knowing full well I’d end up ghosting the ones who were actually nice to me and throwing myself at the ones who couldn’t be bothered. Because wanting love and believing I deserved it were two entirely different things.

And then, I became a mother.

All those petty, self-absorbed anxieties I had before—agonising over whether my passive-aggressive email was too harsh, spiralling about losing my license because I still had weed in my system, fixating on the herpes, my chronic constipation, my butt pimples, and the slow, the direction of my life and the humiliating death march of my love life—evaporated overnight.

My brain had upgraded. Levelled up. But not in a good way. No, now I was in the big leagues. Now my anxiety and intrusive thoughts had turned into full-blown, R-rated, Quentin Tarantino-style horror reels playing in my head at any given moment.

No more Oh god, did I overshare in that text? Now it was Oh god, what are you going to wear to the funeral of your child?

I’d be washing dishes, and suddenly, I’d see it—my child slipping under the water, their tiny body going limp before I could reach them. Or them running out onto the road and a car slamming into them, their shoes left behind in the street. The worst one? The three-meter-high glass window in the living room of our houseboat shattering, breaking clean in half—one massive sheet slicing straight down, severing them at the waist. And me, scrambling over the edge, trying to pull their bodies back together, my hands scooping them up, slick and useless, my screams raw and animalistic. Howling at strangers to help me while the world moved in slow motion.

And it wouldn’t end there. The scene would roll on, relentless, shifting into the aftermath. The funeral. The impossible silence of it. How could I even speak? How could I exist in a world where I had to wake up every morning and keep going? How dare the world continue as if nothing had happened—cars honking, people ordering coffee, the sun still rising—when this had happened?

I’d glance down at my watch—my heart rate spiking between 120 and 130 beats per minute—just sitting there on the couch, my body reacting to a mere thought like I was being hunted through the jungle by a leopard.

If my mind wasn’t running Tarantino reels of them dying, then it was fixated on me going first. The fear that they’d be left behind. That they’d watch it happen. What if I dropped dead—heart attack, aneurysm, some freak medical event? What if some lunatic kicked the door in right now—what’s my play? One kid upstairs, one downstairs—who do I get to first? We need a boat. No, a panic room. No, an underwater, pedal powered escape capsule. Yes, that’s the one. But what if they kill me and take them and they are sold into the underground human trafficking world? The horror!

I suffered in silence with this for the first few years of motherhood. It ate me alive from the inside out.

At first, I tried to reason with the thoughts, turn them into something I could win. Like, okay—what if some guy did break down the door? He’d come charging straight for the lounge where I was sitting. Fine. I’d grab my eldest, bolt downstairs, shove him out the bathroom window where he could wedge himself under the deck, just above the water. Untouchable. By the time he was out, I’d only have seconds to get to my husband’s office—just enough time to arm myself with a pencil.

The attacker would lunge from behind, choking me out. But I’d be ready. I’d jam that pencil into his face, his neck, anywhere soft, stabbing wild and fast, just hoping to hit an artery. He’d let go. He’d slip in his own blood, staggering, choking, trying to haul himself up while his body pumped red all over the floorboards. I’d run upstairs —grab the baby, leave the house and scream for help. By the time I got to my other child hiding under the deck, the bastard would be making his escape, clutching his neck, stumbling toward the door.

And then our eyes would meet. Panic in his. Something shifting in mine.

"Mama?" My little one’s voice, muffled, trembling from under the deck.

The perp would hesitate, glance down. And I’d be already moving. I’d grab a loose brick from the retaining wall—the one I’d been nagging my husband to fix for months. And like a crazed, blood-soaked banshee, I’d end it.

Case closed. So now, anytime the thoughts crept in, I’d just wander into my husband’s office and sharpen a few pencils. Nice and sharp. Nice and safe. Flawless logic. Completely normal behaviour. The textbook reaction of someone definitely not developing a low-budget, home-defense-themed case of OCD. Just a loving mother, prepping for imaginary warfare, arming herself with office supplies like some deranged suburban assassin.

But of course, I couldn’t keep sharpening pencils forever.

At some point, I had to admit that maybe—just maybe—this wasn’t normal. That the fear, the obsessive disaster-planning, the full-blown IMAX screenings of tragedy weren’t just part of the motherhood package, but something deeper. And if I wanted to stop living like a hostage to my own mind, I had to figure out how to dismantle it.

Healing my trauma didn’t just ease the fear—it cleared space. Like finally shutting down a hundred background apps running in my brain, making room for something else. Something lighter. I’ve written before about how, once the weight of old wounds started lifting, my mind wasn’t just quieter—it was sharper. I could actually learn, retain, and absorb new knowledge instead of operating in survival mode.

Over time, I stumbled into Dolores Cannon, past life regressions, and the idea that maybe this wasn’t my first rodeo. That reincarnation wasn’t just some fluffy New Age nonsense, but a puzzle piece that made everything click. Michael Singer untethered my soul, peeling me away from the nonstop chatter of my own mind. And for a while, I fell deep into the world of Near Death Experiences—stories of people stepping out, seeing beyond, coming back changed.

Hearing these stories—accounts from people who had actually died—changed everything for me.

Not just the fact that they returned with some kind of newfound wisdom, a shift in their soul, as if they’d glimpsed the truth, seen behind the curtain, experienced God or the Source or whatever word makes the most sense. No, the part that really got me was this: their soul always seemed to be out of their body before the actual dying happened.

Say you’re in a car accident—you see the collision coming, brace for impact, but in almost every near-death experience, people describe the same thing: floating above, detached, watching it all unfold like a scene in a movie. Their body is still there, but they are not.

And that hit me.

What part of death was I actually afraid of? The incident itself? The moment of impact? The fear of it being the end, my time running out? Or was it the horror of my children witnessing it, of them carrying that grief, watching me go and having to live with that pain?

Because even in those moments, when people found themselves outside of their bodies, they didn’t panic. They didn’t even recognize their physical form as theirs—it was just something happening, something they were observing. And then came the next part—the lifting, the sensation of being pulled into something greater.

Call it another dimension, a new realm, whatever language fits. But in every story, there was one thing—one feeling—every single person described: love. No fear. No disappointment that life had ended. No sadness for the ones left behind. Because where they were now felt like home.

It was familiar. It was love. It was the place they believed we all come from and where we all return. And with that realization—knowing that I wouldn’t experience the pain and sorrow I had spent years bracing for—my fear of death didn’t just ease.

It vanished.

The biggest plot twist? Death wasn’t even real. Not in the way I thought. The ones who had been there, really been there, weren’t mourning their bodies. They weren’t screaming, clinging, begging to hold on—because they were still there. Conscious. Aware. Whole.

Even Seneca, in all his stoic wisdom, had warned: “He suffers more than necessary, who suffers before it is necessary.” And wasn’t that exactly what I’d been doing? Living like death was already in the room, on my back, sharpening its knives.

I had spent years grieving something that hadn’t even happened yet. Suffering not from death itself, but from my own fear of it. As if fearing it enough would somehow soften the blow. But if the people who had been there—who had seen it—weren’t afraid, then what the hell was I so afraid of?

So why punish ourselves by suffering now over something we won’t even feel when it happens? Why burn ourselves alive with grief for something that isn’t even ours to carry?

And that’s when it clicked.

It made me think of that old Epicurus quote: "Death is nothing to us, since when we exist, death is not yet present, and when death is present, we no longer exist."

What he’s basically saying is: Life is the absence of death. Death is the absence of life. Not opposites—just two expressions of the same cycle, different phases of the same existence. Which, in case you need a refresher, is straight out of Hermeticism’s Principle of Polarity—opposites that aren’t really opposite at all.

All that fear, all those years spent dreading something that was never actually coming for me. Because death wasn’t a thing, not in the way I thought. It wasn’t some event, some moment to brace for. It was just a shift. A turning of the dial. A transition.

Then I stumbled onto the theory that Earth is a school. Some cosmic Hunger Games we volunteer for, where we don’t just show up—we sign up. Dolores Cannon cracked my brain open with The Three Waves of Volunteers, The Convoluted Universe series and Between Life and Death, but she wasn’t the only one. Barbara Marciniak’s Bringers of the Dawn, Michael Newton’s Journey of Souls, even The Law of One—they all pointed to the same idea. That we choose this. That before we arrive, we sit somewhere beyond time, flipping through options like a deranged character customisation screen. What do I need to learn? What karmic debt am I here to balance? A little heartbreak? Some sexual abuse? Addiction? A fear of death I’ll have to fight my way out of? Maybe a childhood trauma pack for extra growth? Load it up. Click confirm. Enter the game.

We don’t just inherit this life—we hand-pick every messy, brutal, beautiful piece of it. Chosen. Signed. Stamped with our own cosmic approval

Before we’re born, we choose our experiences like we’re drafting some twisted character build—traumas, heartbreaks, failures, the exact cocktail of suffering we’ll have to drink down. And not because we’re masochists, but because we’re here to learn. To evolve. To stretch our souls past the breaking point and come out the other side.

And once I truly grasped that—once I swallowed the idea that every wound carved into me was one I had, on some level, requested—I couldn’t look at my life the same way.

I chose this version of Emily. Not the glossy, optimized-for-success version, but this one—this exact mess. I chose my parents, knowing exactly how they’d shape me. I chose my trauma, knowing it would mold me. I chose every painful, humiliating, soul-crushing thing I would have to endure. Grief, pain, sadness, anger, resentment—all so I could crack through it, transcend it, and drag my consciousness kicking and screaming to the next level.

Because there was a higher version of me. I knew that. Some future self—stronger, wiser, lighter—was waiting. But I wasn’t getting there without going through the fire first. Just like a game, you have to complete the level before you level up. No shortcuts. No cheat codes. Every heartbreak, every failure, every breakdown—it was all just XP.

And if that was true for me, then it had to be true for everyone else (NPCs and backdrop people excluded, obviously).

Which meant my children chose too.

They weren’t some random assignment from the celestial adoption agency. They picked this. Picked me. Picked my love, my flaws, my mistakes, my baggage—all of it. And if I die? If I leave them behind?

They signed up for that too.

And that was the kicker.

Because I had spent years clenching. White-knuckling every moment, terrified that something—fate, bad luck, the grim reaper—was going to rip them away from me. Or rip me away from them. And here was the brutal truth staring me in the face:

It’s not my job to control the curriculum of their souls.

Who the hell was I to deny them their own journey?

How selfish of me to think I could.

How selfish to believe that just because I couldn’t bear the thought of their suffering, they shouldn’t have to endure it. As if their pain, their loss, their grief—whatever form it would take—wasn’t just as sacred as mine had been. As if I hadn’t needed every ounce of suffering I went through to become who I am.

As if I had the right to deprive them of that same evolution.

An overbearing mother isn’t the one who causes her child’s suffering.
It’s the one who tries to take it away.

But suffering is the initiation.
The breaking open. The fire that reveals what we’re made of.

I had fought it. White-knuckled my way through life, trying to outrun pain, outthink fate, outmaneuver grief—until I realized it had never been my enemy.
It had been my greatest teacher.

And if I needed every ounce of my suffering to become who I am, then so would they.

I wasn’t here to shield them from it.
I was here to show them how to walk through it.

Words best paired with Shake it Out by Florence and the Machine