In September 2021 I had covid and it was a very unusual experience, but for sure not a bad one. It was actually a really good experience. As it was a good experience I want to share what happened with you. For me there was a lot of silver lining involved with having been ill with covid for a couple of weeks. It totally fit in with the spiritual journey that I am on, so I can be very grateful for having been through it. Below you’ll find why.
Covid
In September 2021 I ended up with covid, which gave me a bit of a floaty headspace after a couple of days. It was during that time that I was mostly sleeping. It was a weird headspace to be in but also became a really interesting journey. I ended up going to some really dark places in my mind, where I felt like I would never do anything useful in life. I thought that at my age, 54, life was over and why was I even trying to get independent. I went through thinking that I had ruined my childrens’ lives as they don’t have impressive careers, my youngest is 13, so that would be impressive if she already had an impressive career. The dark headspace made me wonder why I didn’t just roll over and let it all happen as it had all been a trainwreck anyway and not bother with anything anymore. I didn’t see myself live long, I knew that I would be a burden to my children and all sorts of thoughts like that. I saw myself and my children ending up homeless. It was a very ugly place to be for a while, no idea how long it really took. It made me very upset when I would be more or less awake. I cried a lot when I was a little more with it. It wasn’t a place I wanted to be in. One of the other thoughts that I ended up with that was quite unpleasant was the thought that I can’t do it alone without a man supporting me. For a while during my time spent in my dark place I was convinced that there was no way on earth that I could live without a man supporting me financially and in other ways. The odd thing is that for many, many years in my life I took care of myself and often also of others.
After a few days my headspace started changing. I did some more rational thinking about my broken marriage and how that had gone wrong quite early into it, that we made it to nearly 20 years together, which was quite impressive. I started thinking about our respective behaviours and what could have been done better. One morning that prompted me to pick up the phone and have a conversation with my husband. We are beyond repair as a couple of lovers, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t be great friends and amazing parents to our children. We talked for nearly 2 hours. I felt that I needed to apologise for some things. I also felt that I needed to explain some things to him. Those were things on which I had only gotten clarity recently and he deserved to know so he could understand better. All in all it was a really good conversation. We both opened up, which was amazing and I felt heard, I hope he also did. I did get the impression that it was as good for him as it had been for me. We have been communicating better and more since.
And then I went to other places in my thoughts as well. I started thinking more about opportunities and possibilities. For some years I had gotten stuck in the headspace of impossibilities more than anything else. Living with people who point out all that is impossible makes it at times hard to stay in a more positive headspace and I had let myself be dragged down into that type of thinking. I had not learned the things I know now and how to prevent being dragged down by it. Looking at all the possibilities that I have in life and the opportunities that come by every now and then made me see that there are so many things that I can do and grow in. It was beautiful to see them all.
At one of the moments that I was laying there and pondering I realised that one of the big things that has caused me to be where I was was that I had been holding myself back in life and my business out of fear. There was a lot of fear in me. Fear of what others might think, fear of what others might do, but also thoughts like “this is not for our sort of people” and “when you’re born for 10c, you’ll never become 25c”. They all ran through my head, but they felt like lies. That was really eye opening that all my fears came from things I had been told and internalised, but not things that were really me. The fear doesn’t help me in any way as it only stops me and the fear isn’t the truth as with many of the “what would others think” the answer is that they wouldn’t care, or they would support or motivate me, but they wouldn’t stop me. This made me realise that I have nothing to lose, but everything to gain from living my life the way I am supposed to, the way the universe will support me doing.
Another moment of deep thinking made me realise that I can genuinely love someone and they don’t have to give anything in return unless they want to. That this is the type of love I have for my children and friends. I realised that in the past I had wanted a partner to read my mind or do things for me in return when I had done something for them. During my thinking I realised that that isn’t really love, that is keeping score and keeping score will never result in a good relationship. I do still want someone to care and love me, but when they can’t, I can love them and leave it at that. This was huge for me to realise that I do love friends and my children, but had never done it the same way with a partner. Somehow I had ended up with a very different view on relationships than is rational and loving. So thinking of it from a loving and caring point of view made it all feel very very different. And I’m allowing myself to love as it’s just beautiful. I can love many people. There is so much love in the world to be given and to be received.
Some of my thinking also got me to realise that I don’t have time to hate anyone. That feeling isn’t helping anyone, especially not me. It doesn’t support my life in any way and this goes for many other negative feelings. When I’m angry with someone, that is okay, but not for it to last and last. Getting over negative feelings quickly and looking at the situation and adjusting things to make things better for everyone is a much better headspace to be in. As I learned from one of my teachers, stressy negative feelings are like having you hand on the hot cooker, you don’t want to leave it there for too long or it will cause much more trouble than it’s worth. It’s just a sign that something isn’t right and then you quickly take your hand off the hot cooker and sort it out. The same is with anything else that creates negative stressy feelings.
Because of all this thinking I’m really grateful that I ended up with covid. It gave me a break from life, it took me to some deep dark places that were totally unreal and then it helped me think through so many beautiful things and gave me so many wonderful insights. I think I did about 2 years of personal development in 2 weeks time. So it made me grow tremendously.