I Searched for Love in Some Desperate Places Before I Found It in Myself

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I should have been wrapped in love. I should have been wrapped in the tenderness of a mother’s arms and in the security of a safe home.

Instead, I was wrapped in loneliness. In feeling lost. So lost. An outcast. An outsider. A misfit.

Invisible.

Invisible except to my loneliness. It would always be there. For decades, no matter how many roommates or marriages or children I had, it was my constant companion, my trusted friend. Familiar. I could count on it.

My mother often said she wished I would “Go away!” She said she wanted to get rid of me — my deepest, little-girl, subconscious fear, having already been ripped from the arms of my teenaged birth mother some weeks after I was born, and then taken from at least one foster mother before landing in an icy, hostile — abusive — environment.

I would spend much of my life searching for “home.” Searching for the love, stability and warmth I craved as that tiny little soul. Searching for something … missing something … but how would I ever find it when I had no idea what it was?

I would remain lost and invisible for many long years. It began at home where I was an interloper. I was over “here,” and my abusive older brother (also adopted) was over “there” being spoiled by our parents.

I adored my best friends as a little girl, the friends with nice Mummies and homes where I felt welcome. They were kind. But I was an outsider looking in. I was right there inside their homes where they smiled at me and spoke nicely to me, but I was a million miles away, thick walls of shame, worthlessness and longing keeping me at a distance — in my place.

In other homes, siblings teased a bit but nothing hurtful. They didn’t beat up their little sisters. There were no drunken rages and terrifying shouting matches that made me think someone would be killed. I was grateful that my friends tolerated me for a while, but I always ended up invisible again.

I carried this with me for many years. It was a large part of how I ended up being married six times. The “nice guys” never stuck around long enough to get too involved with me. My mother always said, “What would a nice guy like that see in someone like you?” I don’t know, Mum. I really don’t.

I settled for relationships that were desperately, awfully wrong. Grateful to have been chosen. Perhaps I wasn’t invisible after all.

Oh, but I was. I was never seen. Not by the ones who mattered most.

It didn’t help that as an adoptee, I had no sense of roots or ancestry, no sense of belonging on a family tree, beyond the minimal information I had about my birth mother. When my parents spoke about their ethnic backgrounds, I was well aware that they were not mine. It was as though I had been found under a rock. There was nothing before my existence, which only reinforced my loneliness and deep sense of being lost.

I stumbled through my teens, a divorced single mum at 19 and completely off the rails with numerous mental and emotional health miseries. In particular, the sexual abuse of childhood took a toll, although I had no idea that there was anything wrong with my behaviour. I was coming out of the “sexual revolution” era, a time in which people wholeheartedly believed that when it came to sex, “Experimentation is in” and “Anything goes!”

And I believed that, too, although in retrospect it was a futile attempt to fit in, while every sexual encounter of every kind, no matter who the partner or partners were on those occasions, served only to make me loathe myself a little more. My soul ached a little harder, became a little more lost, and ultimately I became invisible even to myself.

I was living a double life. By day, I held down a respectable job as a legal secretary. I was the best mum I could be for my little girl. But when she went to bed — or when I could get a sitter and go out for an evening — well, let’s just say the wheels fell off rather spectacularly. Oh, hell, let’s be honest. I tore the damned things off in one self-destructive, self-loathing choice after another. How I ever thought I could possibly find love and warmth or home and kindness acting in those ways and from that place is beyond me. But desperation had its own agenda and I was its hostage.

Something had to give. I was spinning out of control and there would have to be an end date. It came in the form of a pregnancy by a dangerous man and a whole new kind of hell.

This wake-up call saw me hit rock bottom. Making it worse, my few friends had abandoned me. I couldn’t blame them. One can only sit by and watch someone self-destruct for so long before reaching a saturation point.

I was 7 months pregnant. I found myself sitting with a young minister in the sanctuary of a church I had attended as a young teen. That is, until I had given up on God. Given up on prayer. How long had I been praying — pleading — to be released from the hell that was my home? But my only release was in leaving it when I was 16 — and finding much, much worse was waiting for me. God was nowhere to be found.

The sun poured in through stained glass windows casting a warm and peaceful glow that amplified my deep distress and inner chaos. I had sunk to some terrible depths; what right did I have to be in a church? What right did I have to feel peaceful?

Oh, how I wept. Years of pain, of deep shame, feeling unworthy to breathe air that could be used by people who were far more deserving than I…so much heartache bubbled up and spilled out in each tear.

I did not know what to do with the young minister’s kindness. Ever so gently, he encouraged me to come along to services. For a split second, I dared wonder, could this be “home”? Could this be where I’ll find love and a sense of family? Could this be what I’d been trying to find for years? I was pretty sure the answers were “No.” But I was desperate enough to find out.

Every Sunday, I felt like a complete and utter fraud and most certainly, I was an outsider. I did not belong but I tried to be like the others. I invited them over for dinners. I went to the ladies’ groups. But there was little reciprocation. The more I tried to fit in, the more invisible I felt. I was as lost as a soul can get.

Still, I kept going to services. I tried, tried, tried to believe what these people believed. I was desperate to feel like they did. Their faith was strong; I could see it in their faces. Still, I was on the outside looking in.

Maybe if I keep going, if I keep singing those hymns and saying those prayers, one day a light will go on and I’ll find what they have. I even became the church organist and choir director, hoping that the more involved I was, the more God might actually decide to show up in my heart. I knew it was a big ask, but hey, I kept hearing how forgiving he was. There were also plenty of stories of how pissed off he could be when someone stepped out of line.

I had done a lot worse than that.

I got tired of leaving messages for this Christian God who never returned my calls. After several years, I gave up. I’d done my best to show up in my life and in his church in a way that I thought he’d appreciate but still, I didn’t fit; I was always on the outside looking in.

I took the hint.

Meanwhile, I’d met my birth mother and was fascinated to discover that her father had been a Jew. I was thrilled to learn more about my roots — at least on her side — and to have the first piece to my ancestry puzzle.

Interestingly, I had always been drawn to All Things Jewish but knew little about the culture or its religion. I began studying with an Orthodox rabbi and felt a sense of belonging every time I went to the synagogue. I blew through my Hebrew lessons, couldn’t read enough or learn enough about this part of my heritage, and soon decided to convert. It was more about fitting on a family tree than it was about the religion. After all, I was still dealing with that same God who never returned my calls when I was hanging out in a church. Maybe I’d just been using the wrong entrance. Maybe there was another way in.

I threw myself in head first — my usual style. Blew the doors off three rabbis during my conversion process. I shot back the correct answers, one after another. So they dug deep for tricky questions and I got those right, too. One of them asked — a few times — “How did you know that?”

I followed the dietary laws. I took my kids to the Jewish school. We went to synagogue every Saturday morning. We had Shabbat dinner every Friday evening. We celebrated all the holidays. I did my best to connect with the Jewish community, attending events, inviting people into my home, trying to make friends.

Take that, God. See what a great Jew I can be? Now will you answer my prayers?

Again, I remained on the periphery. Again, I was on the outside looking in. Again, God did not return my calls. As always, I was invisible. Lost. And desperately lonely through to my bones.

It was an aching emptiness that wasn’t about needing to be with people for the sake of it. It was a longing for love and warmth, that sense of belonging I’d never had, a burning need to feel wanted and connected.

Throughout these many years and beyond, I experienced all sorts of personal challenges, a life-threatening health situation, abusive relationships, a few more divorces, and years of trauma as a parent. I’d had plenty of counselling and was doing all sorts of self-help and related study.

Somewhere along the way, I learned the difference between “religion” and “spirituality.” I read about Buddhism, the Tao, and began checking out people like Wayne Dyer, Paramahansa Yogananda and other spiritual leaders. I learned about Wicca, or modern-day “witchcraft”, and instantly felt at home. Being a pagan and nature-based system of beliefs, it was easy to connect with it. I could get on board with something that celebrated “Mother Nature,” our beautiful planet, all living things, the Sun and Moon. These I could see. I could relate to them.

Sure, there’s also the concept of God and Goddess and other spiritual entities, and I was open to seeing if maybe my calls would finally be answered. I got a beautiful altar, a proper cast iron cauldron, a wand, a dagger, a load of crystals, oils and other witchy goodies and dove in.

It was the closest I had come to feeling like I belonged, and I suspect it was precisely because like most practitioners, I was (am) a solitary witch. We can do our own thing. There is much more freedom and flexibility for self-expression of our spirituality than in organised religions.

But although I had been practicing for some time, casting spells and offering prayers for my healing, and other requests of whatever God and/or Goddess might (hopefully?) exist, my calls were still ignored.

There came a time when I had a complete breakdown. It was after an exceptionally challenging period of loss, grief, and trauma. I hadn’t been in such a terrible state for 20 years. My physical health was in crisis, too.

To say I was fragile was a massive understatement. I was certain I ought to be stuck in a psych ward but I couldn’t have coped with that. With my extreme aversion to conventional medicine and all pharmaceuticals, there was no way in hell I was going to let anyone find out I was in trouble.

Also at this time, I was at a crossroads in terms of my healing work. I had moved from Canada to England a year earlier and couldn’t seem to get a business going in the rural area where I lived. No matter what I did, no matter how friendly or helpful I tried to be, the locals didn’t want to know the Canadian woman. I couldn’t find clients, and forget about friends.

With this on top of everything else, I sank into a deep depression.

It was a misty, grey, February morning. I went for a walk around the lake that was just a stone’s throw from Ravenswood, my old stone cottage. I was so lost. So damaged. So completely and utterly broken. Halfway around the lake, I found a fallen tree nestled into the woods at the water’s edge. I sat on the tree and wept like never before.

“Please, please, please heal me!” I whispered, tears streaming down my face. Just who I thought might be listening to my desperate plea was anyone’s guess but on the chance that there was a Divine Being out there who might actually exist and hear me, I had to try. “I’ve been through too much. I can’t take anymore! I am so ill, so broken, in such despair! Please, please will you heal me? Please please please! Please will you take away this pain and make me whole?”

Suddenly, a powerful Presence hovered above me. I began to vibrate as though a thousand volts raced up and down, up and down through my body like lightning and causing me to tremble visibly. I was frightened, bewildered — to be honest, I was freaking out because if I believed what I thought was happening, then maybe I really had snapped.

I heard silent words. “Yes, you will be healed. You are a healer and have great work to do. You are meant to heal many people.”

In that moment, I wondered whether this meant I would get back to practicing homeopathy. Without actually posing the question, an answer came. “No. You are meant to heal on a much wider scale than that. You will find the path that allows you to heal masses of people.”

I knew that sounded nuts and I knew it sounded arrogant. And I knew I was neither. It must have been the truth.

I was shocked. Confused. “But how?” I whispered. It didn’t help that I felt completely broken and lost. How would I ever heal “masses of people”?

And then came the qualifier. “But first, you must heal yourself.”

No kidding. I was hanging on by a thread; there was no way I could help anyone else at that point. I realised that if I had been crazy, I wouldn’t have known it. I wouldn’t have been afraid to tell anyone about this incredible experience. In fact, I was still vibrating with that frighteningly powerful surge of energy continuing to run up and down through my body and I knew I couldn’t make that up.

It was several minutes before the tears slowed, the vibrating stopped, and the Presence left me. And it had left me with a profound sense of peace.

It would be some time before I processed what had happened that day. I could only interpret it as having finally had my calls returned by “God” or whatever label you want to put on that Divine Presence that showed up to say, “Hey, I know you’re really sick but I’m here and you’ll be okay.”

As I waded through the copious thoughts and notes that resulted from that experience, I came to understand its purpose. Throughout those many years of being off the rails, the religious searching, chasing marriages and that happy home I wanted so desperately, I had been praying for something external to fix my life.

Although I’d received years of counselling, it was only really aimed at helping me understand how the abuse from my childhood had adversely affected my choices as an adult. But it hadn’t helped me heal the deep emotional wounds that remained. Unless and until I healed them, I would continue to feel like an outsider, alone, never fitting in. I’d kept finding myself in situations that validated those feelings, which is exactly how humans operate.

What I needed was to love and accept myself like my mother had never done. And I needed to forgive myself for the many crimes I had committed against my own soul. I didn’t believe I deserved it but until I did, it would hold me back. This was my turning point. Deeper healing could begin.

I hadn’t been abandoned by God. I’d turned my back on myself because I had never been shown anything else. Just like Dorothy and her red shoes, I’d had exactly what I needed all along. The spiritual connection that had eluded me for decades lay in my ability to love and accept myself, flaws and all. In coming “home” to my Self, finally I felt connected to All That Is.

Fast forward:

Some years later, I was hanging out with my friend, Dave Moffatt. He and his three brothers were “The Moffatts,” an international “boy band” in the ’90s (Remember “I Miss You Like Crazy”? That’s Dave on keyboards). They are all still deeply involved in music. Dave and I thought we should write some spiritual music together and we did pull off one song just before he moved to the Philippines and I moved back to England.

I was driving one day, remembering that long-ago day at the lake when suddenly, lyrics started coming. Had to rush home to write them down.

This song is a conversation with God (or whatever term you prefer; my concept of God is not restricted by popular religious descriptions). The song sums up much of my journey — and that powerful day at the lake. Hope it resonates with you in some way.