Emotional Healing

Some People Didn’t Like Her Joy

By Leah Cox on October 25, 2024

It’s Friday morning and just getting light here. The rain is falling soothingly outside. I hope all is well where you are.

I finished this poem yesterday. It tells a story I think many of us can relate to or have experienced in our lives. The story of how social exclusion, rejection or disapproval can cause us to hide or push down our authentic expression.

In doing that, maybe (maybe) we find more love or acceptance in the world, but inside we wither and feel less alive. But it’s also the story of reclaiming that authentic expression later in life and the joy of that homecoming.

It’s written about a woman, but this is not only a woman’s story. I hope you enjoy it!

She’d wake up in the morning
when she was just a girl
she’d fling the curtains open wide
and sing praises to the world.

She’d praise the pretty flowers
the cows grazing in the field
she lived in joy and harmony
she knew God’s love was real.

Everywhere she went
she sang the good song of her heart
always full of gratitude
from sunrise until dark.

But as she left her girlhood
she noticed something strange
some people didn’t like her joy
and she began to feel ashamed.

It started out so slowly
she’d hide it here and there
she’d feel the urge to sing her love
then remember to take care.

She entered into adulthood
the years had rolled on by
and with every year that trundled past
she felt less and less alive.

She knew she had to change something
reclaim the joy within
but with years of pushing it away
she didn’t know where to begin.

Until a day not long ago
when she was feeling low
a voice rose up from deep inside
and said I’ll never let you go.

The tears streamed down the woman’s face
as she felt a spark ignite
she wept all night in gratitude
to feel the glory of God’s light.

From that moment onwards
nothing kept her down
she knew her joy was sacred
so she cast aside all doubt.

She sang her joy at daybreak
she sang her joy at noon
she sang her joy as darkness fell
and she sang it to the moon.

She’d wake up in the morning
now a woman fully grown
and she’d fling the curtains open wide
so happy she’d come home.

Love and courage,

Leah

More Than Pure Gold (Song for Mourning a Loved One)

By Leah Cox on May 8, 2024

For a few short, glorious weeks each spring, the lilac trees bloom. Our bedroom window looks out onto a long line of them along our neighbour’s garden boundary and there’s a small one in our own garden.

During these fleeting weeks I look out each morning and marvel at that crown of lilac. The blooms flower and fade so quickly, which makes them all the more precious and beautiful, even though this fact also feels painful and sad. Sometimes I just wish it could all last forever!

Last week there was a wonderfully warm day and the scent of lilac was drifting all about the place. It truly makes you want to die of happiness!

Even though I’ve been in very high spirits lately with all the beauty of spring, I somehow ended up writing a song for mourning a loved one. I suppose to me, sadness, beauty and happiness are inseparable.

May this song reach you at the perfect moment and bring healing, release, or whatever you most need.

More Than Pure Gold

The world keeps on spinning
even though you are gone
and I long for your smile
next to me.

The pain charts a course
so deep through my veins
that I wonder if I’ll ever
know freedom again.

The lilac tree blooms
so sweet and so true
I breathe in its scent
and dream only of you.

I’ll join you one day
in that place beyond time
but for now I am grateful
our paths intertwined.

Our love was a treasure
worth more than pure gold
I’ll keep it forever
and know I am never
alone.

Love and courage,

Leah

Your Purpose Is Lived In Every Breath

By Leah Cox on January 28, 2024

When my friend Rosie passed away, I realised something very important.

Rosie had lived her purpose perfectly.

Her purpose was lived in every breath. It was inseparable from who she was.

She herself had things in her life she wanted to change, challenges she wanted to overcome, dreams she wanted to fulfil.

But I realised after she was gone that there was nothing she could have changed or achieved in her lifetime that would have added to or taken away from what I missed about her, which was simply the wordless essence of who she was. Who she couldn’t help but be, no matter what the external reality of her life looked like.

I would have delighted in her every success and moment of growth. And I don’t mean to say that these wouldn’t have been important and wonderful for her during her life. I wanted for Rosie anything and everything that she herself wanted. But none of it would have made even the smallest difference to what I received from her.

Her very existence was the gift.

And, I don’t know, this seems like something worth thinking about today.

It’s worth contemplating that even when our own lives feel far away from what we’d like them to be or when we feel we’re not being who we want to be in the world, for the people who know and love us, nothing else is needed.

The love that we are shines in every moment and will shine forever in the hearts of those who love us. Maybe we can relax, just a little.

Love and courage,

Leah

When Everything Feels Broken

By Leah Cox on December 2, 2023

I offer these words today for anyone who is experiencing pain, grief, darkness, despair, heartbreak – in whatever capacity, for whatever reason. May these words bring a little comfort as writing them has brought to me. Personally I have a tendency to withdraw when I’m struggling, but writing is my way of reaching out and connecting. And sometimes even I, with all my love of solitude, can feel the need for the togetherness of other hearts.

When everything feels broken
and you don’t know what to do
remember there are others
who have passed by this way too.

When darkness keeps on coming
and it seems it will not end
remember even darkness
can sometimes be a friend.

When grief is casting shadows
in every place you look
remember that your heartbreak
can open you to love.

When we are at our lowest
feeling tender and exposed
compassion for our kinfolk
finds its way into our bones.

And that’s the gift of suffering
it opens up our hearts
connects us to all others
who’ve known a pain like ours.

Love and courage,

Leah

Incompatible

By Leah Cox on October 27, 2022

Needing everyone to love, accept and approve of you is incompatible with living your truth. Fully living your truth can only happen when you offer yourself the love, acceptance and approval you long for from others.

Still, it’s a challenge, especially for those of us prone to people-pleasing and giving more importance to other people’s needs than we do to our own.

Often we ingested a message during childhood that we could either be loved or we could be true to ourselves but we couldn’t be both. Faced with that choice, most children would choose love. And that’s how we begin to lose ourselves. That’s how we begin to turn away from our deepest joy. That’s how we end up in lives that feel like they don’t belong to us.

Learning to offer ourselves love, acceptance and approval is deep and ongoing work. No quick routes. Reminders from others that you’re allowed to live your truth help the message seep deeper into your heart, little by little. I love the reminders I’ve received over the years. And I love passing the reminders on.

Love and courage,

Leah

Self-Loathing, Shame, Guilt, Regret

By Leah Cox on June 11, 2021

As someone who has spent a significant portion of her life actually believing that she was rotten to her very core and who has spent day after day, night after night and hour after hour being truly lost in a dark pit of self-loathing and seemingly insurmountable shame, there is something I want you to know.

Or perhaps it’s more that there’s something that I want to remind you of, because the chances are that you already know, somewhere inside, what I’m about to say.

No matter how awful you think you are; no matter how much self-disgust or shame you feel for things you’ve done or not done, or things you’ve said or not said, there is a field, a level of consciousness, another dimension of life, where all of this simply does not exist.

There is a field, a level of consciousness, another dimension of life where all these thoughts and feelings that occupy your mind and hold you down simply melt away. And in that place there is complete clarity – as clear as the purest, most pristine sparkling stream you could ever imagine – that you are loved and have always been loved.

The knowing of this love and the knowing that you have always been enveloped in this love is not something that can ever, ever, ever be put into even the most beautiful words a human being could come up with. This love is too complete and too magnificent in its wholeness to describe and can only be known in the knowing of it.

In this place, you know that not only are you forgiven for all the things you feel you need to be forgiven for, but indeed you see that there was never a single thing to forgive.

In this place you know your perfection and the perfection of every other living being. In this place you are held in arms that you know, beyond a shadow of doubt, will never let you fall.

But oh yes, there is also this place in which we feel this shame and self-loathing and have such hatred for ourselves and regret for all the things we think we’ve wasted or ruined. And in that place we have to feel those feelings and look at those feelings and do whatever we are called to do to heal those parts of ourselves. And all of this is as it should be.

And, and, and, there is that place, always there though sometimes seemingly not there, where all of this melts into a golden shimmer and we can relax in a way we have never relaxed before knowing with certainty that we are ok, everything is ok, and all is as it should be.

Love and courage,

Leah

Show Me Where It Hurts

By Leah Cox on October 6, 2020

“Show me where it hurts, baby girl,” says the loving mother to her daughter.

And the daughter points here to her knee, or here to her belly, or here to her head, or here to her tooth and says, “Here mummy. It hurts here.”

And the mother fetches medicine, if there is medicine to be had. A squirt of antiseptic spray, maybe. A blob of ointment, a spoonful of cherry cough syrup, or a day under the duvets.

And then, whatever the ailment and whatever the medicine, the mother seals it with kindness and kisses. Because without kindness and kisses, the mother knows that the medicine can’t take full effect.

Now, fully grown, we have to become the loving mother to ourselves. For some of us, perhaps, the loving mother we never had.

When we feel pain, we learn to ask, “Show me where it hurts, baby girl.”

And the little girl still within us shows us where it hurts. Deep in the heart, maybe. Or the gut, the head, or pervasive throughout the whole body.

Listening carefully and compassionately, the wise loving mother knows exactly the right medicine for the little one. An early night, a call to a friend or therapist, a break from caffeine, a walk in the fresh air, a week off.

And so the mother fetches the right medicine on behalf of the little one within. And then, no matter the ailment or medicine, she seals it with kindness and kisses. Because without kindness and kisses, she knows that the medicine can’t take full effect.

“I love you, baby girl,” she whispers as she strokes her hair and cheek.

The little one, knowing she is loved and taken care of, falls into a restful sleep.

Love and courage,

Leah

Healing Old Wounds: How Self-Love Works

By Leah Cox on April 8, 2020

One day, under the rubble of my anger and tears I found, sitting right there in the hot heart of my adult body, a small, sweet, innocent child. She was crying out in such pain, ‘Love me! Please love me! I only want to be loved’.

As this little poppet of a child revealed herself to me and as I heard her cries, I understood, clear and true as the cloudless night sky, that it was I, and only I, who could gather this angel up and give her what she longed for.

Now that I finally saw her and heard her desperate plea, I instinctively rushed forward to meet her and pulled her quickly but gently toward me, warming her cold, delicate hands by the fire of my love. I stroked her little cheek and comforted her in every way I knew how, all the while telling her that she was loved, she was loved without condition and would never again be banished from my arms.

The child was immediately trusting of the love and words I offered. I saw she had been waiting such a very long time. Exhausted from her waiting and ecstatic to have finally had her cries answered, I felt her relax and breathe heavy in my arms, finally drifting into a peaceful sleep, a small, contented smile across her face.

As the little one slept, I woke, and knew right away that a wound, made long ago and which had remained open and bloody until now, had this day healed over. The child and I would remain close now, I knew. Our friendship would grow by the day and in the tender, unconditional love I vowed to always offer her, we would set free all the other characters in our life whom we had so often asked for the love we now saw we could only offer ourselves.

And as we set those others free, so too would we free ourselves and we would inhabit our lives in a new and brighter way. We would take up our true place in the world and the love we had discovered within would flow out to other hearts. And those hearts, in turn, would discover the joy of their own love and by and by all would be healed and all would be well.

Gather Your Pain Like a Posy of Wildflowers

By Leah Cox on December 4, 2018

We have spent a lifetime fleeing our pain. We have turned away from the rivers of sadness. We have pushed away the furnace of anger. We have denied the shame. We have rejected the depression. We started running and we never stopped. We thought we could outrun it, the pain. If we just kept running we would run to a place where it didn’t follow. We would run ourselves into freedom.

We ran to sugar rushes and alcohol buzzes and drug highs and relationships and books and TV and the internet and self-improvement and exercise and work and achieving and money and marriage and travel and even, yes, spirituality. We ran far and we ran fast, but no matter how far or how fast we ran, the pain was always just a hair’s breadth away, waiting whenever we stopped for a brief moment.

This is the gift of pain. It will not be outrun. And finally, when we have tried everything and come up short and we are utterly broken and exhausted from the years of running, something within us goes into a deep surrender because the mind is utterly lost now and has no idea where else to look. And in this deep surrender, in this moment of admittance that we have no clue how to help ourselves any more, we stop searching ‘out there’ and we sink into the only place we can ever heal our pain – this moment.

You are tired of running. We are all tired of running. Stop. Instead, gather your pain like you would a posy of wildflowers, with a delicate touch and eyes full of wonder. With tenderness, pull it close to your heart and bathe it with your undivided attention. Do not turn away from yourself. Meet yourself here. Meet this energy that is circling within you. Engage your curiosity. Hello, sadness. Hello, anger. Hello, depression.

Keep this image of wildflowers with you, if it helps. Don’t you love them? Don’t you want to run your fingers over their velvety petals and inhale their rich perfume? Aren’t you enthralled by their colours and shapes and just in complete wonderment that such things could even exist at all? How did we get so lucky to live in a world with wildflowers? Be with your pain in this way. It is a thing of such beauty and its hand is outstretched in the most important invitation of your life. The invitation to stop, stop, stop and meet this moment exactly as it is.

It is not dangerous. It will not overwhelm you. It will not ruin your life. In fact, it is an invitation to life. To live. To be alive. To fall into the dazzling experience of Now.

Love and courage,

Leah