One of my favourite stories is The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway.

It’s about an ageing fisherman and his epic, three-day battle with a black marlin.

Spoiler alert – he eventually catches the monster, but it is too big to fit in his boat, so he tows it to shore.

On the way back, it gets eaten by sharks so there’s no evidence of his extraordinary feat.

And none of the other fishermen believe that he caught the infamous fish.

Now, I’ve never been fishing in my life,

But we can all resonate with the struggle to overcome a battle.

No one gets through life unscathed.

And many of us are facing silent battles that no one can see.

These people don’t get applause for getting through another day of impossible hardship.

But they continue to endure.

I know from personal experience how hard it is to keep going when everything falls apart.

Yet the bills still need to be paid, the dishes still need to be done, and people are depending on us.

Life is relentless.

For the last 18 months, I have been conducting an experiment.

If you’ve been reading my emails for a while, you’ve probably heard me mention it.

And while the experiment isn’t over yet, I can report on my interim findings.

When I was diagnosed with cancer last year, I made a conscious decision to surrender.

Now, surrender doesn’t mean waving the white flag and giving up.

Surrender is not resisting reality.

Since this was my third cancer diagnosis, I knew that fighting and resisting didn’t work.

I needed a new approach, and since surrender is a tenet of Yoga, this was as good a time as any to practice it.

When I surrendered, I fell to my knees.

I let go of trying to control the outcomes.

I surrendered to the waves of fear, grief, dread, and panic.

I let go of trying to hold it all together.

I let myself fall apart.

It felt like I was falling, and there was no ground beneath me to catch me.

It was terrifying.

But I kept going, I’d been through hell before, so I was curious what would happen if I just kept falling.

I could see old patterns unravel.

I could see long-held attitudes and beliefs disappear.

My sense of self dissolved.

There was a lot of sitting in the shit-pit.

Then something stirred in me.

Christians would call it Grace.

Yogis would call it Shakti.

Buddhists would call it Bodhicitta.

It was a moment when I went beyond my ‘self’.

Whatever your frame, it was a sacred moment.

A door had opened.

And since then, I haven’t been the same.

I returned to work about five months ago, and many of you have been asking how I am.

And I can honestly say I’m about an 8 out of 10.

I feel good.

I have lots of energy.

I have chronic pain, but it’s bearable.

Twelve months ago, I was using a walking frame and couldn’t even wash my hair.

I never thought I would be where I am now. I am the strongest, fittest and most energised I’ve been since becoming a Mum.

And it’s because I didn’t resist my fall.

Life is full of ups and downs. And when we find ourselves in a natural down cycle, or worse, in the ‘shit-pit’, it’s tempting to fight and resist.

However, I’ve learned through experience that we can waste precious energy resisting the natural downward flow, which could be better spent on healing and recovery.

I’ve been dormant for over a year.

But that dormancy was not wasted.

I dissolved a lot in that time.

It became compost.

And now, new seeds are beginning to sprout.

I can see the horizon again after being horizonless for a long time (horizonless is a stage of acute distress when there is no way forward).

I know many of you are suffering too.

I know many of you are in your own ‘dark night of the soul’.

I know what it’s like to lose hope.

Which is why in season two of the Cultivate Calm Podcast I share my story to shine some light on the dark and to inspire you to keep going, no matter how bleak things feel.

LISTEN HERE 

Keep calm,