I didn't get the life I dreamed of, but I did get this - Letters From Therapy Podcast | Lyssna här

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Hi friends,

Silence is deafening when everything you thought your life would be crumbles in your hands. This stillness became my companion during those years when grief carved spaces in my heart I didn't know could exist.

Twenty years ago, my world fractured in pieces. My ex-husband and I lost two baby girls, 4 years apart, one of whom I held as she took her first and last breath, full term and perfect in every way but one.

Ever since, I've lived with two vast empty spaces in my soul where their life force had once flowed. Where my brain, flooded with powerful hormones, reorganised itself to care for them, even though they weren’t there. Between these angels came Grace, our bouncing, beautiful daughter who carried light into our home, that had been so shadowed by the dark cloak of loss.

As my life long-dreams of family life drifted away like smoke, so did many friends. I understand; grief makes people uncomfortable, particularly when you’re young.

Grief is messy and long and never follows the neat timelines others, or even we might expect.

For a decade, my pain seemed to have no end. Those old Christian messages from school days of the value of humility brought no solace; just more alienation.

Raising Grace largely alone (we co-parented but separately), I feared my disenfranchised sorrow was seeping into her bright world, shaping her in ways I couldn't see or prevent. I knew from my therapy training these experiences would impact her profoundly too. (She is studying psychology at Uni now, what does that tell you!).

My soul aches in sorrow for who I was through those years, and for what my younger self missed out on. But, it gave me insight.

Those years taught me how the human heart can break and expand at once, how loss can hollow you out, while creating space for deeper understanding.

It was this insight, born from my own shattered dreams, that led me to sit across from others in their darkest moments as a counsellor and psychotherapist.

As I helped others through their pain and into the light and back into themselves, I wondered if the sun would shine on my own life again.

But the sun did come out, as the Beatles promised back ‘69. She’s dappling her rays of light against the mantelpiece now, and my collection of treasures there: pretty vases from far off places, a feather, photos bearing snatched moments of joy, a little painting I did of my favourite place in Cornwall, and candles ready to be lit to acknowledge the beauty of life.

The sun burns bright!

I don't live where I once imagined I would, far from family and my West Country roots, settled instead in a leafy corner of London that never quite felt like home.

My flat is small but pretty, and where is that large, beautiful garden I dreamed of? The one filled with flowers and children tangled in climbing frames, ripe apples dropping from ancient trees? Where are those rolling hills and the cheerful knocks at the door from smiling friends? Where is the busy kitchen with loved ones leaning on ovens, warming hands on cups of tea, and where are the loving arms wrapped around me several times a day?

Yet somehow my heart remained the same heart. My soul bursts with the same joy it would if I were the woman with those imagined riches.

I am an optimist. I carved out a beautiful life for myself and Grace, just in a different shape.

Through intentional living, I built a new life: a thriving jewellery business, gathering thousands of people there and here, including you, following along while on your journey. Supportive, regular customers put their faith in me, and I get to play with alchemy every day, creating silver talismans that might bring inspiration for centuries. I make gifts that sometimes make people cry with joy.

I found my voice there, and writing here, outside the shackles I might have found myself in if everything had gone to plan. (Perhaps that dream was rather rose-tinted anyway.)

I grew through those layers of shame that once seemed unshakeable.

And now, I use my voice here to share the woven threads of my life, braided together with the underpinnings of my psychotherapy work.

I survived with a strong connection to my authentic self. I protected her with all my power, trusting that she, me, knew the way along this rocky road.

The soul knows what it wants.

We butterflies cannot stay hiding in a chrysalis, even if it has fallen to the dirt. If we do, we die.

Despite everything, I must acknowledge how far I've come, and so must you.

Perhaps if I hadn't experienced such lows, I could never have understood the highs. None of this, my writing, creativity, the deep work with tortured souls and the purpose it gave me, could exist if I were living that original dream life. I don’t think so. We can’t go down every path. This was my path, and I'm still walking it. It's rocky, but the view takes my breath away.

I pour all the beauty life showed me into my newsletter, the membership and Bloom Sessions and my workbooks.

Working as a therapist taught me what else I needed to learn about humans, how we can all shape a life around the obstacles and curves and suffering that get thrown at lowly humans like me, and rise despite it. Maybe you too?

At 52, post Long Covid, my body is failing in places but still standing strong (between naps). The sun warms my face, and I'm grateful for any rain, too, in my little shady patch.

Some kind, funny friends with their own scars that now bring light to the world stuck around. I'm grateful to them, and to you too.

Gratitude swells in every cell for everything I have: for my resilience and the courage that got me here, for the few who caught me when I fell. That I overcame self-doubt, and reached radical acceptance early on.

All along, I kept my higher self in mind as a guiding light. She took the reigns. And it's still not that easy, is it?

But I have faith. I trust the universe. I trust myself to continue adapting with the flow of life, whatever waits around the corner. I've stepped into the truest version of myself (which I never did as a young woman) and made a home in my own soul.

Our lives, hopes, dreams, and actions all arise from that fertile void from which all life springs. The sacred space in which our awakened, soulful metamorphosis begins.

Have you found yourself filled with new season energy to channel, or if you’ve fallen on rocky ground and are looking for a fresh start? Do you want to reclaim the truest and highest version of you to lead you forward?

Has your life journey lead to a quiet awakening for you too?

With love and gratitude,

Kate

P.S. Thank you for reading. Feel free to click the heart and share on Substack, it really helps, and if you’d like to become a fuller version of yourself, upgrade here.

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I’m Kate, a psychotherapist helping sensitive people rebuild an authentic fulfilling life, with reflections, therapy tools and deep journalling questions learned over 16 years working with clients.

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“Dear Kate, thank you for sharing this. It helps me to understand why I am drawn to your writing and your posts. There is something deep and still and vast about the energy in your writing and the way you come across on the page. I don’t know how to explain it better than that. But Kahlil Gibran would say you have been carved very deeply by so much sorrow. Sending love and appreciation for sharing what you have learned.” Dawn

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