A Very Raw and Vulnerable Share
Exciting News: I’m hosting a weekend retreat, “The Sacred Rebel Retreat”, at The Art of Living Center in Boone, North Carolina from April 12th-14th. You can find all the details here. Would love to have you join!
This is a very vulnerable email for me to share with you, and one I think is important to share. Teachers and guides often come off as though they never struggle or suffer; as though they are on some enlightened path that keeps them above being human. I have yet to meet a fully enlightened being in this life, so I just don’t believe that is realistic or true. I also believe it’s why so many of my clients are therapists and coaches. Even though my containers are not centered on me at all, it feels so important to share my shadow because it allows us to all be so freaking human!
Shadow work and parts work are so liberating for this reason; we don’t have to over identify with our struggles. They’re just pieces of us that need care and compassion. So often in this work it seems as though the teacher is above the student, but I’m forever a teacher and student of Earth School!
The past few weeks for me have been very difficult; I would go so far as to say ‘traumatizing!’ I have dealt with sleep issues since I was very young (if you know Ayurvedic medicine, it’s very common for Vatas). I began taking Benadryl for sleep in high school because I honestly believe I just didn’t want to be awake, and I was also steeped in disordered eating at the time, and sleeping kept me from eating.
I had my first major nervous breakdown in 2012 after living the majority of my life in bed (for over seven years) from major complications of surgery, being in a major freeze state, and knowing my ex-husband was done with our marriage. That first breakdown began when I completely stopped sleeping. I didn’t sleep for over twenty days in a row! There’s a reason this is a torture tactic; everything shuts down. I would lay awake in bed, alone, all night having massive panic attacks; I have no words for how traumatizing it was. I knew my marriage was over, and I had to move home to live with my brother because I wasn’t capable of caring for myself.
This experience may have been traumatic, but it was also the catalyst for me completely changing my life.
I weaned myself off of an insane amount of narcotics and learned to live outside of my bed. At the time I thought all the trauma and breakdown was about the physical pain my body was in; I had no clue yet about emotional trauma and its impact on the body or nervous system.
Seven years later almost to the week, I had another nervous breakdown that began with not sleeping. I hadn’t heard of 7 year cycles at that time, but boy are they real! In some ways this felt even more traumatizing because I had done so much work and I had just turned in my book and I felt shame like you wouldn’t believe. There’s so much context to all of these stories, and I have written about it a good bit (even this email shares a bit about the last breakdown). Read my Substack Post, Breakdowns to Breakthrough ⇒ Here
That second one also began with my body being completely unable to sleep. Once again, I laid awake alone all by myself, losing my mind with panic. I ended up in a three week residential treatment that changed my life completely, once again. I left a world that I thought made me special and “worthy” and began living in more alignment with my soul’s path. I stepped away from so much of what was no longer serving me. I discovered a lot of childhood trauma that I had been completely unaware of, learning that it was the root of so much of my emotional, physical, and spiritual pain.
Due to my lifelong sleep struggles I function pretty well off five or six hours of choppy sleep, but once I got home I started waking up at one in the morning and staying up. This went on for four nights in a row, and then on the fifth night I didn’t get even one minute of sleep. I started doing all the sleep hygiene practices I knew. Ironically, I had only fully done these practices any time I was in breakdown, so even the practices themselves felt activating. I don’t think I realized how much PTSD I had around not sleeping. One of the rules I’d been taught was that if I couldn’t sleep, I should get out of bed, because I needed my body to only associate my bed with sleep. So, instead of staying next to Eric, I was laying on the couch alone, feeling utter panic that I was going to have another breakdown. I told myself some really terrifying stories. I have a very loud inner critic (hello, four planets in Virgo in my chart) but I have many amazing tools to love on that part of myself, and I use them daily. Unfortunately, after so many nights without sleep, my nervous system calming tools were simply not touching the panic.
So here is how this time was different. After the fifth night, when I didn’t get one minute of sleep, I drove myself to the doctor’s office. I hadn’t been since early 2020, and I haven’t taken a pharmaceutical since 2020. I do believe there is a place for everything, but after being on every med under the sun for all those years, I felt called to take a holistic healing approach; I may have swung a bit too far to the opposite extreme. I told the doctor I needed something for panic and I was prescribed Xanax. I felt a bit of panic around taking it because of those old stories, but I was desperate for sleep.
That night I took half a dose and slept two and a half hours. I woke up drenched in sweat and took another half dose, slept two and a half more sweat-drenched hours, and spent the rest of the night on the couch feeling afraid I would get addicted to Benzos. Our brains really aren’t rational with very little sleep. My body was majorly fatigued, but could not sleep without these meds because I was in flight or flight mode. When you think you are running from a saber tooth tiger, your body is pumping you full of adrenaline and there is no way you can rest!
The meds did give me a bit of sleep but I was still feeling panicked for a few days that I would become addicted to them and would need to wean off them; I know how hard that is from experience. Thankfully, I have the most supportive and incredible community around me. In the past I would not reach out for help because of shame. In the past I might not have driven myself to the doctor, but I did!
About eight days into all of this, I luckily had a session with my incredible coach Dr. Erica Matluck. I cannot speak more highly about her. She was able to help me turn so many of my stories around in such a profound way. She helped me realize that this medicine was appropriate for an acute situation, and that taking it now didn’t mean I would be on it forever. Again, I’m not saying pharmaceuticals are bad or wrong, but I’ve had many traumatic experiences with being dependent on them, so I still feel pretty big activation around taking more.
She was able to so lovingly talk me off that ledge and help me realize the need I have for them at this moment. She suggested I start praying over them as though they were sacred tea or mushrooms, as though they were part of a beautiful sacred healing ceremony. She reminded me that the energy of how you consume something changes how you receive it. Now I pray over the medication, hold it to my heart and thank it for helping me calm my mind and body, for helping me rest. She then suggested that maybe this was an opportunity to heal the versions of me in 2012 and 2019 that felt so lost and alone and panicked. She suggested staying in bed, and stopping the sleep hygiene practices until I was more stable, so that Eric could hold me; so that I could feel his love and remember that I am never truly alone. I have the love of a man that would do anything for me, including hold me all night if I asked him to. What a reframe and a reparative experience!
I then remembered, when I was in residential treatment in 2019, my mom shared with me that she had major depression and panic attacks while she was pregnant with me, and it all got worse after I was born. She was doing the absolute best that she could but I cried it out a lot as a result. I didn’t get the attachment and attunement that highly sensitive baby Ruthie really needed. I suddenly realized that those times in 2012 and 2019 felt connected to something pre-verbal. Even as an adult in those breakdowns, I had no words; I would wail and rock myself, feeling so much terror and aloneness. This new sleepless episode was a chance for me to go back and re-parent that scared, crying younger me while she felt so alone. I would never blame my precious mama; she was doing the best she could in survival mode. There’s a lot to that story, but it isn’t mine to tell.
I’ve also been working with an incredible nervous system and somatic teacher, Elena who is helping me to lovingly go back to baby Ruthie; to attune to her and take her to the safest place I know. In a recent practice with Elena, I brought baby Ruthie to my dear soul sister, Dr. Hillary McBride, an amazing mama to a daughter herself. I saw her holding me and rocking me as a young girl, singing me lullabies. Hillary sent me a recording of a song she wrote for her daughter and sings to her every single night. I have listened to it more times than I can count in the night while I couldn’t sleep; it has made me feel so loved and cared for. What a precious and loving gift; it brings tears to my eyes as I write about it.
My sleep is slowly but surely getting better every week. I’m feeling so much gratitude for the love and support I have surrounding me, especially when my oldest pain story always tells me I’m all alone. My angel friend/sister Elizabeth came over to love on me through her amazing energy work, friends brought me homeopathic remedies and checked on me consistently; and that leads me to what is the most GORGEOUS thing about all of this. We will never be free of painful trials coming up in our lives. This is the polarity experience of Earth School, and it doesn’t mean that we’re bad or something is wrong.
Pain is always inviting us into deeper states of healing. What we get to witness is that we might be quicker to come back to the truth and alchemize it when we do this work. The first time, I was in a bed for seven years. The second time it was about a four month process before I started feeling some grounded normalcy again. This time it’s taken about two weeks to get back on track. I am not fully out of it, but holy hell, it is SO MUCH better. I’M also getting to go back to my core wounding, which I believe my body and soul were asking for.
I am so honored to go back and take care of that precious tender younger version of me. What an honor to love her the way that she needs. I’m also proud of myself for reaching out for help so quickly, and for canceling important family commitments to honor what my body needed over anything else. I’m so proud of myself for allowing my body the love and tenderness and care she is, was, and always will be deserving of. This work is slow and gentle; I will be doing it until my last breath. I’m grateful to have the clarity now to see that nothing is “bad” or “wrong”, instead seeing a chance to surrender more and more into trusting my process. I know that ultimately this is for my greater healing, which in no way takes away that it has also been INCREDIBLY painful and traumatic. Both get to be true, beautiful friends.
If you made it all the way through this essay, thank you. I hope that this is an encouragement to you if you are struggling and really going through it. You are not broken, my beautiful friend. You are doing the absolute best you can, and this is all inviting you into a greater level of healing. I believe in you so deeply. I trust the divine with you so deeply. I am honored to be on this Earth School journey with you, learning side by side.
With so much love and gratitude,
Ruthie
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Get in Touch With Your Feelings, With Amber Rae - A Love’s Invitation Special Event
Hello beautiful souls,
I’m so excited for our special event that will help you Get In Touch With Your Feelings with my dear friend, Amber Rae, on Tuesday, March 26th at 1:00 pm CST! If you haven’t registered yet, make sure you do below (this will be recorded if you can’t make it live). As a reminder, this event is part of our monthly live offering for paid subscribers only - if you’re not a paid subscriber yet and would like to sign up for $6/month, you can sign up using the button below and then come back to this post to register!
In this conversation and workshop with bestselling author, speaker & journaling mentor Amber Rae we’ll discuss the realm of emotions, including:
The importance of opening into curiosity with our emotions
Why emotions aren’t good or bad but rather neutral messengers
How to acknowledge and name what we feel
The stories and meaning we may create
How to harness the wisdom of our emotions
Amber will guide us through her most transformative journaling practice, bringing us into a personal conversation with our emotions and inner support.
Here’s a little bit more about Amber:
Amber Rae is an international bestselling author, speaker, and journaling expert who’s on a mission to help people harness the wisdom of their emotions. She’s the author of Choose Wonder Over Worry, The Answers Are Within You, and most recently, The Feelings Journal. Her writing and illustrations reach nine million people per month in over 195 countries, and her work has been featured in The New York Times, New York Magazine, TODAY, SELF, Forbes, and Entrepreneur. As a keynote speaker and teacher, Amber’s spoken and led workshops at celebrated brands Kate Spade, Microsoft, Merrill Lynch, Lululemon, Unilever, and TED, among others. Through her website and popular social media channels, she's launched public art movements, global journaling challenges, and life accelerator programs. Previously, Amber helped Seth Godin launch a publishing venture with Amazon, and worked with brands like Apple, Dove, and Kimberly Clarke on their marketing campaigns.
You can connect with Amber here:
Amber’s Instagram: Click Here
Amber’s Feeling Journal: Click Here
This is an offering for paid subscribers to Love’s Invitation. If you’re not already subscribed, you can do so before the event to join us!
Here are all the details to join:
If you’re already a paying subscriber:
Register using the link below.
If you’re a free subscriber:
Join the monthly or annual subscription to Love’s Invitation.
Once subscribed, come back to this post to access the link to register for the event.