So the 30-Day Challenge is finally over and as it turns out, it has served a slightly different purpose for me than what I had in mind when I started it.

The clarity I was seeking regarding one particular matter/aspect of my life hasn’t been achieved to the degree that I hoped.

What did happen however was the sudden revelation of a core wound that is the underlying reason behind the lack of clarity, as well as the reason behind a big number of other situations and occurrences in my life. it’s one of those times when you can’t believe there was something so big, so blatantly obvious at play in your life for so long and you still managed to miss it.

So deep and fundamental and old that it is totally and completely invisible because it has literally shaped you into who you are so you don’t even see it as something outside of you. You don’t even see it at all. “That is who I am. I have always been like that”.

Wrong.

Just another mask, yet a persistent one, one that I’ve been constantly wearing for so many years that I ended up believing that this is actually what my face looks like.

In one of the online groups I participate, someone mentioned recently that the more they work with magic, the more they think that it’s less about manifesting things and more about seeing things that were right under their nose the whole time, yet they couldn’t see them. This has been my experience too.

Not that it’s always like that of course.

There are times where magic is straightforward: I know what it is I want, I have a pretty good idea how it would best manifest in my life so I use magic to make it happen. More often than not though -and especially when it’s some kind of big, fundamental change in my life that I’m after- it’s more about revealing to me what has always been available but I couldn’t see it and therefore couldn’t benefit from it.

The possibilities that are already there, if one knows how to look. It’s like being handed a different, better pair of glasses that allow you to see things that you couldn’t see before, and you realize that no, you don’t need a 10-step plan spanning a whole year or even more to get that one thing you were after, cause that thing is right there and all you have to do is move a couple of things just a little bit so that you can reach it.

So, back to the core wound, recognizing its presence is both freeing and terrifying. Freeing because now that I see it for what it is I finally know this is not me, it has never been me. I am not doomed to live with this pain, I am not doomed to repeat the same patterns over and over, I am not doomed to suffer for the rest of my life, wondering why no amounts of magic or physical action ever make any difference.

But it’s also terrifying, because it’s overwhelming. Because it’s so deep and has hurt so much for so long that I feel too small and too weak to even begin to work towards healing it.

There have just been too many failed attempts to change things connected to it, enough to make me doubt things could ever change. I believe this one will require outside help to heal, even though my spirits reminded me I already have tools to help me change the patterns associated with it.

And so the adventure begins.