Most people stay in the shallow end of life, deciding at some point to never take a risk, avoid any conflict, fly low, and fearfully with judiciousness they veer away from anything that causes them discomfort. No conflict. No truths. No uncertainty. That decision was never an option for me.

I got thrown into the soup early on. Mine was a smack you up the side of the head and learn to sink or swim beginning. So, I did, swim that is, and the water was deep and without choice. There were no shallow ends to play in. There was only getting behind the wheel at age eleven to check my passed-out mom into Camelback hospital again or chasing her rapist all over town after he blew through my brother and I at our front door as we came home. By the time I was three, I knew everything in the world, my world, was not just fine and superficial was never an option.

After leaving home at thirteen, I grew older and wiser. I began to wonder if my mom’s alcoholic Dad and her four alcoholic brothers were the reason she could not breathe without a drink. Was it in her DNA or was I simply never able to offer more than whatever was in her can of Coors? I left home at thirteen and it wasn’t until years later that also learned she was my finest teacher and our short-lived life of hardship together was an enormous gift.

Without the valuable experiences of life with mom, I might have never understood that tissue thin offers nothing of value to genuine soul work, that unvarnished truth is the foundation of every real relationship and that the fastest way out of pain is straight through it. My mom was a master teacher and because of my metaphysical beliefs, I also believe she had contracted with me, to offer her life of pain so that I could learn these things.

Today, as I approach the end of my life I reflect on a panorama of deeply connected moments, with soul deep cohorts, and a family, the majority of whom, know the value of and are committed entering into discomfort temporarily, for the sake of healing and love. I am so grateful for each of them. And I hope you will give yourself the gift of that as well. But how?

The first step is to own everything; every hardship, every painful experience and everything for which you are still blaming someone else.  Try to explore the possibility that you created everything in your life in service to your own soul and figure out what you have learned or need to learn from your experiences.

© Dr. Dina Bachelor Evan 2018. All rights reserved.  No part of the intellectual property of Dr. Dina Evan may be reproduced, placed on mechanical retrieval system, transmitted in any form by electronic, video, laser, mechanical photocopy, recording means or otherwise in part or in whole, without written permission of the author.  Contents are fully copyrighted and may not be owned by any other individual or organization.