The Salmon and the Sacred: A Journey of Healing
On a crisp autumn afternoon, I took a different path near my favourite forest. I had just finished a meeting at Backed By Bees, where I’ll be teaching some workshops in the winter. As I walked, I found myself reflecting on healing and the unexpected ways life can lead us toward deeper awareness. Sometimes the most difficult experiences become doorways into something we could not have reached otherwise.
I sat on a park bench and enjoyed the sun caressing my skin as the wind began to stir. I felt a spaciousness within. No thought. No mind. No attachment. No desires. No resistance. Just being and awareness.
I felt a dragonfly land on my head and a bee on my ankle. I simply observed, noticing these small interactions with the world around me.
I walked on and slipped into another hidden path. There was another park bench, this one sitting beside the river. As I settled in, I noticed the salmon swimming against the current.
I had forgotten that this was the time of year when they make their difficult journey upstream. They swim toward a suitable spawning ground, where they will lay and fertilize their eggs – and then die.
The Journey Upstream
I watched them swim hard and fast over the rocks where the water became shallow, their bodies pushing against the current. Then they would enter a deeper part of the river and rest for a while before continuing toward the next stretch of rocks.
On the other side of the river, I noticed a vulture sitting on the rocks, most likely waiting for a tired or injured salmon. There was a faint smell of death in the air, and I imagined that some of the salmon had already become a meal.
I sat there reflecting on this difficult journey. And I realised how much it reminded me of my own.
The hardest times in my life have always been the greatest doorways into spiritual awakening. I seem to move through pockets of awakening, followed by periods when life becomes steady and quiet. Then another challenge arrives, and I am invited to learn something deeper – to move further within.
When the Past Rises Again
In my last journal entry, I mentioned that some things in my life had changed over the past few months. They haven’t been easy.
Some of these experiences have mirrored traumatic experiences from my childhood. I am finally ready to share that this included physical and emotional abuse from my father.
More recently, I experienced emotional abuse again (“home” is not always a safe haven). What has been fascinating is how closely this has coincided with the therapy (specifically EMDR) that I have been doing around this period of my childhood.
I am an adult now, with greater resources and a deeper awareness than I had as a child. And yet, at times, it has felt like swimming upstream.
There are moments when I can rest in the deeper water. Then I reach another stretch of shallow water, where I have to work harder against the current. And sometimes there are vultures waiting on the banks.
For me, the vultures became a reminder of what can happen when pain and unconscious patterns remain unseen. We can act from our wounds without recognising the impact we have on others. We can pass our pain outward without ever turning toward the place within us that needs to be seen.
The Little Girl Who Thought She Was Unworthy
During another EMDR session, working with the same memory, something shifted.
I suddenly saw how the 5-9 year-old girl I had been, had internalised my father’s anger. Somehow, his anger had become a reflection of my own sense of worthiness – or, more accurately, my lack of it. Meanwhile, it was his anger and his unconsciousness of not being able to process it in a healthy way. But as a child, we cannot process or see the difference.
I felt such sadness for that little girl.
I could see how Shanine had viewed herself and the world for so many years through this distorted lens: There must be something wrong with me. I must not be worthy of being loved simply as I am.
And I began contemplating what it actually means to be worthy.
Worthy of What?
I have always found it strange when people say we need to practise loving ourselves. It is also strange to me when people talk about building self-esteem.
And now I find myself asking:
How do I see myself as worthy? Worthy of what?
I also know that a successful career doesn’t make one more confident, lovable, or worthy. Having a million dollars in our bank account doesn’t change the essence of who we are. It changes our external circumstances, but circumstances can change in a moment. Married one day, divorced another. A successful career one day, gone the next. Surrounded by friends one day, and betrayed by a friend the next. Putting highlights of “my life” on social media – to gain what? Recognition, to be worthy, to be liked, to be popular?
Everything in form is capable of changing. And something portrayed on social media is not always true.
So our sense of worthiness cannot ultimately be attached to external form.
Swimming Toward the End of the River
I am in a strange place now.
I am swimming upstream, navigating things that have felt incredibly difficult. And yet, sitting beside that river, I had the sense that perhaps there is a kind of death waiting at the end of the stream.
Not a literal death, but a death of something I have carried for a very long time.
As I sat on that bench, I saw (or perhaps felt and sensed) that beneath all of the stories, all of the identities, all of the ideas I have about myself, there is something else.
Something that has always been there, unaffected, unchanging.
In the spaciousness of being, there is no need for self-love, self-esteem, or worthiness. Because there is no separate self to prove worthy.
There is simply life. I AM life itself. I AM the essence of everything.
You are the light from the sun. You are the wave of the ocean.
The Story of Me
It is thought that makes me identify with the world.
Thought tells me that I am only the wave and not part of the ocean. Thought tells me I am separate from the sun, even though I am the ray of the sunlight.
Thought tells me to compare myself to another. Thought tells me that having money (or not having money) means something about who I am. That a successful career (or the absence of one) defines me. That having many friends (or not having them) says something about my value. That being in a relationship (or being alone) determines whether I am loved.
That being worthy or unworthy is something I can gain or lose.
I turned my father’s anger into a story about my worthiness as a child, and then carried that story forward. I allowed it to shape my sense of “me” and influence how I moved through the world.
And yet, beneath the story, I am life itself.
There is nothing more worthy than that!
Sacred Remembrance
I recognise that I am human.
I will have thoughts. I will identify with them. I will forget the sacred within me. I will become caught up in stories about who I am and what my life should look like.
And perhaps that is part of being human.
Maybe awakening isn’t about permanently arriving somewhere and never forgetting again.
Maybe it is about remembering.
Again and again.
Life will bring another challenge. Another stretch of shallow water. Another set of rocks to swim over.
And just like the salmon, I will keep moving upstream.
Not because the journey is easy. But because somewhere within the journey, I remember.
I remember the sacred. I remember what I am beneath the story. I remember that I am not merely the wave. I am the ocean.
And I awaken to the sacred remembrance again and again.
