The Whisper of Her Soul.

Silently, as if only my soul was ever meant to hear… I could feel it. If silence had a voice, this voice was shouting. I can remember it so vividly, it was as if my whole life was waiting to break forth, as if every moment and every tear was finally purposed to bring me here. It was beautiful, brilliant and different then I expected.

I was alone. It was a moment that I had waited my whole life for and yet somehow no one else could see it. It was the moment that all the pain came into the healing and the healing became the story and that story became power that I began to embody.

The Power of Becoming.

I was changing, the more I sought to bravely face the deepest wounds my heart had ever contained, wholeness was beginning to envelop me. To the world, I was moving forward but to my heart, I was becoming.

But not like anyone I had been before. I wasn’t the soul I knew before the grave I entered. That darkness that consumed me for so long. The deep pain that one soul could bring into another, that brutality, that abuse, I wasn’t the girl who lived those tears. Yet, somehow she was still inside me, she was part of me, and I could still feel her.

Leaving the Grave.

Some days, I go back and meet with her. I sit with her for awhile and find out how she has been. I ask her about how she feels and what her life is like…I find that she has a lot to process. She has held so much pain for so long. I watch her as she shares her story of the grave, as if she is this imaginative figure. Who she was when she entered the grave, that girl won’t ever exist again, in many ways, I had to leave her there.

I had to grow, but I wouldn’t have known it at the time. How could pain be used for such a great purpose as to allow darkness itself to be the conduit to the destiny of my soul? I now know that’s a promise. That even the darkest of our days will be formed into a goodness that we never could have foresaw.

It feels like betrayal to say that, after all, that girl who entered the grave still lives within my soul. It’s strange to say that she is part of me, but I am no longer her. The one who rose from the grave had to make choices, hard choices. Choices no one talks about.

Having to choose to leave the life you thought would last forever, to separate yourself from the dream you waited decades for, and to do it knowing it will be gone for good. In so many ways you regret loving it because to lose them, destroys the remnants of your soul left in the wake of darkness. Yet, to never have loved them would be even more tragic then the loss itself, because it was a love that changed your very existence.

To heal is to change.

I’ve been changed forever. And I will continue to choose to change, because to heal is to change. Healing involves allowing our hearts to be found in all the pieces and remnants where we went to war with darkness itself. The war zone where we met demons face to face that we never knew existed. Those demons and all the damage they did…we make the choice to begin to find the pieces.

In many ways we are forced to find these remnants, because to stay in the war zone is to live surrounded by darkness. And deep in our soul we know that to stay here is to surrender to death itself, which we cannot do. It’s here I felt my soul whisper. In the silence I heard it louder, and louder, until I found the motivation to begin to search for the pieces of me scattered across the battlefield.

“Keep going”, she said to my soul.

The process that heals.

As I began collecting the pieces, holding the remnants of broken promises and shattered dreams, I found myself in this space they call grief. It’s that place where the world thinks you are putting the parts of your heart back to their respective places. But what few realize is your heart won’t ever exist the same way again, you will never be who you were before. Yet, the process is what heals, and so I continued my search… feeling the edges of each piece as I picked it up, I held it gently and when back to the moments when it formed.

I recalled the moments that will now forever be memories, the moments of joy and happiness, and I mustered the courage to feel the trauma again. As I began to feel the rough edges, and faced the darkness for the last time. I faced with a boldness that was almost foreign. It was as if I was it’s master. I felt the piece, I knew it well, I knew the pain it held and the way it deeply wounded my soul…and then I decided to soften the edges and enable healing to pull the wisdom from the experience. I felt the areas where once I could only see the demons that once haunted me and by my touch alone they left. For darkness will always yield to light. I then softly lay the redeemed piece back upon my soul knowing the trauma it once recalled, is now written as testimony.

It’s a testimony that doesn’t stop. When once I asked if the darkness would ever end, it’s as if life has taken back over. Day after day, the testimony just keeps redeeming the pieces of my soul that I wasn’t sure would ever leave the grave. Then, came that day where I met her…

To meet her.

She moved softly and slowly, and spoke with that same whisper, the whisper of her soul, it was silent yet louder than any noise, like every time before. I would know her from worlds away. I would feel her and breathe her in. She is everything I’ve ever been, redeemed and healed. All the darkness that was triumphed for testimony. If testimony had a soul it would have felt like her. She was me.

Standing tall with all of her beauty and power suddenly all the darkness made sense. She somehow came with a mandate that turned every grave over, and brought what was once lifeless back into existence. She made a playground of death itself and a masterpiece of what it claimed as ruin. Where lifelessness abounded she came in with all her femininity and with the whisper of her soul spoke a kingdom back into the world. She made a beautiful kingdom from a grave. And with authority she spoke life over every piece of my soul.

I breathed her in, meeting this new life for the first time. I felt that healing whisper consume my very being. She embodied me, and that’s when I realized healing has a soul, and that soul has a whisper.

Keep going, you will make it.

Breann Shannell