The Dark Knight of The Soul…

October 14, 2017.

The death of my son Brett Cameron age 24, dying by suicide. 

One day in my life, that completely changed me forever, it was the day not only did my son die, but I too, died a death.

This traumatic experience completely crushed me to my core, all perceived meaning to life gone.  NO-thing left within but heavy dark emotions of pain, anguish, sorrow, confusion and devastation.  All that I once knew to be true of my existence to this point in my life, was gone in that one moment.

The death I died, was the death of my illusory self and life took on a whole new meaning from that point forward.

As the Dark Knight of The Soul emerged, I was hurled into truly discovering why I was here on this earth, I was forced to uncover Who I Am, as soul.

This journey of soul into self-discovery had to start from the death of my illusory self. 

This conceptual sense of self we create for ourselves in this lifetime.  What died in me was the egoic sense of self that became my illusory identity that I created in this lifetime.  The non-realistic perceived meaning that I gave life through all of my experiences.

I don’t believe one can comprehend the enormity of this experience unless one travels this path themselves.  The loss of a child as a parent (mother), then adding the trauma and complexity of the death through suicide created an experience of insurmountable heartache and loss.

This darkness I felt, of NO-thing left within me, was a bleak nonexistence and dissociation from my soul self and the life I created around me.

My world completely disintegrated to ashes that day.  All that remained in those ashes, was but one tiny little amber, barely flickering to keep my soul my divine spark, alight.

My soul was almost completely extinguished.

I felt I had nothing left inside of me at all to want to go on living. It was the most heart wrenching experience of loss and bleakness I’d ever experienced.  I was struggling to find reasons to live because no longer could I see any meaning to life apart from my other son Kyle who was still here with me.  Who was also journeying a painful loss in his own way from losing his brother.

In truth, if not for my son Kyle, I don’t believe I would be here today, little lone if I would have made it through this journey out the other side.  Kyle gave me a glimmer of hope to find a way to keep going.  To Rise Stronger, to be brave to live and to love again by not choosing other means to end my sorrow.

Believe me, it had crossed my mind wanting to leave this planet. However, upon trying to make sense and find meaning to this experience, trudging through what felt like thick sinking mud.  Lost in the insurmountable emotions with stress coursing through my body, as I searched deep for answers as to WHY?

Questioning… Why did my son choose this path, blaming myself wondering where I went wrong, What could I have done better, How did I not know how to help him further, after a year of supporting him as his fulltime carer.  As I witnessed his relapses several times over the year in traumatic suicide attempts, for him to keep falling deeper into depression, not even the system could help him.

All these unanswered questions deeply anguished me, leaving me utterly confused and disconnected from life.

Adding to this sorrow was the experience I had with my family, when having to let them know of the death of my son, with their reactions to how he died.  Their unkind words expressed shame and blame.  To never hear from them again for many years all compounded my grief.  I quickly understood that day, that any family I felt I had, with the exception of one brother and his family, was now severed from my life. So now, not only was I grieving my son, I was also grieving the death of my family.

This experience, I could not make sense of or comprehend whatsoever, it became unfathomable as I started to sink into my own darkness of depression.  This then triggered past traumas and the many suppressed emotions from my childhood and adulthood to surface.  I was feeling deeply saddened because now, I was seeing myself as ‘not even a good enough mum’ which until then, I had always felt was the greatest experience of my life, to be the mum to my two amazing sons.

I felt that I had deeply failed my son.

Yet, one thing I did know as a mother still, for my other son, was that I could not put him through any more pain or loss with me not wanting to be here anymore. I could not add to his anguish and sorrow that we were both feeling as a brother and mother, that we were both deeply lost in.

And so….

This became my Turning Point to Live!

I chose in that moment that I would stand up and rise, to Rise Stronger no matter what, despite all the hurt I was in, I would find a way out of this Dark Knight of the Soul.

This was by no means an easy feat because, when one experiences grief or in my case trauma loss to suicide, it can bring up past hurts of your life. As if grief alone isn’t enough to deal with, and so I knew there was no way out but through this mental emotional turmoil.

It was time to face my struggles and fight for my truth to find meaning from this experience, the death of my son, and everything that was my life to this point in time.

Deciding at that moment, this Turning Point in my Life, to stand in the arena and not run from struggle but to turn toward truth and look it in the eye, to face all fear and sorrow dead on!

And so began my journey of soul spiritual expansion because overtime, what I came to understand was, these traumatic events are brought to us for a reason. We are given the opportunity to practice vulnerability and heal deeply. When we are vulnerable, we put all of our core wounds into huge exposure.  It really is the biggest emotional risk we can take as humans, yet it is where we can have the most profound spiritual awakening.