This Was Never Gentle

Awakening, Initiation, and the Lost Art of Being Held

There is a story we tell about spiritual awakening that is far too polite.

It speaks of soft light, gentle insight, and peaceful unfolding.
It implies clarity, calm, transcendence.

That story does not belong to those of us who were broken open rather than softly unfurled.

For many of us, awakening is not gentle at all.

It is identity death without witnesses.
It is grief for a self you cannot return to.
It is knowing — at a cellular level — that the life you are living no longer fits, long before you can articulate why.

And historically, this kind of experience was never treated as a lifestyle upgrade.

It was treated as initiation.

 

When time dissolves, identity follows

After the birth of my first child, time stopped behaving properly.

Not metaphorically. Literally.

It stretched and collapsed at the same time — dreamlike, warped, unreliable. Days felt endless and over in an instant. Nights blurred. I remember standing in front of the mirror one day and not recognising the woman looking back at me.

It wasn’t dissatisfaction.
It wasn’t about my body changing.

It was estrangement.

The woman I had been — the one who knew how to move through the world, how to belong, how to be readable — was gone.

And the grief was enormous.

Not because I wanted her back.
But because I knew, with absolute certainty, that I could never be her again.

So if not her…

Who the fuck was I?

Not who my parents expected.
Not who my friends understood.
Not who society had prepared a place for.

Just me — undefined, unrecognisable, without language or map.

Across cultures, this exact moment marks the beginning of initiation.
Modern culture simply forgot the name for it.

 

Awakening does not feel like finding yourself

It feels like losing everything you thought you were

I was never consciously afraid that I might “lose myself.”

In my reality, I already had.

The fear lived somewhere else.

The fear was being labelled.
The fear was credibility.
The fear was watching compassion turn into suspicion.

I had already witnessed what happens when someone has a sudden spiritual opening and the people around them don’t know how to hold it. I had seen how quickly a soul-level experience could be reframed as pathology, how fast curiosity turned into fear.

So I hid.

Not because I was ashamed.
But because hiding felt like protection.

Protection of my children.
Protection of my ability to function.
Protection of the small thread of safety I still had.

There were only two people I could speak honestly to about what I was experiencing. Two people who could hear it without trying to fix me, fear me, or reinterpret me into something more palatable.

For everyone else, I stayed silent.

And that silence became a place.

 

The spiritual closet — and the birth of The Broom Closet

Long before The Broom Closet was a business or a brand, it was a metaphor for survival.

I used to say — half joking, half aching — that I was “in the spiritual closet.”

I could show up.
I could be a mother.
I could live a functional life.

But a vast part of me — the sensing, knowing, feeling part — was hidden away like something dangerous if spoken aloud.

Historically, the broom closet was where witches hid.
Where women with sight learned to whisper.
Where knowledge survived quietly.

I didn’t choose the name lightly.

The Broom Closet was born from being a woman who knew there was more — and knowing exactly how unsafe it could be to say so out loud.

 

Awakening happens in the body — not just the mind

One of the most damaging myths about awakening is that it is purely psychological.

It isn’t.

It is physiological.

My body spoke long before my mind had language.

I experienced:

- Major changes in sleep

- Heightened sensitivity to sound, light, and people

- An inability to tolerate crowds, concerts, or clubs

- Long periods of exhaustion after internal shifts

- Intense physical sensations — especially heat

The heat was unmistakable.
In the palms of my hands.
On the tops of my ears.

At the time, I had no framework for it. Years later, when I learned about Reiki and energetic healing, it made sense. But back then, it was simply another thing I carried silently.

What grounded me — then and now — was never anything elaborate.

It was back to basics.

Water.
Nature.
Bare feet on grass, even for five minutes.
Breathing — three slow breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth.

The simplest things brought me back into my body when everything else felt like it was dissolving.

 

This experience is ancient — we just forgot how to hold it

What many people experience today as frightening or isolating was once recognised, ritualised, and respected.

Across cultures, sudden spiritual openings were not treated as problems to be solved — but as thresholds to be crossed with support.

Ancient India: Kundalini as sacred and dangerous

In classical Tantric and yogic traditions (roughly 200 BCE – 800 CE), Kundalini was never romanticised.

It was understood as potent, destabilising, and capable of causing harm if awakened prematurely.

Spontaneous awakenings were acknowledged — but they were treated with great care.

Those who experienced them were:

- Relieved of ordinary responsibilities

- Given grounding routines (food, sleep, manual tasks)

- Closely supervised by a teacher

- Slowly reintegrated into daily life

The goal was not transcendence.

The goal was embodiment.

Siberian and Central Asian cultures: the calling sickness

Among Siberian, Mongolian, and Central Asian peoples, anthropologists documented what became known as shamanic illness.

It often included:

• Sudden visions

• Sensory overload

• Hearing voices

• Withdrawal from ordinary life

• Periods of collapse or despair

These individuals were not abandoned.

They were recognised.

Elders stepped in.
The initiate was cared for.
The experience was interpreted rather than erased.

The danger was never the awakening.

The danger was being alone with it.

Celtic traditions: seasonality, sensitivity, and postpartum liminality

In pre-Christian Celtic cultures, heightened sensitivity was not pathologised.

It was seasonal. Cyclical. Expected.

Seers, poets, and healers were often deeply sensitive people who moved in and out of ordinary roles. Solitude in nature was not isolation — it was training.

Crucially, postpartum women were understood to be liminal beings.

Birth was recognised as a threshold between worlds. A woman who had crossed that threshold was believed to remain open for some time.

She was not expected to bounce back.

She was expected to be protected.

That knowledge didn’t disappear.
It was simply lost.

 

My awakening didn’t explode — it eroded

I didn’t experience a dramatic flood of visions.

What I experienced was erosion.

The slow crumbling of a life that no longer fit.
A nervous system that could not tolerate surface-level living.
A sense that the world I had grown up in suddenly felt fake — small talk, gossip, roles I could no longer inhabit.

After my second child, the rupture deepened.

Postnatal depression returned. Alcohol crept in — not as recklessness, but as numbing.

Because when your inner world grows too vast and your outer world too small, numbing feels like relief.

I withdrew further. Genuine connection felt rare. I had never felt less supported or understood.

This was when hiding stopped being protection and started becoming unsustainable.

 

2023: leaving when nothing “happened”

In 2023, I dismantled my life.

Not because something dramatic had happened.
Not because there was a single event I could point to.
Not because I had a plan.

That was the hardest part to explain.

Nothing had happened.

And yet, everything in my body knew.

I knew I could not stay.
I knew I could not build my future from the foundations I was standing on.
I knew that if I ignored this knowing, something in me would calcify beyond repair.

People thought it was crazy.

They couldn’t understand why someone would leave a relationship when “nothing had happened.”
They wanted reasons that lived in language.

But this decision did not come from my mind.

It came from somewhere older.

At the time, I couldn’t explain it — not properly, not to anyone. I didn’t understand it myself.

I just knew.

And only now — only with distance and integration — do I understand why I had to do it.

 

Some thresholds are crossed before meaning arrives

In initiation-based cultures, the body moves first.

The initiate leaves before understanding.
The old life collapses before the new one is visible.
Meaning comes after obedience, not before.

This is somatic intelligence.

Modern culture calls it irrational.

Ancient cultures called it knowing.

 

Awakening does not run on human time

Some people integrate in months.
Others take years.

Neither is ahead. Neither is behind.

Awakening follows capacity, not clocks.

Capacity shaped by:

- Nervous system regulation

- Support

- Responsibility

- Safety

- Timing

Comparison is meaningless here.

 

Awakening is not gentle — and that truth matters

If I’m honest, the word awakening feels too soft.

What I lived was:

• Painful

• Ugly

• Sacred

• Beautiful

• Irreversible

It hurt more than anything I’d ever known.

And it was worth it.

If I could sit beside that woman staring into the mirror, I wouldn’t promise ease.

I would promise meaning.

This will hurt you more than any pain you’ve ever known — and it will be worth it. I promise.

 

Staying human is the real initiation

The ancient goal was never to leave the body.

It was to return to it changed.

To drink the water.
To touch the earth.
To breathe.
To stay.

Even now, the desire to numb exists — because I am human.

But I am here for the long game now.

And that, too, is sacred.

 

If this is you

You are not broken.
You are not alone.
You are not late.
You do not have to choose between spirituality and safety.

What you may be missing is not insight — but containment.

And containment can still be built.

Slowly. Carefully. Humanly.

 

With all my love & light,

Sarah xx

 

A gentle note

This reflection is shared through a spiritual and cultural lens, not as medical advice. Spiritual experiences can be profound and transformative — and they can also feel overwhelming. If you or someone you love feels unsafe, is not sleeping, experiencing distressing symptoms, or struggling to function day-to-day, please seek professional support. Spirituality and care are not opposites — the most sacred path is the one that keeps you safe.