“Do you know how it feels when someone passes a pencil eraser on your scalp? I used to love it. My life feels like this to me.”
Louie is sitting on an Alpaca rug, digging his finger through the soft wool.
“What would you say to yourself from 10 years ago?”
“That the juice is worth the squeeze”. He looks at me, waiting. “That’s it,” he says. Time stops for a moment as his sense of peace and gratitude fills the room.
Still water runs deep and under the apparent calm and balance that Louie projects, there is a long and complex story of struggles.
In 2015 Louie moved to Colorado, changed careers, left music performance as a profession, got divorced. He saw his life crumble around him.
“Without question I was completely broken by October 2015. I had heard that word before. Broken. But I never completely knew what it meant until that one day in October. It came crashing down on me like an emotional pile of bricks of which I had no control over whatsoever. I could say it was unlike anything I have ever felt, but it was so such more than that. It was an overwhelming scenario where I was completely forced to surrender to the world and the way in which my life had changed. This is something I would wish upon no one.”
Louie scratched everything he knew and started his life over in a city where he knew no-one and had nothing. He has since spent every day of his life building himself back up, piece by piece.
After this cycle of un-doing and re-learning, Louie has reached a mountain top where he allows himself to contemplate how far he has come. Today, with this session, we celebrated what Louie was able to create and opened the door to the journey ahead of him.
The session ends and he asks to sit on the rug again. He folds over, cradles his head. He is tired, he sinks to the ground. Every warrior needs a little rest to prepare for the next battle.
