June seems to be bringing in even more intense, compounding energy, and whilst it is about keeping things in perspective and not jumping to conclusions or making judgments, it appears that never does a day seem to go by without seeing the world as we knew it changing in some way before our very eyes.

We are all being affected in many different ways and rewired for a new level of consciousness. Whilst there are many tragic things happening in the outer world that may trigger our deep seated fears of survival or highlight feelings of vulnerability, people are finding the courage to instinctively rise up in their own way to help others in need or change the status quo.

We are all being asked to master our emotions and to observe and be aware of our own reactions to conflict when triggered by events. Through the waves of anger, rage, frustration, sadness, sorrow and tragedy, and deeply wounded and grief stricken Hearts, we are all being given opportunities to connect to a new level of Love consciousness with ourselves and each other that is now starting to emerge.

There are some deeper insights within this article on sharing my Truth and the healing of my own Heart’s wounding and the deeper purpose a Dark Night of the Soul. I am not the “therapist or counsellor” here. I do this because I am in an ongoing process of evolving as many are. I am just sharing what has worked for me to heal myself because I have learned that through giving the blessings I have received, it will remind others of the Truth of who they are too.

So Love’s healing message from the Black Rose this month is this:

Heal the Children….heal the Children!

I received the message above during the night two nights after the Manchester bombings, and the realization of it’s Divine timing. These children in that message are the inner child that resides within all of us which gets triggered and activated in times of uncertainty when we feel vulnerable, frightened, sad or angry.

2017 is the year to focus on the relationship we have with ourselves. One of the greatest themes for this year is the balancing of the masculine and feminine which affects so much of our life and relationships – yet this balance and union can only happen through healing.

For the “Lightworkers, Star seeds, Roses and Angelic beings” whose purpose is to lift the vibration of the planet, the cry that many may feel from deep within their Hearts comes from the biggest Light bearer of all our core wounds, anxieties and fears….

our wounded inner child

Our childhood affects all the relationships we are in as adults, and in the aftermath of the Manchester and London bombings, and the results of the General Election in the UK, many will be going through a dark night of the soul as they come to terms with their losses. Now is not the time to react but to take a step back and observe without needing to judge or blame.

It is the personal and collective shadow and Dark Night of the Soul that we are living through now, and when we can truly stand in the eye of the storm through a Dark Night of the Soul we change. We emerge changed, and are not the person we were before.

Earth has been dark and negative over a very long time in Earth’s history. It has been used and abused. Wars of mass destruction and constant pollution have seen it changed.

Healing belongs to all of us and to rise above distress and confusion, anguish and despair, illness and disease, what is required is Presence to access our stored unconscious memories….

Where the Black Rose blooms

There is a dark beauty in a Dark Night of the Soul yet it is often mistaken for depression. A true dark night becomes a quest to find meaning in life when all appears lost in our lives.

It can come through illness, loss of someone we love, aging, work disappointments, or as we are seeing in the UK and around the world, an ongoing dissatisfaction with life as it is. Whatever form a dark night of the soul comes in, they are all rites of passage.

The emotional “Dark Night of the Soul” is our childhood. Until we learn to nurture and Love our inner child he/she will always control our adult lives. To gain deeper insight into our relationship dynamics, we have to process our childhood fears and heal the relationship with the opposite sex.

This was the journey I shared in The Importance of Healing Our Core Wounds to heal the relationship with my own father when my own inner child broke through.

That work was only just the beginning of the journey of living with a chronic illness. Although it was the most shocking and devastating experience of my life when my wounded inner child broke through, the subsequent healing of a Heart broke wide open brought with it many gifts that were hidden treasures brought forth from the dark, watery recesses of the unconscious.

Our inner child embodies our emotional self and relates to feelings rather than the self imposed conditions and compromises that have been placed onto our selves to function in a dysfunctional world. Our inner child is also the Gateway to our Higher Self and our greatest potential.

In the garden of Roses within the Temple of the Black Rose, Her dew sheds tears of blood for humanity to embrace our shadow and release all the pain and losses of life, including our unacknowledged and unexpressed grief and sorrow.

She is here, calling us to grieve

Her thorns are yielding our deepest wounds as we now move forward in Love and compassion. Her song is our healing balm to heal our shadow, our sad, lonely inner child, and the Dark Night of the Soul.

It is grief work that heals our wounds, not intellectual processing. No-one can do that for us, although some can show us the way. Most people carry grief energy within them whether they will admit to it or not.

Healing our inner child means bringing into awareness all the beliefs and attitudes held in our subconscious mind that cause our dysfunctional reactions as we keep reacting to the programming of our childhood.

The Black Rose has stepped forward in this time of need bringing forth the gift of Grace and divine assistance for transformation of our shadow and inner child, and to help us release the emotional bleeding that we carry around in our bodies, in our chakras, and in our cellular memories – and what we project onto others in the outside world. If we don’t see our own shadow then we are in denial.

Whether we choose to accept or remain in denial, we are all going through an alchemical process of some kind. To feel secure, we must honour our own truth and integrity by embracing our shadow and healing our inner child – for it is the two archetypes of our shadow and inner child that make us who we are.

If we are unable or unwilling to accept our shadow side, we just become ravenous vampires seeking outside validation and recognition to compensate for the self doubt and unworthiness that haunts and eats away at us.

There is a lot of New Age fluff about the shadow, inner child, and Dark Night of the Soul and it cannot be intellectualised. Healing the wounds of the past is sacred, holy work and a sacred process that has to be experienced.

Only we ourselves can find our inner treasure, no-one else can do that for us. We find the gift of who we are when we are ready to step out of our dramas and see the sacredness of it all. The wisdom gained from our emotional Heart wounds enables us to truly break free from our past and seize what we always thought we were seeking – our divine purpose in life.

If we are unconsciously at war with our shadow and allow our wounded inner child to dominate us, we project it outwards to individuals and groups without being aware that what we are doing is acting out the inferior side of our nature.

Whilst it appears a mammoth task to integrate our shadow and embody our healed inner child more consciously into our personality, there are profound rewards waiting not only for ourselves but for the world at large too.

Learning to Love our Inner Child

With so much releasing and letting go of relationships, friendships and people in our lives over the past few months, it is easy to feel a bit lost as we may desperately seek out “our tribe” to fill the void. But what if our tribe is not there for us and we feel lost, lonely or unloved?

Love is the key to healing and we have to give that Love to ourselves first. The approach to healing within the pages and blogs of this website has evolved through my own personal healing journey over the past seven years, and the realisation that I cannot heal or teach anyone – I can only share what my Soul and the Black Rose shares with me.

No-one can truly understand our journey unless they have walked it too. Some of the biggest patterns we have to let go of is feeling like a victim,  the need to be accepted, and believing that we are broken, need fixing or healing in some way. So…

Are we willing to stand in the unknown and uncertainty?

We must come to everything in our own time through our own awareness. It may be hard to believe or take on board for some how a deeply disturbing event in life can be the catalyst and a time for transformation – particularly if their main priority in life is health and wanting to “get rid” of dis-ease without looking for the meaning and the important gifts a dark night has to offer.

What I am about to share here is not about solving a dark night, but how we can be enriched by one. For me, a dark night is a stage in alchemy. I learnt that there is a big difference between healing and a cure, for although a cure may not yet have been attained and a possibility it never will, sometimes a dark night of the soul is more about what it contributes to others rather than self.

I like many who live with chronic illness on a daily basis, at the beginning of my healing journey I did not know what self care was because I had been wired that I was only worthy of Love and happiness if I was taking care of other people and getting their needs met. And I spent the next three years unraveling my beliefs and patterns that made we want to take care of other people’s needs rather than my own. My body had been trying to tell me something and I had not been listening…

I am not labeling RA as sickness or disease – it is not who I AM and does not make me less than. I see it as more of a trial that makes me more of a person. And this may sound shocking or incomprehensible to most people, because I value caring for my soul and living soulfully over health because it takes me above the petty grievances of life and I feel blessed. There are many that have good health, yet they still live in a toxic model of work and life.

And I live with a paradox. Each dark night is unique and through this pearl of great price maybe I have not been liberated physically yet. But I have emerged with character, Love and wisdom, the mysteries of life, death and rebirth – and the dark beauty and essence of a Black Rose that can only be seen and felt in the dark.

Many of our greatest saints and sages lived with illness yet it did not stop them from writing about their ecstatic connections with “God” or achieving great things. A real dark night and alters us for good – there is no going back to the way we were.

From personal experience there is no choice in a dark night but to surrender control through what is an unwilling withdrawal and be with the not knowing and uncertainty because a dark night is a profound initiation that nothing in life can prepare us for.

Living with chronic illness on a daily basis and not having the energy to get through the day brought up a lot of fears in the beginning for me, yet it has also been the biggest teacher in self Love and loving and healing my inner child to show me what surrender, acceptance, self Love and gratitude truly is.

We cannot truly Love the adult we are without honouring and owning the child we once were.

Standing in the eye of the unknown and uncertainty in the early days brought up the root fear of survival and not feeling safe – “how will I survive?” as I started to lose the things I loved and the stable things in my life like my health, job, business, clients, hobbies, partner at the time, and friends. I had to learn what friendship and partnership truly meant, not what my ego thought it was.

Living with auto-immune rheumatoid arthritis, I learned what it is really like to live with a chronic illness every day and the path it takes, and have had to learn how to adapt.

The physical side is challenging enough.

Mentally and emotionally it was devastating.

I had to learn to shift my relationship with the unknown and uncertainty, the confusion, fear and pain that dominated my life.

It got me to question as to whether it was karmic in nature and can it be reversed?

I had to change my mindset around medicines, the well meaning intentions of people, the modalities that made not one iota of difference, and the realisation that all illness and disease is a gift and a mystery here to serve my greatest and highest good.

I had to feel the pain of envy and longing of not being able to join in the fun and do things spontaneously that most people take for granted.

I had to feel the loneliness and isolation of not having a support network of friends around me.

I had to feel the betrayal of my body, in the belief that it had let me down at the height of my career.

I had to feel the rejection from “friends” who were not there to support me in my time of need.

I had to feel the annoyance and hurt I felt towards people who through their own ignorance and lack of understanding were more of a hindrance than helpful support.

So much I had to feel – as my wounded inner child revealed one gut wrenching and Heart breaking event and suppressed feeling and emotion at a time.

RA taught me to be vulnerable – and to feel.

It taught me to authentically see and hear others.

It also taught me the lessons of surrender, patience, accepting – and Divine timing.

And it taught me to learn to be at peace with life, be grateful for the “good moments within a day”, love what arises in any given moment as it is and not fight it. For it was all a journey of Initiation and awakening. My dark night of the soul and rheumatoid was:

A journey to heal my wounded inner child

One of the biggest gifts RA brought me was to deepen the relationship I had with myself. It revealed to me that my body has its own intelligence and inner healer, and that if I would just take the time to listen to what it had to say the truth would be revealed.

In the beginning, as I dived deeper into my body and listened to my frightened, neglected inner child, that love cracked my Heart wide open and all the suppressed, denied emotions, fears and core wounds were revealed.

I had to learn to listen, love, and be there for my inner child who had been so neglected, abused, unseen and unheard. I have now learned to slow down and listen to my body on a daily basis and listen to its wisdom to guide my daily actions.

I had to dive deep and look at all the patterns of perfectionism and co-dependency and low self worth that kept my patterns of over doing, over giving, over caring and people pleasing in place.

As shared in the importance of healing core wounds, I was not able to express anger, frustration or rage, and so all my life that meant I did not say anything when I was upset because I was afraid of hurting someone else’s feelings so I just suppressed and stuffed it – and it wreaked havoc in my body.

I call rheumatoid my friend, because it enabled to befriend and acknowledge my emotions and suppressed feelings and allow them to flow through me.

I had to learn to take care of myself and create healthy boundaries with people so over doing did not become a drain on my energy. It is too easy on a good day to start slipping back into old habits and over doing that created the health challenges in the first place.

I had to learn resilience, mourn and feel the grief for all the losses, and find the gratitude in what illness had not only taken from me, but most importantly the expansive gifts it brought forth for me in return.

In the beginning in a moment of total despair and isolation, I asked myself what would I do if I was the only one left on the planet?

The more I acknowledged what was real and true for me without hiding in denial it created the space for what healing was possible to come through.

Over time, in developing a deeper relationship with self, something happened.

I awoke from the unconscious need for someone outside of me to love me, validate me, accept me, give me recognition, or to say the things I wanted to hear. Although nice to be appreciated, it is no longer an unconscious necessity for my well-being because I had healed the wound of co-dependency and could now give all those things to my self (inner child) with no strings attached.

At the Heart of co-dependency is a fear of intimacy. Co-dependency and healing the inner child go together. And at the root of a fear of intimacy is a fear of abandonment, rejection and betrayal.

We have these unconscious fears because we experienced being emotionally abandoned, rejected and betrayed by our parents – who were also co-dependents that abandoned, rejected and betrayed themselves. As a result that caused us to feel unworthy or un-loveable which we carried into adult life. No blame here towards parents – they did not have a healthy relationship with themselves either!

Most humans don’t like uncertainty, or something being out of their control. The truth is, certainty is crumbling all around us and we need to learn how to be with it. When we have let go of all our 3D stuff all that is left is Love. I have let go of so much yet there is still more to let go of.

Whilst I have come to a place of acceptance (not the same as giving up), and despite all the work I have done on myself and lifestyle changes, RA is still here. And I can be at peace with that. Love does not always come wrapped up in pretty ribbons and rainbows. My life continues to unfold in perfect Love, perfect trust, just as it is.

The Dark Night of the Soul came knocking at my door in the form of illness that took me into a deep exploration of myself and the purpose of my life – supporting others through healing core wounds and a wounded Heart.

In healing my own core wounds and wounded Heart, it’s my passion to share what helped heal me with others. It also enables me to give my love and compassion to the world with no expectations of receiving anything in return – for experience has taught me that when we give freely it is always returned in the most unexpected of ways.

I share as just one expression of Love in the knowing that the continual in breath and out breath of giving what I have received, I am continually healing me and the world into wholeness one Heart at a time.

Wisdom the Inner Child has to share

As adults we have an inner child who has a lot of wisdom to share.

Kids are honest and they tend not to judge and say what they think as they have not yet been programmed to hide their feelings. Where do we hold back as adults? How can we approach relationships, friendships and life more honestly? Calling on our inner child can help us to begin to share our truth.

Our inner child will not come out to play no matter how much coaxing we give it if it is lost and lonely and hiding in fear or shame or neglect. In order for us to fully claim our wholeness and ascend, we must first descend.

The Path of embodying Unconditional Love

To become awakened beings, we must commit ourselves to removing everything that blocks our inner light and keeps us stranded in darkness and unawareness.

I have experienced what it is like to have no tribe and no-one to turn too in my times of greatest need.

That is why I have been guided to bring forth the sacred work of the Black Rose – to help support and inspire others, providing a safe place to explore who you are, heal core wounds, and share what I have learned along the way.

When we can embrace our shadows and heal our wounded inner child, what is contained within the stories of our suffering then becomes the seed for our own transcendence.

The Black Rose has been guiding me since 2014 to create an approach to healing and transformation that offers a powerful formula and blueprint for transforming our relationship with self and life itself. This work requires real commitment and dedication that requires a willingness to dig deep.

The Black Rose is sacred Alchemy to healing our inner child, our shadow and dark night of the soul –it is a journey of great initiation taking us into dimensions of conscious awareness, and into our greatest potential and divine power.

So if you are called to come closer, reach out via the contact page above. I would be delighted to hear from you.

In the meantime, if you have found any comfort, support or guidance in this article, or know of anyone who may benefit from it, please feel free to share the link with your network.

Please feel free also to share your stories and experience with your inner child below – it can help us all learn and grow into wholeness!

In Love, Grace and Service,

Linda