Niamh Ennis: ‘The deep grief and loss I’d experienced had closed me off from actually allowing love in’

I wrote an article recently, on why I had so willingly jumped on board the cacao-drinking train, mostly due to its renowned “heart-opening” qualities. I knew it’d raise some eyebrows but what I didn’t realise when I referenced my own need to let love in, was just how much it would resonate with so many people. It clearly struck a chord. 

How many of us who have experienced abandonment at some point in our lives believe it will happen again? How many of us have felt bullied, targeted, different, isolated and just wanted to feel the same as everyone else? How many of us have had someone walk out on our lives and not look back and we vow to never let anyone do that to us again? How many of us know the pain of grief and loss and find ourselves worrying that it’ll happen to more people that we love?

I wondered, how, when something life-changing, traumatic or difficult happens to us, that we, quite cleverly, organise things to avoid a recurrence. We carefully put structures in place, often unconsciously that we believe will keep us safe from any future pain or hurt. 

And in truth, it works. For a while at least. 

Deconstruction

To get there a lot of healing needed to happen. It required a significant amount of effort on my part and I won’t pretend it was easy. Not everything I tried worked but the thing is I did try everything. 

I took a step back from all that was familiar in my life. Every day I journaled. I did a lot of breathwork, visualisations, affirmations and Reiki. For the first time in my life, I found incredible comfort in nature amongst the trees. I parked my cynical self and opened my stubborn mind to new ways of thinking and new ways of being. I made a very conscious choice to let whatever change needed to happen, happen. 

Slowly the walls started to come down. And it was slow because every so often I’d panic about being so vulnerable, worry about how it would look and the walls would go back up again. 

I learned how to forgive myself even more than I was able to forgive others.

I was patient with myself and I gave myself as much time as I needed. I began to observe, that the less guarded I became, the more love started to flow naturally into my life. 

When I reconnected with the heart inside me, that same heart that has never once stopped beating for me, everything became possible. 

I learned to embrace the people who let me feel so deeply and became so much more aware of all of the reasons I have to feel so grateful for having them and allowing them in my life. I learned how to love myself and in so doing I allowed others to love me too.