ALUNA TEMPLE MAGAZINE EDITION No4 'BRIDGES' | Page 32

confidence and a secure belief in the work I offered, I suddenly experienced an extreme criticism from my colleague. I was devastated and found it very hard to come to terms with. The criticism threatened every part of my career, my confidence, my abilities as a teacher and my very reason to be part of a successful and wonderful opportunity in my life. I wanted to leave, to go it alone and never look back. I struggled with this decision for well over another year, stepping away momentarily and doing my own thing. Yet a bigger part of me knew that if I did not see this through and fulfil my own promise to myself, then years of hard work and the possibility of empowering myself along this path would likely have to be totally relived in another way, until I could build up these possibilities again. I absolutely had to face up to this challenge, feel everything that I experienced in my heart and express what was needed to my colleague, making a very firm decision to keep going until the conflict inside myself began to ease. I had left home at 16, a young pregnant mother, with a blind boyfriend and no home of our own to live in. It was tough! I had left my family home for the first time through very dramatic circumstances. I realised that this pattern was reliving itself over and over again. When I left a relationship, there was drama. When I gave up on something it was through a drama or crisis, caused either by myself or a partner that made me turn away. Whatever the ending, it always happened because of a big challenge! I found it hard to enter into anything, to trust anything else because I simply kept imagining the worst scenario endings. But here again was my 'Oracle of Repetition'. Another opportunity presenting itself to me for renewal. A scenario that was going to change me and empower me this time around.