This is what’s left of a bar of a sizeable bar of chocolate. I devoured it like a primal Neanderthal, honestly, it didn’t stand a chance. I didn’t savour the bites or notice much about the experience at all because it wasn’t about eating, it was about self-soothing.

About the time when my tummy started to ache, I stopped and thought, “what in the shit am I actually doing here? What’s really going on, Mar?”

I felt sadness. Pain. Heavy emotion that felt scary and dark. When we’re in fear, we often escape or numb in reactivity.

Releasing any need to judge or criticise my chocolatey scavenging, I asked the sadness what it needed: love, it told me, attention, acceptance, release. So I stayed with it. I sat and meditated, and as I did so, tears flowed; energy shifted, the weight of heavy emotion lifted. I felt the sadness, but didn’t get consumed by it. I didn’t force or judge, in fact I didn’t do antything at all. I just ‘was’.

And it released.

Any time we’re self-destructing, numbing, escaping – we’re in pain. When we eat, drink, drug, shop, shout or sleep our way through it, we’re just thinly bandaging an open wound. It will continue to weep. It needs to be tended to, with kindness, love, non-judgement and acceptance. Only then can real healing take place.