I used to feel that I was indelibly stamped with sadness and grief.
I didn't even know where it had sprung from.
All I knew was a deep pain and the shame that accompanied it.

This is what I hear from my clients very often, and as I reflect on my twenty years as a therapist, it's clear that my healing was  linked  directly to the healing of my clients.

When I started the long journey of healing - which is never finished- and realised what my story offered me, I opened to its richness and understood this counterintuitive notion that my woundedness was my giftedness.

The metaphor of the lotus rising through mud helps us understand our situation, and to seek the cool water, which is the right condition for flourishing.