The bird with the broken wing

This is not a story about a seagull, but about how a bird with a broken wing taught me that as I have embraced my own healing journey, that I cannot ignore the gift of my journey to help others in theirs.

I know I have been deeply held throughout my journey and never given more than I could handle to uncover the trauma, programming and social conditioning that I held deep within my nervous system. Birds were a good indicator of how I was doing, when in alignment they landed peacefully on my car as I parked or came to meet me and walked alongside me, circling, dive bombing and screeching at me when I was out of alignment. I have come to appreciate them as deeply spiritual creatures with messages from the universe.

When I pulled up at a local gas station one morning, I noticed a seagull dodging the traffic on the forecourt with one wing hanging on the ground. Most people were oblivious to its plight but it really caught my attention. I drove off hoping that someone else would do something to help it but about 200m up the road my conscience, my body reacted to leaving it and I knew I had to turn around and help it. I texted a friend who I knew would know what to do and found out there was a bird hospital 10 minutes away that took in injured wild birds. So I turned around and went back to help it. When I got there a woman had also noticed it and was getting a cardboard box ready to take it to the bird hospital. Between us we caught it, got it into the box and I took it to the hospital. When I got to the hospital, I told the receptionist what I had in the box, she asked was it the one in South New Brighton people were posting about on Facebook, I said no I found this one in Redcliffs. She thanked me and said they would take it from there.

As I drove away the tears started to roll down my cheeks, why was I crying? I helped a seagull, it wasn’t as if I had just saved someone’s life. As I sat with emotion after emotion coming up and feeling into them I realised it wasn’t the seagull that had affected me but what the seagull represented. Something big had shifted in me, the old John would maybe never have even noticed the injured bird and have continued driving without a thought or left it for someone else to sort out but not anymore. I could now see how everything in this universe is connected, how energy connects everything and to ignore the plight of one living creature was to ignore the plight of everyone with a broken wing.

I had been procrastinating around formally launching my coaching business and I believe the bird was there to show me that I have a duty to help others in their path and its no longer possible to drive away. To use my lived experience to help others clear the trauma that has kept them stuck. It was also something that the woman said to me when we got the bird into the box “I’m so glad that there are people in the world like you” that made me realise that my journey really has been a gift.

The Bird With The Broken Wing for me is a synonym for so many people out there struggling in their lives. I could have posted stuff on Facebook, drove straight out of the forecourt and hoped that someone else would help, but I didn’t, I turned and went back. I took action, I embraced the love, the compassion and the deep sense of duty now within my heart that my healing journey has gifted me, I embraced the connectedness I now feel to help and I needed a seagull to show me that.

I now feel a deep sense of purpose, of duty, of servitude to help show others the way, I have vision of a global platform where those who have embraced their healing journey help those still struggling, to raise the collective consciousness of the planet and help us live in greater harmony with each other, with nature and integrate our spiritual essence with our emotional and physical bodies.

As I write this my vision of this platform is nothing more than shell website and an intention, I’m not sure how it will come about but this won’t stop me taking action now. So I am formally launching my 1:1 coaching service as my vision takes shape.

So many of us walk around with broken wings, dodging the traffic and living in fear. I believe we can collectively heal if we work together, we can learn to open our wings, to open our hearts to love and soar.

Much Aroha

John