*Please note that this episode contains descriptions of suicidal ideation.

Tam had a series of dark nights, the “big one” being a spiritual emergency and its aftershocks that started when she was in her late twenties. Beset with social issues, including homelessness, her “grip on consensus reality” began to falter. Soon, a “curtain came down” in her conscious mind and she found herself in a horrifying hellscape, facing her deepest fears. Having been told she was evil from a young age, the child part of her was “still there and still terrified.” Trying to navigate her way through a psychosis diagnosis, doctors, and medication, she eventually met a psychiatrist who saw her as a human being and turned her life around.

Amongst many other things, Tam and I talk about the multitudes within; the nature of the shadow and the stuff that gets “pushed beneath the surface”; and having incredible insights into “the secrets of the universe.” We touch on the moment in which “any possibility of suicide was gone”; rediscovering our indigeneity and becoming one with the land; and “the lid flying off the pressure cooker.” We discuss the nature of spiritual emergency and its preciousness and meaning; flipping between realities and dimensions, and the Kahlil Gibran quote that carried her through.

Tam Martin Fowles is a London-based nana, wife, mum, writer, international facilitator, trainer, lecturer and consultant. A psychosis diagnosis at age 29, which she later came to understand as a spiritual emergency, has informed her life and work, engendering a fascination with the phenomenology of consciousness, and commitment to challenging the paradigm surrounding mental health distress. Tam is founding director of Hope in the Heart CIC and a co-founder of the MadPsychedelics Collaboratory.

Fiona Robertson is the author of The Dark Night of the Soul: A Journey from Absence to Presence, and Eve Was a Realist: Poems for the Untamed Heart. She works one to one with people who are going through a dark night or spiritual emergency, accompanying them in this challenging terrain as they rediscover and deepen into their real selves. She also offers a monthly dark night gathering group, and occasional workshops for therapists and counsellors.

Connect with Fiona

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Tam quotes this line from Kahlil Gibran’s poem, On Pain. “Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.”

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Music by James Waring / Design by Adam McKillop / Artwork by Stefan Armoneit