Upon Breaking Open

A woman who has gone through many drastic life changes recently told me, that the key to life comes at a very early age.  I was intrigued by this and had her explain her theory.  She said that in her eyes it makes sense that we survive childhood with a certain armor.  Each one of us is triggered at some point and must pull within to protect our hearts, our will, our inner light.  We learn to survive with that armor and at first it works for us.  The issue comes when we try to develop over time with that same armor and we tend to outgrow it.  At this point the armor isn't really working the same and we finally meet someone or have a situation happen and it gets shattered.  Everything we've used to protect our most intimate parts of our lives is non-functioning.  At this point we gather up the pieces and are forced to truly look at ourselves.  A lot of us experience this around age 27-30 and in astrology it is often referred to as a saturn return.  Ultimately though, if we don't take the moment to observe our broken exterior it reoccurs and eventually we must rebuild.  I thought this theory was incredible and in many ways shamanic.  We are all human and all experience shamanic voyages in one way or the other - this may not be a classic shamanic initiation but in many cases for each individual it is significant within their own world to be considered of the likes.