It’s so easy to become distracted, to be swept away with things, to get lost in the moment.

Bringing the focus back in takes discipline, takes recognizing energy leaks and choosing to pull in the reigns.

But honestly, there’s so much freedom and imagination and ecstasy in losing yourself sometimes, in creating the dream inside your head—a dream that starts in your mind’s eye, in your belly, in the warmth in the cave of your being. And then comes the realization that if you want it badly enough and with pure enough intentions, you can have it…you can have anything. It’s all about the intention and vibration we put out—the clearer and more positive we are, the more amazing the outcome will be.

I’ve started to believe in miracles, big and small.

I’ve started to believe that I can feel free again, feel full of hope and expansion again. I can reclaim my life and fill it with ever-expanding adventure, love, vitality, joy, fulfillment, creativity, sunshine, new, vivacious beginnings and graceful endings. I feel a sense of lightness about my future rather than restriction. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’m holding onto these exciting new feels of growth and love and abundance and miracles in my belly, because I know I deserve all these things.

Relinquishing control and letting down the walls, the carefully erected structures once built out of love and protection is the most liberating process the soul can undergo. My body has been constricting even to mimic the emotional barriers and restraints and safeguards I’ve created; my body has been following suit and has been making itself a rigid fortress, ready for battle at my signal.

Someone once told me it was killing me, that my body was becoming a prison, closing in on itself.

I was 25 when I heard that, and at 33 I’m still prying open these resilient bars. There is more give now, but not much. It just makes me more aware of the work that lies ahead, of the constant compassion and gentle work that I must show and give myself in order for this physical healing to happen.

I guess I can look at it as a testament to how much my spirit really cares for me and the lengths its willing to go to make sure I’m protected and safe. When you think about the miracles the mind and heart and body are capable of, you don’t always think about the lengths that you’ll go to, on the subconscious level, to protect yourself from not only what may happen, but what has already been done.

The emotions and truths we harbor in our hearts always seem to be so clear to everyone but ourselves.

People pick up on the subtle energies, the gestures, the silent words spoken through our eyes—our souls trying desperately to communicate with another soul, trying to convey what our lips simply aren’t ready to. When you imagine all of those traumas and all that pain residing silently within the constructs of our physical bodies, is it any wonder we’re riddled with stress, disease, maladies that have no cure, not even a name? Energy manifests, festers, and without a portal of release, a clear channel of recognition, these energies continue to grow and take over, lining the caverns and passageways of our insides with a suffocating layer of emotional decay. They clog our arteries, block our energies—toxic, repressed emotions are the true causes of all that ails us.

But when we begin to listen, to heed the signals and signs and begin to hear the soft melody of home that’s been struggling to work through all of the toxic build-up, we can begin to clean house. And this is no spring cleaning—this is a lifetime cleaning. This is a process we engage in each and every day, working to undo the damage that half a lifetime has wrought. This is truly our life’s work—to heal ourselves from the inside out. To come home to our innate wisdom, allowing the universe inside us to work its natural magic and reclaim its original power.

The most basic truth is this—we are all our own most powerful healers.

We alone have the power to heal or to hurt. We can choose to succumb to physical and emotional toxins, or we can choose to make the slow and steady trek back to our source. Even though this sounds like an arduous, unforgiving process, once in the thick of it, you’ll come to realize it’s the easiest journey you’ll ever make. Like coming home after years of absence—the initial thought horrifying, but once you arrive on that doorstep and see that weathered welcome mat, you realize this was the simplest, most worth-while trip you’ve ever made.

Coming home doesn’t mean giving in and returning to harsh or even unhealthy situations, as some of us have viewed home to be. Coming home means returning to yourself, your core, your true essence. Going inward and knocking on your soul’s door is the most gratifying action, because there will always be a smile and open arms waiting to greet you on the other side, no matter what. Because that’s you waiting there, you who have been waiting an eternity to welcome yourself back to yourself.

Not all who wander are lost, and eventually, all of us make our way home.

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Ed: Kate Bartolotta