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I sit here, feeling uncertain and scared.
My chest pounds with a delicate blend of anticipation, restlessness, and confusion. It’s hard to sit still, but I crave stillness most of all.
Yes, I want to carve out a soaring space of peace, complete with wispy clouds and a resounding “Ommmm” to fill the entire room. I want to release the stress that’s tangled up like balls of yarn inside me.
But it’s not always so simple, is it?
It’s messy and awkward. ‘Cause I’m a human being, dammit — not a zen robot programmed to calm and serene.
So my bones resist at first. They freeze up with something strange, with the pure immovability of this moment. All I have to do. All I wish to be.
I exhale in fiery frustration —the feeling like I’ve lost myself a little today.
You know, when we get scattered and irritable and just…forget where we are. Or who we are. How much we matter. What our voice sounds like.
We get caught up in the swirling chaos of life.
Yep, my days have felt jam-packed with work and school — my eyelids are heavy, protesting a backlit campaign for sleep. For rest. For a moment to set it all down and just be.
Right now, life demands a lot from me. I’m not always good at keeping up and my to-do list seems staggering— taunting me with its sheer length. I swear, it laughs at me at 8 a.m. when I’m bleary-eyed and not sure how I’ll successfully make it through the day.
The truth is:
I don’t know how to believe in myself right now.
And yet, something inside me echoes with a sweet refrain that trickles like a steady rain: I do believe.
I just need to ground. To arrive here.
Okay. I can do that. I think; I hope.
And now…drumroll, please:
After a hearty (and I mean hearty) application of my favorite essential oils and a wildly deep breath and a moment of feeling my body, things begin to shift a little bit.
Oh yes, baby —now we’re talking. Now, I’m—more here.
I love how quickly things can change in our inner terrain. Landscapes can soften and transform at warp speed.
Now, I am in the deep forest of myself. It smells like ancient conifers and stars (yes, stars) —I taste them in my mouth. They taste like lilacs and lime and wine that is perfectly effervescent.
Pine needles stick to my feet. I smile beneath moonlight, cupped by the palms of something much larger than myself.
I feel small and big—at the same time.
I love that.
Something is happening. Something old peels away.
Another
Mask
Goes bye-bye.
Something sticky, old, and raw departs. Something that felt almost like me —but it wasn’t. Not quite. It was one of those things people told me I should be.
It was a bumper sticker, a caricature of what an empowered woman should look like.
Well, I know now - –she looks like me.
Like you.
Like us.
She looks messy, resilient, wise, strong, scared, brilliant, soft, quiet, courageous, weird.
She comes in a thousand flavors.
And she is freakin’ beautiful, with hair blowing across her face as she laughs, when she cries, when she’s uncertain and afraid.
She looks alive.
‘Cause there is no extra-special, super-sparkly recipe for empowerment.
Nope, there’s just the nakedness and wildness of who we are that glistens under our skin when we aren’t trying so hard. When we have no one to impress; when we have the kind of confidence that’s sourced from our hearts and sung out bravely by our souls.
So I swim here, in the deep currents of my Self.
And it is not selfish. It is not too much. It is the brass heart-balls of becoming.
It is the badass silence.
The slowed-down tempo of a melody that feels like water.
Like peace.
When I stop asking everyone else
Who to be/what to say/what to wear/how to be
And I go within
To
Me.
That’s the richness I want to cultivate. Full-moon me. Real me. Raw, unvarnished me.
Not a cheap facsimile. Not a charred representation of my old wounds. Not a torn sliver of the radiant depth that has lurked inside of me since the beginning of time. Not pretend perfection.
Screw perfection!
‘Cause I won’t always be completely full or exactly my best—for I am like the moon, waxing and waning all day. But that is part of living. Nothing is stagnant. I am not stagnant. I am like art - –dynamic, a bit flawed, and forever becoming.
But I want to be more in contact with what overflows, what is big and real, speaking from the depths of my throat, my heart .
Hiding? Nope, I’m not made for that.
I am made to be here, to be seen, to be wild, weird, tender, to feel it all —and be me.
Hell yes.
This is who I am.
I own it. I own it, a hundred times.
And then I own it some more.
I roar it out until my voice becomes a hoarse whisper, satisfied and sore with righteousness in this long-needed ownership.
It’s good medicine.
I am becoming more myself.
Every day.
It’s hard. I question myself. I question relationships that once seemed great, but now feel strange. I want to tug at their hand and say: do you really see me?
Because that’s what I want. So badly. And I don’t think they do.
Now that I am seeing myself more
I’m rising up from the vast oceanic depths of my being.
It’s exciting and freakin’ scary. Just like it should be.
And more and more, I want—I need—to share the real me. It’s not always loud or showy. It’s not anything in particular. It’s just me.
But it matters. It matters a lot.
And dear heart out there — you matter. You matter a lot.
You really aren’t what they say. Don’t believe them.
You are complicated and simple at the same time;
Textures and flavors, water and fire, petals and snarls, sweetness and spicy surprise
Swirling and braiding together in a breathtaking way.
Come back to the steady current inside you that knows.
It glows with wisdom.
It bubbles and burns with a sustaining ruby flame.
Go there.
Listen.
There, you will find joy.
You will find everything.
You will find integrity and a sensuous beauty that’s impossible to name.
You will find dripping pools of creativity and inspiration.
You will find something so much more meaningful than the empty receipts of other people’s opinions of you.
You will find your truth. Your voice.
And that matters. It matters a lot.
People might say we’re selfish, but we’re not.
For those of us with big hearts that beat wildly with seas of feeling everything, all day every day,
We need to find those quiet, sweet spaces to rest within ourselves. To replenish.
The world is loud and busy. People seem to need so much from us.
But we need things, too. We need deep, delicious breaths
Moments of inhaling while petting our cats and exhaling into mountaintops, alive with the swiftness of balmy, summer breezes.
A fantastic rendering of solitude - –writing, singing, painting, dancing. All of it.
We need to clear space to heal. To feel. To listen. To be.
And
More than anything
To remember
Who we are.
Because we glisten valiantly, even against the billboard backdrops of other people’s bullsh*t expectations and society’s warped ideas of what a woman should look like; how she should behave.
Screw that. And screw perfection, too.
This raw, delicious, nearly feral thing inside us - –it never dies.
It is always there
Home.
Home.
Home.
Listen to its steady, uproarious beat!
A melody that pours into your veins
Like a song that’s familiar, even though you haven’t heard it before.
But you know the melody from somewhere. Oh, it’s sourced from the deepest caves of your Self. It’s intoxicating and wild, yet you’ve never felt so clear.
Don’t get lost in the frantic stirrings of the world.
Dive into your own arms.
Be enveloped in seaweed and saltwater splashing down your chin.
Embrace your entire being with the delicate fingertip touches of a thousand fragrant roses.
Come home
To
Your
Self.
And
Stay.
~
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