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I’ve been spending a lot of time next to rivers, creeks, and streams listening as the water speaks to me.

Sometimes, the mythical faces of the rocks under the surface come up for air and sing songs to me, speak of forgotten things, or show me that part of me that must be surrendered back into the flow of life.

Transitions require a lot of untethering.

I’m becoming more and more convinced that the more untethered I am willing to become from what has been safe, true, and comfortable, the more I open myself into a surrender that feels like it will obliterate me, while being held by grace sending me miracle after miracle.

There’s a certain kind of safety from healing complex trauma that creates a strong foundation for living life openly, surrendered, and in a different way.

And, there’s a point where that safety becomes another skin that needs to be shed for a truer, more fulfilling, more flourishing life to emerge via learning to trust life again.

Healing complex trauma is a slow, steady journey of learning to live life more openly, surrendered, and trusting that it’s safe to flourish, to trust the good, and to open to the wisdom inside the desires we’ve kept hidden from ourselves for a long time.

Becoming untethered isn’t just randomly, uncontrollably flying in the wind, but taking refuge in the great mystery that carries us all in our lives.

That flow of life is constantly holding us, carrying us, sending us messages, reflecting us back to ourselves, and offering us the wisdom and clues.

In a life where impermanence is the only thing that is certain, I’ve discovered how powerful it is to take refuge in that only thing that is certain besides change—that’s love, spirit, and the support of being held in the arms of the divine mother herself.

That obliteration inside our grief and our longing, it’s real because part of grief, part of longing is a death of the old self, the old patterning, the old structures of safety that supported life at one point and now hold us back from the next season, the next chapter, to opening to the miraculous possibility of a beautiful unknown we’ve been shaping with every prayer, breath, vision, hope, and breaking of past patterns.

This is the magic of the in-between, of the untethering that is death, that heartbreaking open, that longing that emerges shedding light on the depths of soul desires you might not have let yourself feel before. It’s a place of deep surrender, the kind of surrender that truly untethers us in the grief of deeply letting go of where we were, what we’ve been holding on to, and even all the longing, while trusting it.

It’s liberating.

And, challenging.

Because traditionally, in the in-between, when we are least tethered to our comfort zones, we see our shadows more fiercely, our addictions and codependent habits, the ways we escape feeling what’s there to feel—listening to the deeper current of life and love pulling us into a flourishing we haven’t yet known.

Our culture is quite illiterate in the medial, in-between nature of what it is to be human.

We normalize addiction as a general way of coping with our aloneness, our difficult feelings, and even our joy. So many films and shows depict people having a bad day and being offered a drink, an unconscious night out, getting high, and so on.

We seek to numb out when what we long for is to feel truly alive and connected, but that connectedness comes through feeling our hearts breaking open to life, not numbing and dumbing ourselves down with superficial connection or binge watching things that feed soul loss, not our wholeness.

This is where we must tend to our trauma, to the bridge of the in-between, to the places we fear we aren’t equipped to navigate because we were hurt or deprived in our most vulnerable states. Healing our trauma heals our relationship with the greater flow of love and life that carries us through the in-between.

There’s a certainty in the river of life that flows on this great earth and through every single one of us.

Stability isn’t necessarily solid, but how do we find our footing when there’s nothing to stand on?

When our legs are wobbly and we are scared, there’s a footing there, a refuge there, a certainty there we must remember how to feel via the longing, prayers, and breaking open of our hearts back into the mystery of who we really are.

I found a piece of paper in my suitcase I don’t remember writing, but it feels so true. Every adventure is a path leading further toward truth, love, and Self.

Such is the land of the untethered in-between.

May we learn to find the footing in the death before we know what is to come.

More love.

Not less.

~