I have been a fraud.

It wasn’t until yesterday that I fully realized this fact about myself. I guess I am being a tad harsh on myself but let me explain what happened:

I watched a six minute video from someone I admire in the spiritual community. She was using her voice to explain why she allows her customers who visit her store to choose whether or not to wear a mask while shopping. I took in every word but it wasn’t really the words she spoke; although they were extremely important. What I took out of that six minutes was that I am still hiding.

Me. The woman whom some describe me as “brave”, “courageous” and “real” has still been hiding. The woman who encourages others to shine their light and come out of the spiritual closet and say what they believe in has been dimming her light and hiding in a spiritual closet of a different kind.

This all began last summer when the BLM movement began and I was yelled at by another healer for not using my platform to speak up about it. At the time, I was terrified of doing so, not because of what others thought or that it would do harm, but because I didn’t think my voice mattered all that much in this situation. I really didn’t. My inner narrator told a story that so many others were speaking up and marching, that I didn’t need to do anything. There were plenty of others sharing and getting the word out. So it was safe for me to be silent. Dangerous times.

I was hiding. One thing I remembered was that I was living in fear even back then.

Then with the pandemic, I began to voice my concerns over the mask wearing mandates.  June 2020,  we got word that masks would now be mandatory. I cried for hours. I stated that I would “not be one of them and no one was going to tell me what to do.”  I yelled and screamed about how unfair this actually was; how my body was shaking at the prospect of not being able to breathe, have my rights as a human being taken away and so many more feelings and emotions to those in my immediate circle. So, I began posting on social media and was met with backlash; even from a family member. It was a lot of energy trying to manage the harsh comments under each post. I got tired. I got lazy and stopped posting anything pandemic related and instead chose to post spiritual memes that made people laugh, because that is what I am “good at.” I am also known for being the funny one; so that is who I became because it was “easier.”

Still behind the scenes, I would complain and I strongly disagreed with the mask wearing. I cried when my kids put one on their beautiful faces. I cried when I walked past the school and saw small children running around a yard with masks on their faces outdoors, sitting on a bench silenced. It was eerily quiet on the kindergarten yard. Now I walk outside and see hundreds of people walking around with a mask on their face, palpable fear emanating from their bodies. I am too afraid to walk into a store and yell, “I am exempt!” for fear of getting in trouble or yelled at. But it’s overwhelming inside of how I want to.

You see,I am not afraid of getting sick. I am afraid of getting in trouble.

How can I be so afraid of something that isn’t even tangible, really? I am a grown woman of 46 years with a following on social media, drive my own car I pay for myself, have built a career as a spiritual entrepreneur, yet admits I am too afraid to stand up for something that really matters.

I ask myself this question only now, if I am to be perfectly honest.  I have only been picking and choosing what I stand up for. I hide my strong beliefs in a Telegram group because I am living in fear due to a long buried childhood wound of getting in “trouble”. I see Freedom marches happening in cities all over the province, and I wish I was in attendance.  I am really good at psychically predicting these events ;yet too afraid to participate in them.

Today, I decide that this ends now. I am tired of choosing the weaker path. The complacent one. The hidden one. I am not fully utilizing my voice for things that matter.  We must stop being afraid of the outcomes when it comes to things that really matter.

IF YOU ARE GOING TO SPEAK UP, YOU MIGHT AS WELL SPEAK LOUDLY.”

Life is too short to silence your voice. It just took me a little longer to take off the mask.