I’ve spent many years shrinking. This year, I promised myself I would expand. Starting with keeping my heart open. No matter how much it challenged me. I found a love buried deep within me that is unshakeable. A gift and a guide to hold me to my truth and desire to live life most authentically. This hasn’t come without requiring a devotion to confronting the ways I handle any single thing. Big or small - battles of the brain or matters of the heart.
I think we all too often look externally to validate what we feel inside. Sometimes as a plea, a bargain for attention, affection, or confirmation. Other times as a mirror to look within. But what I’m learning is that there’s no running from who we are. There’s no place to hide when we are pulled towards our calling - summoned to take the stage in our own life.
But how does one who has never known what main character energy become the star of their own show? How does one who wants to become - all that they are - find sustainability in taking on, shedding, letting go, and growth? I don’t think it comes easy for any of us. But I think we can choose to try - and find the compass that directs us towards our own true north, even as we journey into, through, and beyond connections with many souls.
Loving has let me know that in every moment there is something great to experience and take away. And, there is also something to fear. But, if we let ourselves be taken out of the present moment, the fear often wins.
But what do we do when we struggle with the pace of time? What do we do when the present moment is hard, challenged, or out of alignment with how we want to live, share, and experience our lives? With knowing that the possibilities of anything at all can take shape and transform our existence? When we are moving through mirky terrains heading towards luscious open plains? There’s a clinging to an outcome that sours what could be built when we mold our lips to shape sentences that are lies. When we minimize truths we hold in our heart to conform to half-lived lives.
I don’t think this is always conscious or intentional. Not from a place of desiring or intending to cause harm. But there’s this way that we turn a blind eye to what we don’t want to disrupt the comforts and predictability we have created to navigate day to day. And with our eyes closed, we find ourselves periodically opening them to discover we’re living someone else’s life.
When we surround ourselves with people, places, thoughts, and systems that believe vastly differently than the values, needs, and desires our soul speaks, we begin to contract and conform. We discover that we are not only finding ways to blend in to not cause friction, but we discover that we also begin to mold ourselves in ways that cause us to shrink without even thinking about it. Conforming becomes so normal that we don’t notice the contrast between our truth and the ways we settle to fit in.
Expanding requires a resilience for discomfort. A dedication to releasing of controlling for the sake of comfort. A persistence towards the vision one holds and a continual letting go of ideas, people, places, stories, past experiences, and invitations that are not connected to the truths one discovers from deep inside of them. But to discover what’s internal - we must create space to journey within. We must become seasoned and practiced and devoted to space with self and facing what we’ve labeled as shadow - unloveable - messy - wrong - hard.
I’ve found safety to explore the depths of my internal landscapes by creating rituals that give me permission to take up space in my day to day. Writing daily is one of those practices. Dumping the spiraling of my mind’s mapping out onto pages and into posts, notes, and stories to share with anyone who’s ready to read. They create timespaces for me to circle back to and reflect on more of my own feeling from many angles and in different periods of time.
I have learned to let myself sit with stillness for minutes and hours at a time. To de-stimulize the way I spend my time. I often do this early in the morning and before bed at night. Slow down to let the speed inside of me have room to dissipate. Move my body intentional and without force for outcome - just giving space to feel, breathe, create shapes, explore distance, and honor it’s ability to function as it is in that moment.
There’s no huge secret to becoming wholly oneself. It’s just a never-ending exploration with owning writing the script for the story you want your life to tell. It’s letting go of the drama that your trauma tells you your life was, is, and is destined to become. It’s believing in yourself over believing in the fears of what you don’t want your life to become. It’s trying. Failing. Loving. Hurting. Saying the hard, big, scary, and honest things. Doing what feels authentic. Discovering that’s not quite it. And then doing something else.
To expand from the inside out, we must find courage to go inward and pull to surface all the beautiful pieces - no matter their form - that have created every part of ourselves.
The next container of OPEN TO INTIMACY Mentorship begins October 4th and runs through October 25th. We’ll meet on Saturday mornings from 9-10:30AM PT online through Zoom. Leave a comment + I’ll message you the link to sign up + a code for 50% off enrollment if you sign up early.
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LET’S GET DEEP.
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