There is a form of violence that we commit against ourselves when we make the quest for personal growth a mission to ‘heal’ from our own perceived inherent flaws, which is essentially our own humanness.  A mission to annihilate any parts of who we are that are hiding in the shadows, and shape-shift into a version of ourselves that finally feels deserving of love.  The tools we use to self-nurture can become weapons when we are wielding them from a place of shame and unworthiness to beat our shadows into submission.

Sometimes the greatest service we can do for ourselves – for the world – is to completely fall apart, fall down to your knees, wail, and let the tears stream down your face.  Forget about trying to love and light your way out of it.  Let the grief or fear or sadness or trauma or anxiety take up some space.  You are simply letting your humanness, your wholeness, take up some space, because it is all there for a reason.  Your deepest wound is the gateway to your greatest gift.  Stand at its feet with your heart splayed out and and offer it your impassioned love and gratitude. Shine light into its shadowy depths and let it be witnessed, let it breathe.  Give it your attention and be a student of its precious lessons – it is an old sage with answers to your most burning questions.  Ask it what it is here to teach you, and ask it what it needs to be loved. Bring it flowers and prayers and songs, sing to the cadence of your heartbeat, sing the songs of your soul bones until they flesh out with new life.

We can learn so much by looking to the cycles of death and birth – one does not exist without the other, and they both come from the same place inside of us.  Taking time to sit in the darkness lets us see what is aching and yearning to be loved, what needs tending, what desires are longing to be expressed, what needs to be grieved and forgiven.  It shows us the pathway to freedom.  It lets us take time to be a doula of death, allowing a graceful passing of what needs to die, so we can then midwife the new life born from it.

This journey is a vigorous one, and if you need to, just rest.  Refill your cup.  Ask for support and know that needing it does not mean you’ve failed.  Treat yourself with a fierce gentleness. There is something to be said for taking a big leap, but there is also something to be said for taking your time.  Don’t rush to throw up your sails in the winds of change if you are standing in a sinking ship.  You cannot simply will your flowers to grow, and they may take more than one season to bloom.  Take time to dig your hands into the dirt, work the earth, water the seeds with your sweat and tears.  Be the sun, so when those leaves unfurl they will photosynthesize your own divine light to feed you.

Let yourself take up some space.  Let all of it take up some space.  Take back the power that you have given away to old stories of unworthiness, to social programming, to the myth of separation, to those who wish to keep you boxed into a shell of who you truly are.  Take. Up. Space.  Let yourself feel all of it, let it ravage you, right down to your core, and live your truth born from that soul place.  Rather than a final destination to grasp for, let healing be an ever-unfolding, fully felt journey.