Thinking Through

I spent so much time intellectualizing my way to healing. None of it was translating to my external reality. It was escapism into the safety of books, podcasts, and meditations. It was a comfort to escape the life I didn’t feel I had a choice in.

Then I started making bigger choices. I dropped myself at the crossroads that asked if I was ready to feel my way through all the tools I collected. It was time to integrate the wisdom I was carrying separate from the way that I moved, spoke, and thought.

It’s been humbling.
It invited me to accept that I have been on the periphery of my life for over three decades because standing in the center of it scared me. 

The last few years have felt like a silent initiation into a new way of being. There was a lot of rejection and reflection in the life I built around me. It was all built on the foundation of fear.

I kept reaching for something outside of myself, and my foundation would crumble. When fear is your foundation, peace is an illusion.

I chose a new path because I had only ever chosen the well-worn one that kept me perpetuating through the same circles and cycles I had always lived in. 

Turns out the path back to myself was as unknown as any journey I’d ever taken. Many truths have been stifled here, told to wait or go away. The pieces of me that weren’t compatible with my needs getting met, so I stuffed them away. 

Slowly, year after year, I started writing my story. My words resonated with people in the silent spaces that craved a voice, even a whisper, for those who felt like they were in it alone. 

It had to. I lived it on purpose, and I was determined to find out who it was meant for and share it with others. 

I’m generous with my words because I know how powerful they are despite the trend to abbreviate everything. You can keep your character count and your sound bites; I don’t subscribe to the bullshit confines of brevity. I am not worried about grabbing your attention because nothing holds our attention. After all, our attention is seeking something to hold us. 

We’ve forgotten how to hold each other because we’ve been living this life of busyness, and we started writing words where we need paragraphs. Our busyness keeps us from feeling.

So we stay in motion and say we’re healing wounds that only our presence can.
We’re on a perpetual wash, rinse, repeat cycle like a terrible ride we can’t get off.
The safety to be still is the only salve you need. Perhaps it envelops you in the inner knowing that nothing is wrong with you, which doubles as a permission slip to start loving who you are today, for all you’ve been through to get here.

Perhaps stillness is where your soul speaks, and it’s begging for you to hear how brilliant you are.