The Honest Truth

For a while this year I didn’t even think about this blog.

Weeks for sure. Maybe even a month passed without it crossing my mind.

I don’t think that has ever happened before. I have been busy, for sure. But also, I have been avoiding it.

Earlier this spring when I did think about this blog, and contemplate posting, I just didn’t have the motivation to do it.

I told myself: it’s sad, and, its ok.

Life changes. We move on from things that were once necessities - our lifeblood.

I told myself that my reminding myself about this blog was simply nostalgic; that I wanted to feel the magic that this practice had once brought me, again. This is true on some level. A part of me wants to teleport back to the time when I believed unreservedly in sharing my journey, as a means of transforming myself, and the world.

The truth is I’m not in the same place I was 12 years ago. Nor is the world.

A lot of heartbreak has transpired in the intervening years. And in my personal world, gratefully, an equal measure of love, and joy.

I would not trade the maturity of who I am now, for the naivete of who I was then. Yet, there is an ache I have been increasingly feeling in my heart - a longing - for something akin to the blind faith and belief in impossible dreams that I possessed in 2013.

This is life, right? We all go through it - losing the naivete of youth.

I am nearing 40.

This milestone is a year away, and yet, I feel it looming.

Have I become the woman I said I would? Have I achieved the vision I saw so clearly for my life, during that time in my late twenties when I was so deeply tuned in to the voice of my soul?

The answer is, in many ways yes, but not wholly. Some dreams I have clearly achieved and become. Some I have let go peacefully, and some I have continued to drag behind me like a weight, that reminds me I am not yet strong enough to lift it.

Am I still following my soul’s path? Yes. I feel aligned and in integrity.

Yet, I am not her - the woman I envisioned I would be. The woman I knew (I know) I can be.

How do I become her, fully? The question reverberates in the ache in my heart whenever I turn towards it.

It is an ache to be seen, to be witnessed in the wholeness of who I am, and to be appreciated and celebrated for all that I bring. It is an ache to be free of the self and society imposed limits of safety and decorum.

I feel guilty for longing for something more raw and unvarnished when so many of my visions for my life have already come true, and so many people do not have what I have.

Yet the longing is there. I can numb it temporarily, but I can’t rid myself of it. The desire to share my soul story, is soul-level true.

That must mean it is possible, right - to share my soul story and not have it take out the rest of my life?

I have believed that before: if you long for something - truly long for it in the deepest part of your being - it is not only possible, but meant for you. You only need to believe in it and take action towards it, and it will happen.

I still believe that to some degree, despite cynicism has in recent years taken up residence as the great protector of my heart, and despite I do not know how to overcome it.

In the past few years I have only been writing snippets of my journey, from a safe distance. That is ok. That is exactly where I needed to be. But my soul is increasingly prodding me and whispering - you don’t need all of that padding anymore.

You are strong enough to bear the consequences of being seen. In fact, you are stronger for it. You are someone who needs to share her creative voice to stay mentally well and balanced. You are someone who needs to write her journey in order to move through it.

I often wish that is not how my soul evolution works.

I don’t want to have to share my journey to alchemize it. I don’t want to have to risk putting my creative work in your hands. It’s too vulnerable. There are too many consequences. Too many judgments. Too many risks.

I wish that I could overcome the ache with other fulfilling aspects of my life. I have tried. But despite the love and the joy and the fulfillment I have achieved in so many areas of my life, the ache is still there softly clawing at me from the inside unwilling to be silenced completely.

This is the truest thing I have realized in a while: that resisting the ache - trying to overcome it - is what has kept me spinning my wheels.

Holding in my soul story is what is holding me back.

xo,

D