“Sometimes you have to fall apart to find pieces of yourself you didn’t know were there,” Soleoado.  Deciding to follow our own paths can be lonely at times.  Sometimes it feels like everything we know is being taken away from us.  Sometimes we simply have to let it fall away to let the light shine through.  The vulnerability of letting ourselves be seen in that state, where our honest goals and desires are shared with the world is unlike other forms of vulnerability.  It feels like the light is shined on every facet we’ve kept hidden—it feels naked and exposed.  But we can’t see those parts of us if we don’t take a light to them.  Sometimes the path we thought was solidly under our feet crumbles like sand and we have to rebuild.  In that rebuilding we are given the opportunity to create who we are and align that person with the facets we’ve previously hidden.

This is a natural part of growth.  The snake sheds its skin, the plant sometimes loses leaves, we lose our baby teeth, everything expands.  That is the nature of life and we no longer fit in the previously chosen/assigned definitions of who we are.  Things have to break down to grow.  I wrote a piece a while back about breaking down to break through.  It isn’t so much about ourselves shattering.  It’s about the ideas of who we are that we have to break.  In the same breath, there are facets of ourselves that need to be sharpened and honed because they are hidden inside.  Let it break.  I’ve made the mistake of treating my life like a series of endless spinning plates.  As if everything I take on needs to be maintained forever.  It’s exhausting and the body/mind knows when it’s time to let the plates fall.  I don’t want to fight that anymore. 

As scary as it is to let things go, to let them fall apart, there is a feeling of relief in dropping the things that were never ours to carry in the first place.  Emptying our cup of the negativity and filling it with the essence of who we are is the greatest act of self love.  Our cup doesn’t shatter, it just needed to empty to clear out what wasn’t meant for us.  We get to choose what liquid comes back in.  We get to choose what you bring out.  Falling apart allows things to fall together and gives a new perspective.  Maybe we needed to get closer to the real us and maybe that version couldn’t exist in the current circumstance.  Be grateful for the opportunity that comes from laying the puzzle out differently.