I want to continue our discussion from yesterday regarding being different people, wanting different things at different stages/ages in our lives.  Sometimes we talk about getting back to what we were “before” a certain thing.  Before that incident, before the kids, before the job, etc.  I don’t know if it’s some sort of engrained homing device we carry as humans or if it’s a sense of loss, a yearning for what we knew.  No matter how much we want it, we never really get back to that person.  We just learn to find the feeling of normalcy again.  We learn to be who we are.  As we love ourselves fiercely and completely as we are, we learn to get back to that acclimated state.  But it isn’t without grief.  Indeed, the person we were before whatever incident it may be, is gone to some degree.  There are of course pieces within us, but we can’t get back to who we were in the sense of the words.  It takes time to grieve the loss of the person we were and learn to love the person we are.  That person still exists and wants to be honored.  Sometimes we think we have moved on when we’ve really just substituted new things with the same behaviors. 

I can’t tell you how clearly I feel the fear of that little girl inside me as I try to put all of those fears to rest.  She is afraid of dying, being forgotten—and no one really wants to die, especially the parts of us that struggled to be recognized in the first place.  I understand her fear because that is still a real fear I have to this day.  I hear all of the amazing things she wanted, the things she wanted to be.  The potential to do literally anything.  She had 0% fear, she was bold, brave, confident in herself, she knew she held herself to a higher standard.  Then the weight of her fears crushing down on top of the failed support, and unnecessary judgements of those around her, it began to paralyze her.  She started questioning if that certainty was really so certain.  If those decisions were really the right ones.  She started making the safer choices and settling for the first thing she could get.  She lost sight of the magic and her ability to not only take on the world, but to create WITH the world.  She felt a spark but never found the fuel to ignite it, and there is real pain in something unfulfilled.

I still carry that behavior with me, looking for praise from my boss, or thinking about what my parents would think of a certain decision.  I still carry the fear that all I know I am meant to do isn’t meant to be seen through by me.  That the patterns I’m meant to break will continue to break me.  In many ways I am still paralyzed—but now I understand it is the little girl I used to be and I need to tell her it is safe to move into the totality of my being, to live the life I was always capable of.  See, I have to mourn her because I know she tried her best, she worked within the framing of the beliefs she was given.  And she did a really good job of it.  At the same time there was something more, that burning that needed to be sparked into an active flame.  So, now as I become someone somewhere between the two and reconcile the fears with the desire, someone new is emerging.  This someone is the amalgamation of all I though ti could be with all I knew, and though she is powerful, she is still learning to take her first steps.  That doesn’t mean she isn’t strong enough to get there, it just means she is still in the emerging phase.   

As I undergo this evolution, I am reminded that all evolution is a death, and in order to grow, we must undergo as many deaths and iterations as it takes to get where we need to be.  We die over and over again each day.  If we accept that with grace, the transition isn’t so jarring.  For some of us, we don’t have the choice and that awakening is like having the curtains thrown open with a spotlight in our faces.  In those circumstances, when we finally wake up to what we were meant to do, especially after a lifetime of being told we can’t, it can take a bit longer to steady ourselves and move forward.  In that way too, the deer learns to walk.  We can find our way by trusting our instincts and welcoming who we are instead of accepting a construct we were given.  Be grateful for that person because they only did what they knew.  Now that we know more, we can do more.  We can allow ourselves to be more, to share more, to open to new opportunities.  We can move beyond the death of what we were by embracing the birth of what we are.  Take the time to grieve but do not dwell there.  Become all we are and learn to walk on our own two feet again, and walk in the direction we know/feel is for us.  That is how we honor who we were and show our gratitude—by gracefully and gratefully taking the next step up in our lives.  What a beautiful way to create space for the new version of us.  What a beautiful way to move forward.