“You aren’t lost, you’re just in an uncomfortable stage of your life where your old self is gone but your new self isn’t fully born yet.  You’re in the midst of transformation,” Marcos Alvarado via The Soul Leaf.  We are emerging from a sleep that kept our powers at bay for years and it feels entirely different from what we’ve been accustomed to.  It’s a disorienting feeling because even in the chaos and the old habits, we knew what to do and this leaves us questioning.  But this is transformation.  It may be cliché but it’s true to say that if we opened a butterfly’s cocoon mid transformation we wouldn’t recognize it because it looks nothing like its old self and it isn’t in its new form yet.  It’s tempting at the beginning of a new year to feel like everything has to be shiny and new but it doesn’t work like that.  Transformation isn’t as easy as flipping a switch where we wake up the next day and are entirely new.  It’s a gradual process and it requires nurturing and adjustment and, yes, it can be quite uncomfortable as things break down and lose their familiar shape.  We may even lose our footing.  Our job in those moments is to keep true to course and keep aiming toward our goal.    

Transformation looks different for everyone and it often doesn’t go as we expect because there’s a whole new set of rules to operate under.  And that’s the thing: we can’t have expectations of transformation.  We have to go with it, answer the call of what we feel, trusting that what comes on the other side is for us.  Transformation is also uncomfortable because it’s a stage where nothing fits.  We feel like we no longer have those resources around us to offer support.  We learn to rely on ourselves in new ways.  In spite of all that, transformation is beautiful and necessary.  We can’t welcome the new if we’re stuck in the old.  New doesn’t arise from repeating actions so we have to learn again.  The good news is once we establish firmer footing, we step closer to feeling secure in our own skin.  We learn what that new skin looks like.  There is no feeling like that click and sense of peace that comes from total acceptance of self.  The goal is to transform into the most authentic version of ourselves and to share our light as far as we can.  We can never get lost when we are guided by that light.  So trust the process and keep going.