Shining serves everyone

I’ve sat with all these feelings and thoughts in my mind and my body like a jumble of half-finished sentences and thoughts that trail off with no ending for months now. I’ve felt the pull of the cord to start collating them into some form of coherency in this format but collecting the fire that lays behind them, and the deep feelings made of weighty stone, has felt like a momentous thing to comprehend even starting.

I sit by candlelight in my study. There’s a sense of fire in my belly and an urgency in my typing as I pound the keyboard. I needed to find more fire, less water, to be able to make this leap, both here on the page and in myself. So here I am. I am ready.

I’ve been off work for a month now, with no end in sight. I’ve been on a radical journey of self-love. I don’t want to preach, but rather, to speak from my truth and in my wisdom. I want to talk about the cult of busy, the value of deep shadow work and my renewed respect for using the word NO. You see I’ve been crumbling for months. My physical health has been deteriorating, along with my mental health. When you start to become unwell like this, it kind of creeps up on you and you look around one day and realise that you are not okay. This took me some time, some stepping back to be able to see what was going on.

So, I did what I’ve never done before, in such a momentous way, and I started saying no to the things that were depleting my energy. This went moving away from people pleasing and ensuring that everyone else was okay and comfortable, to feeling into what I needed and setting the boundaries clear and making no apologies and continuing to do this even when it felt uncomfortable. I let myself fall, I let myself STOP, I let myself breathe!

This is a radical space for me as there is no minute plan mapped out! Just a sense of what I need NOW. This has meant that I’ve had to move away from fear, the what ifs of the future, and the worrying about security, to fear’s opposite. To love. I’ve had to trust that as long as I am in alignment with myself, honouring my truth that I am on the right path.

It’s a cliché, but I felt that I had to break-down to have a break through. I don’t feel depleted in my spirit, but rather lit up with greater clarity that my no’s will bring in the yes’ that will enable me to live a more vital and joyful life. I sometimes wish that I was a conformist, who just wanted to keep the peace. I do think that even the conformists have their own struggles, but I do know that being a believer in my ideals has meant not compromising and making tough decisions not to settle in so many areas of my life, even though I know some of my choices seem insane at the time. In all of it, is the thread of the question of ‘what do I really value?’, ‘how do I want BE with others?’ that has kept me on this path. Albeit, it has not been an easy path!

I also see much more clearly now how we have made our busyness into a prized pig. Who says we need to be busy, exhausted, overachieving, everything’s to win the prize at life? I know that it is in my quieter times, in my reflecting and my going in that I do my shadow work. By shadow work, I mean really looking at the shit that holds me back, sitting with this, feeling it, embodying it and letting it go so that I can I can get on with being the biggest most loving human being that I can be.

I always think about life as yin and yang and, more deeply, if we look at the wisdom of the seasons, we learn the lesson that everything has a time, and that the change and transition in this cycle is a necessary and adaptive act of nature. Humans are the same. And as I slow down, there is a small buzz of anticipation that I am making space to create more of the life that I want. There are flickers of this as I dream a new way of doing life, particularly my working life, and know that this down time is a necessary space through which to bring forth something new. It’s when we say a fierce ‘no’, to what we don’t want and get clear, that we can have a clear ‘yes’ as to what we want to call in.

Before I slowed down, and I was feeling unwell, I noticed too that I was struggling to hold space for others going through their own stuff. It was as if I just did not have any extra energy left beyond my own survival. I am noticing now, that as I give myself what I need, or fill my own cup, that I have space and time to BE with others with more generosity. On this, for some time I have been working on allowing myself to be seen more authentically and to unashamedly shine more. This is something that I have really struggled with. It has felt too vulnerable to be seen in my fullness. At the same time, I deeply wanted to be witnessed and to be in my authentic flow with others. I also admit that I had some judgement around the shining, like it was a bit too navel gazey and self-absorbed. I realise now that when I am my truest self and treating myself with respect and meeting my own needs that I can be in greater service to others. I have more love, more generosity, more time and more compassion for others. It just flows! The world needs me to shine, because it is an act of service to myself and to others!

This is a big, and VULNERABLE share. It’s all been swishing around me for so long. The anguish, the thoughts, the fire, the feelings, the noticings, all of it! I needed to get it out, and publicly evidently. I share, to be witnessed and to hopefully spread some inspiration for others to keep valiantly walking towards the life that inspires.