WELCOME
The Journey
By Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
What you had to do, and began,
Though the voices around you
Kept shouting
Their bad advice‚
Though the whole house
Began to tremble
And you felt the old tug
At your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
Each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
Though the wind pried
With its stiff fingers
At the very foundations‚
Though their melancholy
Was terrible.
It was already late
Enough, and a wild night,
And the road full of fallen
Branches and stones.
But little by little,
As you left their voices behind,
The stars began to burn
Through the sheets of clouds,
And there was a new voice,
Which you slowly
Recognized as your own,
That kept you company
As you strode deeper and deeper
Into the world,
Determined to do
The only thing you could do‚ Determined to save
The only life you could save.
I would love to tell you a little about my story.
May who I am, and the journey I have taken, inspire you to see who YOU are.
May the journey I have gone on, to heal, to discover my truth, to become more fully my SELF, inspire you to do the same.
The world needs more authentic, inspired, whole, humans.
May we be them.
All About Me
52 year old, radically altered me
If you had told me when I was 40, that I would unravel the life I had built...married at 19, 6 kids, home schooler, stay at home mom, church goer, good girl, people pleaser, good daughter, loyal friend, accommodator of others, I would have said you had lost your mind.
I was perfectly happy in the roles I had taken on, I was living my best life, satisfied with my 'good enough' marriage even if I did most of the relational 'heavy lifting'.
But, the thing is, I have this presence inside me that is always taking me to my own edges, always turning over all the 'stones' of my life a presence that is determined that I become my fullest self, not stay stuck in my comfortable, small, habitual self.
I now know this voice, this forward motion, this unraveling, this presence in me to be my soul.
My soul is not concerned with my safety and security, and for most of us, arrives on the scene sometime in mid-life with the purpose of dismantling the life we have carefully built for ourselves.
I know, bummer.
This is sometimes called a mid-life crisis, arriving sometime after the age of 35, and is only a crisis because we lack guides who know how to help us unravel and so we hang on...usually much past the expiry dates of relationships and ways of being in our body and ways of showing up in the world.
And so, it shows up as suffering, or crisis, body breakdown, a depression, a 'failed' relationship, a broken dream, something that stops us in our tracks and says, "Pay Attention! The ladder you have been climbing is on the wrong wall!"
For me, it began with my own growth, with asking questions about what I was doing...my habitual way of showing up in the world. It began with loosing my voice when my parents would visit, putting my back out after they left, no longer initiating all the things I had continually initiated in my marriage, no longer rescuing friends, discovering I was co-dependent, passive aggressive, a people pleaser, afraid of conflict and accommodating others at the expense of myself. It also began with this hunger I had to not stay the same, to grow, to uncover and become my SELF, to live my own life.
Along the way, I had to end friendships, end my marriage, discover and heal my patterns, take distance from my parents, change my codependent ways, learn how to have difficult conversations, return to my body, discover my soul, rename the Divine for myself (that's quite a journey), grow up, learn, change, expand, and give myself permission to live my own life, a life that I actually choose, not one that I created because it was expected of me and because I expected it of myself. I also learned about my wholeness, and how, from my wholeness, to heal and integrate my fragmented parts. This part of the journey has been so beautiful and has opened my to possibilities I hadn't even imagined.
Is this journey easy?
No, but it is so fucking worth it!
Truly!
I have been where you are.
I have had to do the things.
I have had to save the only life I could save.
My own.
The invitation is there.
What will your answer be?