I woke up today thinking of my old post titled Just Start – Don’t Worry, a post about not worrying too much about getting going on that project you’ve been holding at bay.
That post was written after being absent from the blog for almost two years…and it was the last post I had written up until now. February 2022: the beginning of massive transformation in my life.
Now, here we are, July 2023, and my life looks incredibly different. I am divorced. My younger brother left this Earth by way of an overdose. I relocated five times in 12 months. I re-opened and re-closed my massage therapy business, and then started a new job that I left within six weeks.
I met and fell in love with an incredible woman named Elizabeth. She is wicked smart, beautiful inside and out, sensitive, deeply kind and intuitive, sexy, sporty, and a little bit country. She wears her heart on her sleeve. We bought a house together and got each other’s names tattoed on our feet. (“It’s permanent!”, said the tattoo artist. Indeed.)
I am not the same person as I was in February of 2022 when I wrote my last entry. I continue to be transformed, layers peeled back, growing into my newly discovered identity, growing out of my old ways of being.
As I write this, Essie Jain’s song “Rising” is playing. I was introduced to Essie Jain’s music in Yoga Teacher Training, where I thought I was going to learn how to be a yoga teacher, but, in fact, I was being called to do a deep dive inside of myself.
I was finally asking this question, “Who am I?” When I asked, I was shown in numerous ways the fragmented way I was living, and that there was a possiblity of a different, more connected and fulfilling life.
One day recently, when I was relaying to my girlfriend this concept I was learning about calling back my spirit from all previous attachments, she replied, “What if you set your spirit free?”
Set my spirit free. That sounded amazing. Back to the wild, its natural habitat.
Setting my spirit free would mean allowing myself to become the fullest and brightest version of me. To allow my gifts to manifest. To allow my emotions to be felt, and to move through them, instead of choosing to numb them. To love with abandon. To not adjust myself to please the world, but be myself wherever I am, and let the world adjust. (Thanks, Glennon Doyle for that last quote from Untamed.)
The call to be set free, to be transformed, is a challenge unlike any. The cost for your new life is your old life. On the other side, are people, places and things meant for you in your new life, who are aligned with the new you. But, the journey across the abyss can be treacherous.
To be transformed requires letting go and saying goodbye, and sometimes the grief of that loss feels like quicksand, or a tidalwave that wants to swallow you. The turbulence caused by answering the call to change can be so intimidating and overwhelming that it will stop many in their tracks. Some will retreat.
But, getting to the other side of the abyss, saying yes to YOU, means accessing the magic of your true spirit. All of the beauty, integrity, childlike wonder, curiousity, awareness, aliveness, joy, wholeness, pure love – your birthrights. It means becoming who you came here to be.
Today there was a New Moon. A New Moon represents a new beginning, a chance to set new intentions, and say goodbye to old patterns and habits. I went for a walk tonight in the barely-cooled-off air (still 95 degrees at 8pm…) and thought about my new beginnings, about how much has transpired between my last post and now.
How different my life looks from the outside. And, how different – and incredibly amazing – it feels from the inside.
This is my new beginning for the second half (and more) of my life. I am so, so grateful for all of my experiences so far. Though I cringe at some of my less elegant decisions and choices, I regret none; they are all teachers on this bumpy road. I could not change anything and still find myself here today, and here is a magical “now” that I felt was possible but could not have known to wish for, because it’s more beautiful that my imagination would have allowed.
I welcome the continual challenges and changes that are refining my person. Through them, if I commit to look inside, trust my inner knowing, and learn the lessons intended for me, I can live a life of unmatched breadth and depth.
We can feel it all, as we were meant to. Remaining present for life’s every moment. True to our hearts. Free.
This is my mantra moving forward: I TRUST my intuition. I ALLOW all the good things coming to me. I have FAITH that things are always working out for me. I speak my TRUTH.
Trust. Allow. Faith. Truth.
And, so it is.
Positively Tasha 