Bare

Today my job broke up with me. I cried. Not in protest, but because I have never failed at anything so vital before. But since my diagnoses it seems like work for me is increasingly more difficult. I rolled over and took a nap. For two days now, my back has been completely out due to stress and muscle spasms. Making walking kneeling, sneezing, high fiving and other very normal everyday impossible. There’s nothing like forced stillness to make you reconsider some very hard truths about your life. Here are some conclusions that I came to in my days of stillness: 

1. I am a healer. I need to be healing.  

Back to that in a second.  

2. The weight of self doubt and punishment are too great to carry. I was asked to resign from my job. Barring the legal implications of that because nothing about it feels right or 100% legal to me, God told me specifically to let it go. My ego wants to fight. My ego feels wronged. My ego knows I am not a failure. I am AMAZING and the work that I produce is star-quality work. Always has been. I excel. I’m extraordinary. Why can’t they see that? My soul is a very chill bitch. She just waits for my ego to stop monologuing and says “this is a gift. You never would’ve left on your own. And you weren’t rocking anything. You were lazy uninspired, disengaged and mediocre at best because that was not your calling. That was not what you were supposed to be doing and I let it go on long enough. But we are done.  Let it go.” 

3. You must play to your strengths. I was born with a specific genius. We all were. Mine? I heal. Usually through words but I’m learning how to use all forms of communication and expression as healing. I’m a hippie. I believe the cure to most of the things that ail us are found naturally occurring in nature. For years I’ve dreamed about a business Green Tea and Honey with a birthing center and an apothecary both specializing in holistic health and integrative medicine.  

4. Shame will kill you. I held on to the secret of my job loss for just three days and I could already feel it start to eat at me. I felt in my heart it was a good thing but why was I still in knots?  

Because I could already hear the questions and the fear coming at me from all directions 

• how are you going to pay rent?  
• Have you started looking for another job?  
• I know a place that’s hiring for (insert something I have zero interest or expertise in)  
• how are you going to pay rent?  
• Have you thought about getting a lawyer? That “resignation” doesn’t sound fair
• Are you going to have to move home with your parents?  
• Are you going to have to sell your car?  
• What are you going to do about money?  

See the pattern here? Here’s the truth though, and I mean this in the most bare naked honest way possible. Worrying about money has never yielded me more money.  

You know what I am going to do? I’m going to pray and meditate every morning and ask God to order my steps. I’m going to move without hesitation through my walk. I didn’t want to write this blog post today. I truly didn’t want everyone in my business as I move through such a vulnerable and difficult time. But I was reminded that the thing that makes me special is my ability to do just that. 

To be vulnerable and tell my story as it’s happening is MY gift. The first time I resigned from a job because of my health I was a teaching assistant for a class. With the other staff, I turned myself inside out and made my pain available for the group because I thought maybe I can help somebody. Well yesterday, one of my co-staff sent me this message: 

I am setting my intentions. I’m preparing my soil over the next few days and then I’m going to repot myself into earth that will grow me. Soil fertile and solid enough to house my roots and enough light and sky for me to reach up towards heaven without obstruction. 

Im scared. Not of failing. But I’m scared of losing my Center. I’m afraid of letting the doubt and the naysayers get to me. I’m afraid people I love won’t support me. I’m afraid that people won’t see my vision and what I’m working towards. I’m afraid I won’t have an audience or I’ll just have lurkers and not active participants. I’m afraid I won’t be able to pay my rent. 

but...I’m more afraid of what happens if I don’t try. That’s the God’s honest truth. I am too afraid right now to bet on anything except myself. 

So my next step? Stay tuned because I’ll be announcing it very very soon. And it’s so me, you’ll wonder why I haven’t been doing this full time for years.