But first, a brief aside …
Unlike the previous writer’s block I’ve experienced in the past (where writing seemed to open up old wounds I’d believed were closed), this last stint of writer’s block was entirely different. It was one of all the thoughts, too many thoughts, tinged with questioning my boundaries for disclosure, wondering not where to begin but how to end, how to put something into a neat, under 1,500-word essay with a bow on it that hopefully you (and, let’s be honest, the algorithm) might like. I also felt a need/ desire/ anxiety to explain my absence, which is so self-important, really, so I won’t explain it.
All that being said, consider this post a return, a mosaic, and a mishmash, a collection of thoughts strung together by the theme of “What I Learned in Mexico” to add some semblance of cohesion. I was only there from June 15th to July 3rd, yet those two short weeks, despite their smallness in the grand scheme of my 28 years in this meat suit, radically restructured the architecture of my soul and life.
Also, I won’t be posting weekly anymore. I make zero commitments to posting. Please expect randomness and intervals of time synced to my changing rhythms. One of the many things I learned to let go of in Mexico is keeping a content schedule, calendar, or plan, which, ironically, has finally freed me up enough psychically and emotionally to return here and to Instagram **gasp**. (More on that later, maybe. One day?)
I learned that …
💫 my intuition’s wisdom is boundless, powerful, capable, and ready to meet my all of my needs when I become brave and still enough to listen.
💫 no amount of intellectual understanding in the world can overcome my soul’s wounds calling to be healed by my heart instead of my mind.
💫 the most powerful way to discover who I truly am was to step away from all the routines, tasks, schedules, and “stuff” that constituted who I believed myself to be.
June 25th, 2024
All that is “me” has fallen away here. What’s left is distant; I am traversing this distance slowly, uncovering …
Acceptance has felt like a promised dream all my life—an unattainable horizon line. I was convinced it lived outside of me, as did its resolution.
When I came here, my heart cracked open. To possibility, to awe and wonder, to all the alternate paths ahead of me. I’d fooled myself into a false sense of comfort within discomfort, false order amidst chaos, hoping control would give me freedom despite their being so vastly different. I fell in love with my intuition here, with my sacred knowing and the love that permeates all my being. I awakened to the next layer of a spiral, finding answers in the depths of my heart and spirit.
I learned that …
💫 my sobriety is wondrously fragile yet brave and steady. I forget to give myself credit for how I’ve integrated this so completely. Nothing like two weeks in the land of tequila could have affirmed it more.
💫 I am an extrovert (like, whaaaatttt?!?). I kept waiting for social fatigue to knock me on my ass, but it never did. It turns out that what I thought was introversion was only a wildly dysregulated nervous system.
I learned that …
💫 shame was a red herring, a decoy to distract from the steady humming of self-doubt, doubt which I’d become so utterly accustomed to the sound of that I didn’t notice how out of tune its notes were.
💫 I needed to honor self-doubt so I could finally let it go.
July 24th, 2024
Shame has a texture. Of sandpaper. Sharp-rough-jagged-edge promising to smooth away my too-human edges. I thought shame was the beginning, yet it was the end. Before shame came doubt. It’s unclear how shame became the answer to doubt, but knowing how does not matter. Knowing what to do now is enough.
I was afraid that without the burning hot sun of Mexico, at a beach that felt like home and the world’s saturation cranked up past vivid, I would forget, but I haven’t.
Afraid to forget the knowing and the aliveness—all of it swirling too quickly to grasp except in deep breaths and closed eyes. Eyes closing to open. Open to the light and possibilities, letting shame dissolve and fall away.
I spent years running from myself without realizing it was me there in the shadows all along. Afraid to be too needy/ ugly/ wanting/ hungry/ lonely/ desperate, but most afraid of my beauty—the internal kind.
My words don’t make sense, I hope.
If they do, then I know you know what it’s like to be the maze and to despise the maze. I know you know what it’s like to look for yourself everywhere except within. So, if you are reading this and the words make sense, I am here to tell you of your vast infinity, that the expansiveness of all that you already are is already here.
You are already absolved of every falsity; you already know your truth.
Hold still. Listen.
Feel.
How the light catches and holds us.
How none of it has been wasted.
How we are gorgeously allowed to be here.
For you to be in your you-ness and me to be in mine.
August 5th, 2024
I wonder whether it’s reasonable to share all of this, and then I remember that reason has no place in my writing.
I am ready to be unreasonable, alive, present, generous, and knowing.
Who are you ready to be?
Let me know in the comments if you’d like to share. ✨