I was doing so well, even managing to post here each week. I was (finally) bringing The Flow Materials out of hiding. I was showing up every single Wednesday for Journey. I was speaking with new clients about real things. Everything was stable. So, of course, I decided to open a School of Magic. As one does.
(And here, I want you to imagine I am laughing in that way that one does when one realizes that the string she was tugging on was attached to a whale. No, not a whale. That’s not what this is.
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(Imagine that I am a woman who is laughing from the inside of a whale; a woman who has pulled in a fish that is speaking a language of secrets as it exits the water. A fish that is also a rainbow, a map, a goddess - a fish that is also, as I draw it closer, a woman whispering in her own ear. That kind of fish.)
I used to say that I was raised by a mystery fish. And I was. I just didn’t really grok what I meant when I said that. Now I do (kind of). Now I don’t (not really). (Not yet).
Sometimes, when I am writing these blog posts, I am thinking: Is this what they want to read? Is this the right way to explain?
This is not one of those times. This time, as I am writing, I am thinking: How might I get this down onto the page and get it out there, to the audience, before my interior protection squad decides to delete it? How fast can I write this? How quickly can I press send? I have to outrun the protection squad. It wants you to believe that I’m perfect. (I’m not. But I think you knew that. It’s me that has to keep catching up.) )
Like you, I am on a healing journey. A walk up and down the mountain range we all travel in a lifetime. During my journey, as I walk, I’ve been mapping. This is one of my superpowers. I notice the way the land rolls out around us, the way the path forms right under our feet. I notice, as I sit by the campfire, mapping the stars, that Healing is not a straight line from point a to point be.
Healing is a trek. Through desert. A swim. Through a lake that may turn into an ocean or a teacup, leaves swirling with fortune.
What I mean is: Healing moves in waves - up and down. Sand dunes, escalators, mountain ranges. Let me explain.
Healing is necessary for everyone. For people who grow up in chaos - and in some ways, this is all of us now - healing is critical. It’s the difference between experiencing life as a battle/struggle and experiencing life as a gift/adventure.
When you grow up in chaos, you have to unlearn its patterns. You have to coax chaos to let go of you.
This is because once you grow up in chaos, chaos feels like 'home'. It's familiar and we are used to it. As children, we adapt to its ways. We develop a special resiliency and some very useful skills to keep us safe and stable when things go sideways. It’s later, when we are grown into big people, that these same skills that saved us can become obstacles to living a fully embodied life. (Later still, they can become superpowers.)
When we are conditioned by chaos, we come to expect it. This makes it harder to trust: friends, partners, colleagues, even ourselves.
So, we embark on path of healing. We learn new skills to quiet the internal chaos and our external world begins to settle. We feel safer in the world. We stabilize.
Weirdly, along the way, this other thing often happens. Without the exciting ups and downs of chaos, we can find ourselves feeling bored, anxious, awkward, and weirdly, unstable. We may miss the chaos. We may fear the quiet and the calm.
When nothing’s happening, we may worry that something is building up - waiting to ambush us. We are viewing our newly stable reality from inside the old pattern, through chaos's eyes. For a while, we may (sometimes) generate little pockets of chaos, little dramas to help us release some of the tension of waiting for the next shoe to drop. By, essentially, dropping the shoe our self we feel more in control.
Eventually, this too quiets. The ups and downs even out and we stabilize. We come to trust the quiet. We learn to tolerate the empty space where chaos used to be.
As that empty space opens around us, we don’t feel afraid. Inside of that spaciousness, we are free.
On my own healing journey, one of the things I had to learn was: It’s okay to change my mind. Though my old patterning tells me, You can’t start something and then change it a month later, the new pattern is also here, running parallel to the old now.
It assures me that I can change whatever I want. It reminds me: I am an artist and this is how art is made.
I am learning that I am allowed to shape reality to suit me.
This discovery is like jumping into the ocean without a life preserver and realizing that, Hey, this body knows how to float! and, Hey, floating is kind of … great. It feels … good. Almost like… pleasure. Almost like… joy.
It’s like shifting what could have been a sad fairy tale about a woman who felt powerless to change her life into an open water swim and, now I am out there, Hey, look at these colorful fishies!
As it happens, right now, much of my attention is on shaping my new School of Magic. No, that’s not right. That’s not how this works. The truth is: I am watching my School of Magic shape itself around me.
I see a bright studio space. There are blank canvasses propped on easels. There are coffee cans filled with brushes. Tubes of new paint. I’m wearing a long white smock. I hear the tea kettle whistling. As I see and sense all of this, it becomes more real. I see a space for movement. Wooden floors. Polished mirrors. I see light pouring through the windows as we bend and stretch, folding and reach, feeling into the experience of fully being in our bodies.
I see a clean white page in a brand new journal where a jar of inky essential oil waits beside a marbled fountain pen. It waits for me. For you. For the work to move through us and soak into the page.
I see a campus inside of a landscape inside of a world. I see space to practice being real in the company of others so we can learn what it feels like to live as the life that is asking to flow through us begins to move.
So, tell me, what’s building itself around you? How can I support that? How can I can help?
"I see space to practice being real in the company of others so we can learn what it feels like to live as the life that is asking to flow through us begins to move." Just reading your words is helpful! As was your comment over on my post. :) I'll reply over there, but thank you. So helpful. Also, I love that I know the sound of your laugh - I could hear it as I read the beginning of your post. :)
"I see space to practice being real in the company of others so we can learn what it feels like to live as the life that is asking to flow through us begins to move." Just reading your words is helpful! As was your comment over on my post. :) I'll reply over there, but thank you. So helpful. Also, I love that I know the sound of your laugh - I could hear it as I read the beginning of your post. :)