It just occurred to me that in a month, I will have completed two years of being self-employed. I’ve been hustling to survive – and I’m gonna keep it real – and I’ve been carried, supported, helped, loved, assisted, and obscenely blessed to have gotten through these years with a TON of help from my friends and family. But that means it’s been two years of living authentically and have the space to heal and create my rise out of the ashes. My main hustle, as you may know, is working in the AI space as a trainer. That work is not guaranteed but there were less lulls this year than last, and I believe I improved my financial situation. I have been able to create some method to my madness of trying to balance taking care of my health, earning income, and working to get my business up and running. For the most part, that means that I decided each day what the priorities in MY life were. I didn’t have to ask anyone for permission to work from home because I need to manage pain, or if I could occasionally bring my dog to work, or if I could take some time off. I also didn’t put my sacred energy into creating profit for someone else. My energy went into healing my body, mind and soul; it went into creating opportunities to guide others through their healing.
I spent far too much of my life ruminating over the past or worrying about the future. Stress, anxiety, overwhelm – these were my constant companions. For one stage of my life, I was a full-time single mom, working a full time job, and going to school full time. I always overdid and overthought everything to the point of exhaustion. Now, I have tools and rituals that help me not react, and to maintain peace and balance and to be ever present in the moment. I have exactly one trigger that causes some anxiety and panic in me, and I’m handling it by shifting my perspective of the situation so I remember I only face that trigger if I choose. Sovereignty is the result of the past two years. And two years ago, sovereignty was my dream. So was starting a business – no. Wait. That’s not true. LAUNCHING a business was my dream; I had started a few businesses before and nothing became of them. I wanted to actually operate a business. My imposter syndrome was so deeply embedded in my soul. And now I’m entering my fourth month of operations.
Two years ago, my soul was grieving so intensely from the loss of my tribe that I thought I would surely die. No exaggeration. I didn’t see how I could sustain that pain. Despite the fact I have no problem doing anything by myself, I didn’t have ANYONE to connect with. I thought internet connection was subpar. I thought I was forgotten, neglected and didn’t matter. Now, my circle has shrunk, but has become watertight. I have learned how to accept and even how to ask for help. I have zero fears of failing because I am buoyed up so highly by my tribe. I have a few real life friends in Denver and am starting to branch out personally as I look for business opportunities. I just joined a book club. And I have a bunch of people I talk to on the phone, text with and have deep, meaningful connections with my circle. We can and do talk about the HARD conversations. I have never felt more supported, more seen and move loved than I do now.
And here’s the motha fucka of them all; the one that really, REALLY is proof of my healing: so many times in my life, I just self-sabotaged. I didn’t believe I could do anything, despite being told ad nauseum as a child that I could “be anything I wanted”. If you are not someone who lacks confidence you may not relate, but I suspect many of you have had experiences where your lack of belief in yourself cost you an experience in life that makes you wish you had chosen differently. Two years ago, I didn’t show up for myself – hell, I didn’t know I was supposed to. I didn’t know my worth. I sacrificed my well being to “do the right thing” as designated by some mysterious “they”. Now, I am a small business owner, a community builder, a healer, a down-shifter, a creator, a wanderer, and a wonderer. I actively show up for me every single day. I have learned self-acceptance and I have fallen in love with who I am. In fact, I love myself so much that I can’t imagine ever sacrificing my energy into a partner that may or may not be able to add to my life, when I can invest it into me and the positive result will be a given. I am human, but I am learning and I always aspire to be a better version of myself than I was the day before.
One thing (among the countless other things) I’m still working on is to acknowledge my accomplishments. I learned I don’t have any clue how to do so – there’s always so much more to do and so much more I could have done. So I downplay all the individual things – which leads to downplaying all the big things that come as a result of accomplishing all the little things. I have a friend I speak to as many days a week as we can. She always is going on about how much I got done, and I’ll be honest, my old pattern of dismissing her and assuming she is just making shit up because she feels bad for me has to be fought in those conversations. It’s been so programmed in me to take the blame and not the credit. But now I can talk myself through that and recognize it’s just the last vestiges of my lying brain which is being reprogrammed.
But no matter how many of those small tasks I’ve accomplished and forgotten, as I pause with a grateful heart and complete, magical soul to look back at what I have created and discovered and done in the past two years, it almost takes my breath away. I am celebrating my consistency, my fighting through the imposter syndrome and showing up for me, every day, for two years.
My favorite song in the world is soul crushing, as suggested by its title, Burying Puppies. If you listen to the lyrics and feel the truth of the agony expressed in the song, you get a glimpse of my soul. But another thing I’ve learned in the past two years is that the darkness that exists there is the source of most of my creation. My darkness is responsible for some of the most beautiful parts of me. There is a line in it that goes, “I never really had the chance to live the life that I had planned.” OUCH. That is one of the sources of pain in my soul – feeling like everytime I work really hard for something, it’s taken from me and I have to start over. It has taught me a lot and it caused me some trauma.
But, with tears pouring down my face as I write this, as I sit here looking back, what strikes me the most is that for the first time in my life, I am living the life that I had planned. I’ve learned to soften boundaries where they aren’t needed to facilitate flow, so I don’t expect my life to be a carbon copy of my plan – but OH MY GLOB!!! I have accomplished MOUNTAINS!!! I am a mother fucking magical sorcerer QUEEN!!
And now I get to spend my life empowering others to heal, evolve and burn your programmed life to the ground in exchange for living authentically and creating the life you have planned. Because that IS the life I have planned.
Thank you for being a part of the life I have planned.