You Be You
I work with a lot of women who along the way lost pieces of themselves. Be it in raising children and pouring everything into them and the path of motherhood. Be it a marriage that slowly chipped away at their self-esteem, at who they are at their essence, sucking their power. Be it career that literally sucked the life out of them. Be it high trauma which has left them fragmented and lost.
Many women have turned to addictions of some sort, ways of coping...towards patterns of living that are perpetuating the cycle... as that has felt like the only option.
Yet, what I see over and over again is women having that moment of awakening. That moment of: "I can no longer live in this way", that sets into motion a deep inquiry and choice to hop on a path of healing.
There are so many options and paths that we can take when we reach that moment in our lives of questioning...of non-negotiable...of churning into the unknown... yet, knowing that the unknown is better than what is existing in this moment of clarity.
The clarity that things can no longer go on the way that they have been.
There are a plethora of tracks we can choose along our healing journey. I feel as though I had my moment of awakening in my early 20s. I hit rock-bottom and knew I could not go on the way that I had been. After years of therapy, of rehashing every possible nuance of my story and addictive way and inability to cope with the massive emotions that I had been suppressing...
I knew in that moment that I needed to take a different track or path or approach. I knew that *just* talking was not helping, that I needed to approach my healing from all angles...a holistic path and approach.
I had already been a yoga and meditation practitioner and grew up dancing, so the body-mind connection was not foreign to me, yet, I did not have the tools to implement any of what I was doing into my own recovery. In coming back together at the seams...and coming into alignment, into integrity, into truth, into functioning, Into LIVING.
It was in that moment of hitting rock bottom, and making the next several choices along the trajectory of my life, that I uncovered a holistic path of healing that is unwavering in its ability to hold any layer of trauma, of angst in the system, of pain, of disconnection, of upheaval, of deep questioning, of falling apart, etc. etc.
I learned very quickly, and explored for decades afterwards, that there is not one way of unfurling, of coming back into ourselves, of integration… That there has to be many different avenues and channels and approaches and practices that truly bring us HOME moment-by-moment-by-moment. This is not a singular, simple, and narrow, one-and-done approach and path of healing.
This is not put a band-aid on and all is well. This is a lifelong exploration, journey, and process with oneself that truly nourishes, nurtures, grounds, holds, supports, empowers, and meets-one-exactly-where-they-are in every moment process.
We work one layer and then another layer appears and then another layer and then we have to go back to the first layer and revisit that...this is the dance.
What it boils down to is this....
This process of healing, of becoming, of stepping forward, of empowering, of unfolding, of awakening, of inquiry....is all in support of women being exactly who they are. Unapologetically, fiercely, lovingly, softly, openly...with alignment, with integrity, with utmost compassion, and with their TRUTH as their guiding light.
I will leave you today with an excerpt from my book-in-the-works, The Path of the Warrior Woman: Building Resilience and Strength from the Inside Out, about this journey of really becoming one with who you are...You Being You (I am determined to get this baby finished by the end of the year, so you may hear much about the WARRIOR WOMAN along the way!):
The Warrior Woman does not abandon herself.
She cultivates an unwavering platform of trust in herself and her ability to move through the world in a way that is in truth, is in alignment, is in integrity, and is wholly embodied.
She naturally experiences the ups, downs, ins, and outs of life….yet, she remains unwavering in herself and her capacity to navigate the inevitable human experiences, encounters, relations, and interactions.
She does not *need* another to remind her of who the fuck she is. She is who she is and that is enough. That is absolutely all the validation that she will ever need.
As the waves of life churn…experiences come and go…people and relationships mirror to her both her greatness as well as her gaps…she learns to take those deep breaths into the core of who she is and she grounds in herself. She accesses her strength, her foundation, her resilience, her own unique pathway on the planet.
The Warrior Woman knows who she is.
In those moments of “forgetting”, she remembers to do the practices that she needs to do to grow herself, to heal those gaping wounds, to open up to new possibilities, and to create new pathways in her existence.
The Path of the Warrior Woman will never abandon you. It will challenge you to step more fully into who you are, it will usher you into new terrain of growth and healing and empowerment, it will propel you with gentle and fierce nudges to step more fully into exactly who you are. You with you.
I would be deeply honored to support any of you along your path of becoming.
Please reach out anytime and connect.
I always love hearing from you.