Grace, Frankie, Anxiety Attacks, Saag Paneer, and Spirit
Raise your hand if 2019 was wild for you! Raise your hand if it brought you life-changing realizations and ass-kicking change! Raise your hand if things you thought you healed forever ago came back up! Cool! Same! Here's the magic I found...
The thing about healing, growing, expanding, experiencing a spiritual awakening is that it is not really linear. The past year for me (and many others) was filled old stories and wounds that came up to be healed. For me, it was self-deprecating thoughts like, who the hell am I to be talking about this when I have so much I feel ashamed about? Or if I have everything I want, why do I still feel longing? Or, how could I have done that? I was so dumb! And the list goes on.
One day I was in forgiveness, compassion, and self-love, and the next I felt fear and doubt about who I was. And the things that I thought would never come back because I healed it, came back.
Well, I’ve learned something along the way. When painful thoughts and emotions come up, it is a physical sign that I need space and to reconnect with Spirit and Self. It turns out that my “negative” thoughts and feelings is my cue to come home to me and reconnect.
There’s this idea that in order to be spiritual, you have to be positive, or constantly have faith, or be a perfect human in order to truly walk your talk. That, my love, is unattainable. And I’m here to tell you that it is truly okay to feel bad sometimes. To go through hard stuff. It doesn’t make you less spiritual, evolved, or powerful. It makes you authentic, real, raw, and human.
The point of this work is not to ever go through anything hard ever again. It is to create a different relationship to these experiences where it can bring you closer to yourself and give you valuable information.
My “negative” thoughts can guide me if I sit with them and hear who is talking. Sometimes, they protect me from acting from a place of ignorance, or manipulating, or any other shadowy act I have found myself in. And when they started to feel overwhelming, I went home to myself and the space I created for this exact reason.
In this space, I did a whole ritual — I connected to these emotions as if they were Goddesses entering my temple, giving me pearls of wisdom, and I honored them as something outside of me, instead of a true story my brain was trying to convince me of believing. I let myself feel. I cried. I danced. I reflected on the times I could have done better. I celebrated the times I did. I honored my unfolding. I prayed.
And then after, I ate my weight in Indian food while watching Grace and Frankie, celebrating just being alive and doing this whole human thing. Because balance, baby!
Spirit and your higher self is always ready and willing to help, and our formal invitation is through ritual and ceremony. So the second I start to doubt, or I feel like I’m on my own, or I feel unfulfilled, unmagic, or dropping into a place of severe judgement to myself (we are our worst critic, mind you), I go home, shut my door, light some candles, and see what comes up. Ceremony and ritual can look like a super serious and calculated event, which is beautiful, or it can be what I did. A simple night of nourishment and balance and creation and prayer.
Your magic is your authenticity. Your wounds are your greatest medicine. Your ceremony is acting on your own inner callings. Your prayer is your sincerity.
This year, when your thoughts start to feel like a tidal wave of doubt and fear, part the damn sea by being with them. Build your arc, your sacred space, to carry you through the storm. And let it cradle you. Let spirit do its thing. You have so many beings rooting for you, waiting to help and hold you. And then after all that, you can eat Indian food and watch Grace and Frankie. It’s a cosmically beautiful and dramatic life, isn’t it?