Transformation

Transformation can feel like: 

  • Every bad choice you’ve ever made rising up to throttle you. 

  • Spending the morning in bed. 

  • Anger blooming up out of nowhere. 

  • Old wounds doing a rain dance on your liver. 

  • Crying in the middle of an outdoor mall.

  • Wondering if you’re too damaged to get any of the things you want.

  • Events you thought you'd made peace with mooning you on the freeway. 

I may or may not have experienced every one of these symptoms in the past seven hours. 

It’s been a fun Thursday. 

I know I’m going through a transformation, but it’s easy to forget that and just feel like I’m failing at life.

Failing at life A LOT. 

Like everything I thought I knew is in question and all of the divine timing messages I get are complete bullshit.

Because obviously I have failed. A LOT.

But failure is a judgment and self-judgment never shows up more powerfully than when you’re about to burst into something new. 

So if you’re in the midst of a WTF-is-going-on-and-when-will-this-end? phase, you’re probably transforming. 

It’s not super fun. It’s rarely easy. But it’s worth it.

Transformation is how we do what we’ve never done before, how we step into our next evolution.

Transformation takes a lot out of you. Sometimes laziness is called for, as your entire system re-boots and your brain re-patterns. You’re doing quite a lot, even if it feels like you’re mostly just watching Netflix and eating half-off Halloween candy. 

But the more chrysalis processes from which you emerge, the faster the transformation goes.

The first few cocoons I crawled into were long, drawn out, painstaking, and painful. Now I can move through something relatively quickly - in a few days or even a few hours. It’s still painful, but I can usually see my way through it or beyond it.

So even though I spent a few minutes worrying that I was going to need years of therapy to work yet another uncovered trauma (good lord, do they never end), I got that nudge that said, “No, you don’t. Just keep moving through the feelings and being gentle with yourself in the process and this will quickly pass.”

It’s easy to make multiple “I Have Failed” arguments when most of your work is in the 5th and 7th dimensions and most of life happens in the 3rd. But if you’re arguing with yourself, it means your brain is far too involved in the process, and the brain mostly just operates as a 3D recording device.

Brains are certainly useful, but not so much in deep processes of transformation for which your brain has zero reference.

Hush, brain hamsters.

In the midst of a transformation, the best you can do is take care of yourself. Lots of gentleness, lots of care for your body and nervous system, lots of nature and water, lots of rest. Zero judgment of your path, your process, or your results. Just let yourself transform.

Times of transformation are not times to expect a lot from yourself externally, because you’re switching worlds and moving internal mountains and getting ready to emerge anew.

Caterpillars halfway to becoming butterflies aren’t getting much done, I guarantee it.

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Halfway to butterfly. Hence, totally fine that I have a sink full of dirty dishes.

Witch of Oz

Hiking into Oz isn’t for the faint of heart, no matter what your heart is made of.

Shifting ground and emotional purges and blazing anger, oh my!

As footwear is a crucial part of the journey, I have just purchased three new pairs of brightly colored Converse. Not as good as Dorothy’s ruby slippers, but pink and turquoise sneakers delight my very soul.

Since “delight your very soul, regularly and repeatedly” is the message right now, I consider my new sneakers a wise purchase.

So much is coming up and out. I feel things burning away - work is shifting, my insides are re-patterning, and a lot of space is being created. It’s like I’m becoming something entirely new, though it’s really just a return to what I always was.

We’re cracking open to let in - and let out - more light.

While I need to leave space and time for that, I get impatient. I want to know! I want to know what’s coming, I want to know what’s next, I want to know what to do.

But it’s not quite time yet.

Since my chill factor is predictably low, my “Surrender, Dorothy!” moments are becoming rather frequent. (Yes, I added some punctuation there but I suspect L. Frank Baum will forgive me.)

I’m doing best to surrender what I think should happen and just do what feels good.

I’m doing my best to follow all my intuitive nudges, even when they seem entirely random - like go to the bookstore to buy Capital Gaines on Monday morning and read it instead of work. And it was exactly what my energy needed to shift, so there we go.

I’m doing my best to not let my brain take over, because my brain just gums up the works. My brain doesn’t have the capacity to figure this process out anyway.

I’m doing my best to give myself space, with deep trust that I’ll have everything I need.

I’m doing my best to breathe, to be grateful for all the perfect small moments, to notice what’s happening around me in this moment - the only one that actually exists.

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I’m doing my best to remember that it’s all perfect. That my purpose is being fulfilled just by being here, breathing here, letting my heart beat here. Since there’s nothing left to do, no homework, and I’m not on the clock - what do I want to do next? What sounds fun? What wants to come through next?

How can joy and love blaze through today?

Spread Your Wings!

We’re expanding into something new. Here’s some guidance on the current energy and how to step into what’s next for you.

(If you’re drawn to this, there’s something here for you - no matter when you run across it.)

Season of Surrender

Surrender one big thing and life gets all greedy and wants you to surrender more.

Fine. (Goddamn it.)

I was all proud of myself for releasing the life-will-align-with-my-husband-and-babies-plan again, when life went, “Great! Good job! We’re just getting started!” as it rubbed its hands together like a miser in a Dickens novel faced with a large stack of gold coins.

Really? We’re just getting started, life? I thought we were DONE.

“Nope! Not even a little!”

Life, the universe, and everything can be a brutal task mistress, I tell you what.

Because suddenly I went into expansion panic, into an emotional free-for-all around my intuitive work and money.

Sometimes I just want the earth to stop shifting below my feet. Sometimes I want to stop having to yank all my stability from somewhere deep inside, because my insides are tired.

But the universe thinks my insides are doing just fine, and tells me to keep going.

So much of our ego and safety and self-worth is tangled up with our work and creativity and bank accounts. Unspooling those threads feels destabilizing, even as it allows for stronger foundations to form.

Here’s what I’ve learned as I feel into what’s next for me on this ride of fulfilling my earthly purpose:

Get comfortable being uncomfortable. You’re fine.

Lift your hands off the steering wheel. You’re trying to steer a matchbook car and we’re trying to chauffeur you around in a Bentley.

Stop trying to stuff yourself into a box. There is no box and never was.

Surrender. Everything is so much easier and so much more fun this way, please do it already.

Note to self: Surrender isn’t giving up.

Surrender is trusting that there are other forces at work.

Surrender is sinking into the idea that you don’t need to have all the answers. Or any of them.

If things don’t look the way you want or expect, it’s because room is being made for something better.

Since I don’t know what this moment requires, in terms of my work or my money or my writing or any of the life purpose things up for review right now, I have to soften in and trust myself, trust what I’m shown, trust my guides, and know that there is no such thing as failure.

Know that I am protected and loved and supported, just as we all are.

Whenever I check in lately, I get “write more.” Because my plan was always to spend half my time on my writing and the other half on my intuitive work (energy healings, readings, channeling the guides, etc). Maybe that’s the emotional rumbling I’m feeling. My higher self is shaking me down to remind me of what I was always here to do, and what I’ve forgotten or resisted or found hard lately.

So here’s to room for something better, for all of us. Here’s to surrendering into the arms of peace and joy and love and whatever the fuck is in it for us when we finally let the universe wrest control from our hot little hands.

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And to writing more, in whatever form that takes.

Death to Happily Ever After

Happily Ever After has finally been beaten out of me.

It only took forty years and multiple loves, entanglements, mistakes, and Oh-Shit-I’m-Being-Weird-Again situations, but I made it.

It’s not as dire as it may sound to those of us who’ve been raised on Disney movies and romance novels.

The death of Happily Ever After means being able to appreciate each day with someone for what it is, rather than constantly grasping for Is This It? Is this The One? Are there babies and an engagement ring in my future? Will I finally get to update my relationship status on Facebook?

It means enjoying the person for who they are rather than what your relationship might be in the future. It means getting to know someone without mentally redecorating their apartment in case you move in one day.

I don’t think life meant to drag my Happily Ever After into a back alley and shoot it, I think life meant to show me how to surrender. How to take things as they come. How to be present in the moment-to-moment of each experience without regretting the past or grasping for a particular future.

When we love someone, it’s natural to want that love to last forever.

And, really, it does.

If I love you once, I will love you for the duration. A corner of my heart is annexed to you and you get to live there forever, like it or not.

I was joking the other day that I need to expand the physical mass of my heart because it’s running out of corners.

He replied, “Good thing your heart is infinite.”

Our hearts are infinite. There is no limit to the possibilities, up to and including Happily Ever After. Some of us do meet that person and choose to keep showing up and loving them until this mortal coil is shuffled, however imperfect and wounded it feels. Some of us have even mastered enough of this human existence to love with ease and pure joy.

Since I want Happily Right The Eff Now, I’m pulling the plug on Happily Ever After.

Because there is no past, there is no future, and my heart has more corners than I could hope to fill in this lifetime.

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