Daring to Let Go

Once again, it's been a while since posting here. The last time I did was just days after I experienced a horrible fall, and then a series of events unfolded that led me down a path of suffering and barely being able to cope from one day to the next. I tried to keep everything together by defaulting to my facade of the strong infallible human creature I discovered people believed I was. However, I had never experienced such a mind-boggling lack of control and knew that I needed to remove my patterned protective blocks to process what was occurring and get to the other side of my misery...

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This has been a difficult year filled with varying degrees of suffering. However, they were overridden by so much joy created through reciprocal love, acceptance, and support by those closest to me—those I trust and who trust me through the sharing of our truths. Some might believe this must be a small circle, but I am blessed with well-established life-long relationships that I cherish deeply.

For me, experiencing both suffering and joy are necessary steps in my life dance, similar to that which I have tip toed around my whole life—the intricate and frustrating footing that leads me to either the safety of sanity or its opposing danger. I often chose the latter because, ironically, it felt safer...

After reading my memoir, many shared their surprise at my lifelong struggle with emotional instability. The shock is understandable because I was incredibly skilled at hiding my truth; I was a functioning, dysfunctional person. Yet, after such a lengthy battle and almost succumbing to mental breakdown, I somehow got to a place of surrendering the fight that I allowed to take over every facet of my being when surrounded by certain people and circumstances. Getting there created space to process my story in order to understand my accountability within it. Writing about my pain was a survival tool that required trusting my story rather than being right within it. In many circumstances, the way I responded to my story was what validated my perception of it.

I used to get frustrated with people who told me to "just let it go" because that created even more crazy-making within me. I thought about how easy they made it seem and how hard I knew it was, if even possible. To cope, I created a program that supported others to get to that "letting go" by processing some pretty heavy shit—I used to tell them that they had to shovel through the shit in the doorway to get to the other side and yet, I could never get there myself. Although I started that journey many times, I just wasn't courageous enough to follow through. As a result, I felt like a fraud within the fulfillment of advocating for others.

Writing my story was the only way I could achieve for myself what I supported others to accomplish—the ever-present dangling carrot of sanity. And with that achievement came the opportunity to choose bliss and all that accompanies it. Just as I had inspired others to, I finally trusted my story and processed it through the writing of it. It was never about being a rock-star author or telling anyone else how to be but rather about working through my shit to finally get to the other side. The writing was simply my tool to let go of the insanity.