Am I Brave Enough to Be Who I Really Am?

It’s been so long. I’ve missed writing to you. So much has happened – to me, and to you. How are you? Was your summer filled with laughter and long days in the sun? Or long dark moments of confusion and anxiety? Did your heart open? Or did it break? Or both?

The end of my time in San Francisco was full. Full of love and celebration and tears and excruciating good byes. My heart still aches for the village we left behind, for the women who held my transformation and my pain and saw me through to my Spring, and yet my soul is dancing in celebration of finally being home. Home in the New England seasons, home in nature, home on land that feels like it’s been waiting for me my whole life.

Our new town of Medfield is just 10 minutes from where I grew up, although my parents now live in Boston (still only 40 minutes away), I worried that coming back to my roots was going to feel like I was going backwards, like I was retreating back to my old life and not spreading my wings or being adventurous enough. I had changed so much while I was in San Francisco, was I going to revert back to the way I was at 18? Would I discover that my woo-woo-ness was just a phase nurtured by living in hippie San Francisco? Would people I knew growing up judge me for being such a weirdo now? Would my family think I was crazy?

I do know that the deep connection to the divine, to the earth and to magic isn’t a phase, in fact, it’s only intensified since being here.

I don’t know how people in this part of the country are going to receive me. I am for sure the only one walking around braless in the grocery store with a crystal around my neck, but I know you can’t judge a book by its cover.

So all I can do is ask myself everyday:

Am I Brave Enough to Be Who I Really Am?

Every time I leave the house, every time someone comes over I have to take a deep breath and choose, am I going to be me or am I going to hide? How much can I streeeetttttcccchhh myself to embody the full range of who I am now – from what I choose to wear to how I answer basic questions like, “how’s work?”.

As humans, we don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. We are wired for harmony because that’s how we survived for centuries, for banding together and being protected by the tribe. So when we decide to be different, from another person, or from who we used to be (which usually means different from the person you care about not making uncomfortable) we unconsciously worry about our safety.

Plus we’re up against a culture that tells us that women are here to be quiet, nice and pretty, not outspoken, magic yielding, wild, unique beings. And especially not a WITCH, gasp! A witch is just a woman who pays attention to the cycles of nature and works with it’s power and lessons to connect with a higher source and manifest the life they desire. It’s really not that big of a deal. It would be like saying, you take YOGA?! Blasphemy! There’s just been 2000 years of bad branding to deliberately steal our feminine power. Because when you tap into the great cycle of life, so much is possible. But I digress, let’s talk about this more later, shall we?

Change. It’s a tricky thing. We either can’t change because we have a belief about ourselves that keeps us stuck like “I’m not lovable” or “I’m not smart” or “I’ve been tracked to be a lawyer my whole life, so I’m a lawyer”.

OR we are changing dramatically on the INSIDE, but have a fear of showing it on the outside because of all the safety issues we talked about above. But here’s the thing…

Nature has two rules: grow and be different.

Think about how many different kinds of flowers there are… and even within the same type of flower, every flower is different.

Think about a caterpillar. It starts out as a glorified worm, turns into mush and becomes a butterfly!

No one ever looks a tree and thinks, “that’s so weird, that tree used to be a seed! Now it’s a huge tree!”

I know it sounds cliche, but we aren’t actually taking in the rules of the universe: to grow and be different. TO CHANGE.

We live by the rules of: blending in, don’t rock the boat, stick to the plan, just be normal, you are who you are.

Ten years ago I was an ambitious New York party girl who wanted to own her own event planning company. I cared about what clubs I could get into and what brand my shoes were. I was also an incredibly loving, fun, kind young woman. There was nothing wrong with who I was then, that was me. I didn’t feel like I was hiding (though after some good therapy I did realize I was hiding some things). I’m just different now. I changed. And that’s what I’m supposed to do.

Say it with me: I’m supposed to change.

Sinking into these two rules of nature, grow and be different, are especially poignant now as we see white supremacist groups promoting racism and Trump repealing DACA – both of which are centered around “sameness = safety”. Know that stepping out as who you are, a soul with a personality, belief system and desires that are one of kind, promotes the kind of world we want to see, one where we are valued for our unique expression, not what we look like or where we come from.

So my dear, who are you really? If change and growth and being different were widely accepted, what would you do? How would you act? What would you wear? What would you say? What would you do for work? How would you raise your children?

And are you brave enough to be who you really are?

So much love,

Sarah

(Photo by Melissa Hoffman)