Falling in Love with Myself

Free Yourself by LFTattooDesign

There are many aspects to the rebirth process I am currently co-creating with my Higher Self. Some of them are thrilling and joyful, some invoke the deepest grief I've ever felt, and many parts encompass both soaring joy and overwhelming grief at once. I feel the joy of release, relief at loosening the gripping and clinging that have held me in this cage for so long. I feel the grief of all the years of living in the cage, of all the years where there was no hope, no option of freedom.

One major piece of this step in my healing journey is becoming closer to myself, to identify my needs so that I can meet them for myself. This is a very new process for me as I grew up repressing all my needs, and have lived in denial of having needs for most of my life. This made me feel strong and self-reliant, when in reality I was too weak to allow my vulnerability to show in this way. I was scared to ask for what I needed because of a deep-seated belief that no one would be able to meet these needs, that no one would care to try. Now I am learning that while this may be true of other people, it is not true of myself. I can rely on myself to show up, to care, to try to meet my needs. No one else is responsible for meeting my needs, and I am very lucky to be a reliable and responsible person that I can truly count on. I have been showing up for myself throughout this healing process, and I now have the opportunity to deepen this relationship to self by figuring out what my core needs are, so that I can learn how to meet them for myself, and how to invite others to join me in meeting those needs.

One need that I have identified for myself is a need for security, to know that someone will always be there for me. In the past, I have endeavored to meet this need through romantic relationships and through external accomplishments that I felt would earn me love. Both of these strategies for meeting my need for security have proven unsustainable. No one else can promise to be there forever, and even when that promise has been made, it hasn't worked out that way. My drive toward over-achievement as a means of earning security has also failed me, in that it is an unsustainable approach to life. The more I have come to value balance and wholeness, the less I have been able to maintain this illusion. My ego has felt secure in fleeting moments of achievement, in winning awards and receiving accolades, but this affirmation is not a daily experience and the feeling of security it brings cannot last without new infusions of praise, which require that I deny my basic needs for rest and relaxation in order to accumulate more and more achievements.

I have learned that other people and external achievements cannot meet my need for security. What I am now discovering is that I can meet this need by falling in love with myself. I can promise myself to always be there and I can keep that promise. I can promise to witness and hold and nurture and support myself every single day, and I am able to follow through consistently. And when it gets too hard for me to hold, when I am overwhelmed and cannot do these things for myself, I can reach out to those around me for support and still get my need met in those moments. This is a place of power, empowerment, transformation. Plus, it means I get to fall in love again, which is the best! I get to romance myself, take myself out and treat myself to special things, write myself love letters and make art for myself and smile at random moments from the sheer joy of it all. This is what liberation feels like, sweet and juicy and enticing, infinitely fascinating and expansive. I am not yet living in this place daily, but I am so blessed to be able to visit here today, and to know that this where I'm headed. I'm manifesting security and love for myself, with myself, and through myself. Thank you for witnessing this journey with me, and for all the love you've helped me tap into. Seeing myself through your eyes has helped me to see myself through my own eyes with more compassion, acceptance, and love than I ever though possible. Thank you all for that great and precious gift.

Death, Death, Death and Rebirth

Drawing by Kalil Cohen, CC BY-NC-SA

In the past year and a half that I've been rewiring my brain, the fruits of my labors grow juicier and more abundant, however the journey continues to get more difficult rather than easier. I attribute this to building capacity, to being able to take on the harder stuff I knew was waiting for me as I began this process but wasn't yet ready to deal with. When I am able to maintain this perspective on my experience, it feels really exciting and affirming that things are getting harder. At the same time, things are really fucking hard right now, and god damn it if I don't feel resentful about that. I've been fully committed to this healing process and diving deep for this long, so when is it going to get easier?

Many years before I started this process it felt like I was dying every single day. Every moment was a struggle, a conflict between my soul's truths and the world I was surrounded by. Eventually this faded back a bit to where I felt like I wanted to die most of the time, but it didn't feel like I actually was dying in the present moment. This was due to addressing certain major issues in between me and my true Self, including transitioning my gender and articulating and beginning to live my radical politics. For a while this felt okay, like a resting place in which I felt comfortable. Then my life began to fall apart around me again as my soul yearned for something more - for a more full expression of my true Self in the world. This is when I began this blog, began a new process of intentionally rewiring my brain. The underlying goal was to alleviate that feeling of wanting to die every single day, and for a while it worked. I felt more centered, more grounded, more connected to my emotions and my body. I had a greater understanding of my issues from childhood, of my triggers and areas for growth, a growing acceptance of my flaws and pain. This gave me respite, courage, faith, and deepened my commitment to becoming my true Self, to continue peeling back the layers of self-protection and hiding in between my soul and my current reality.

I turned to face the truth of my deepest grief, greatest rage, and looming fears, and that's when all hell broke loose. Here were the issues I had been running from for 30 years, the struggles that haunted me from birth, the reasons I had kept my emotions repressed for so long, had denied contact between my body and conscious mind. Suddenly, it feels once again like I am dying every day. It feels like the grief is too great to bear, like the rage is infinite and uncontrollable, like all my fears are coming true in front of me. I kept myself in tight control because I feared intense pain for which I would be unprepared. Now, as I loosen my grip, this is exactly what I'm experiencing. The deepest pain I've ever felt, and no certainty to cling to, no belief system that can make it alright. I am dying right now - my old self is dying as I write this, as I reveal this truth to you. Part of me believes this is happening because I am ready for this false self to die, and that it is making room for my true Self to be born in its place. Sometimes that explanation makes sense and brings me some measure of comfort. Simultaneously, that birthing process feels remote and unimaginable, possibly a chimera that will never materialize. I may in fact just be dying, never to be reborn, never to find roots or an anchor or solace from this pain. I know that I will probably never again have the illusion of control as a means of creating safety for myself. Can I feel safe some other way? Can I feel my own truth and my connection to the Oneness of the Universe so deeply that I am safe simply because I am connected? Can I survive this death process long enough to get to the other side? I do not know. At times I feel certain that I can and will - that I am experiencing this extreme deconstruction process because I am ready to be transformed. Other times I feel desperate and panicked, wondering if it'd be better to just die right now and get it over with rather than endure the slow and excruciating death rattles that I'm currently experiencing. Rather than death and rebirth, this part of the process feels like death, death, death and (hopefully) rebirth.