“You were made to live and love with your whole heart. It’s time to show up and be seen.”
- Brene Brown
In talking to a friend about all that’s happened this past year, I felt an overwhelming surge of emotions for how difficult this year had actually been. I don’t think I realized that before now—I don’t think I’d let myself. I’d spent the past year focused on the present moment and having faith in the future. Now that I have time to look back, it almost takes my breath away to acknowledge just what a struggle it was.
Healing always is. Transforming always is.
That’s what this year has brought me.
Transformation.
In ways I never could have imagined…
I was broken down over and over and over again, looking at the darkest pieces of myself, stripping down those masks I had built for my own survival, my own self-preservation, until there was nothing left but me.
Who I truly am.
The soul of myself—for better and for worse.
It was painful. It was beautiful. I wouldn’t trade this experience for the world for who I have become. But now I’m acknowledging what a feat that was, what a journey it was, when I couldn’t see that before.
Maybe you never can when you’re in the midst of transformation.
The butterfly can’t see the wings that are being created for her own future—all she feels is the breakdown, the metamorphosis, the shift. In the goo between caterpillar and butterfly, she doesn’t see what she was or who she’ll be, she just allows the transformation to take place.
I feel like this is where I’ve been this year—aware that a shift was taking place but not fully cognizant of all of that change and the struggle it took to get here...
At least, until now.
I don’t want to go back. Because I am changed now, irrevocably. I learned what it is to allow myself to be happy, to let love in, to love unconditionally and with an open heart, to step more fully into myself—the soul of myself—and to face life with the courage and faith that it is beautiful, that this life is meant for me, that love and happiness are meant for me, and that there’s no going back.
I want to look forward now, to live with that courage and with that open heart. And I don’t want to wait until New Years Day.
Because it is here, this is now.
This is where I begin.
(This essay was originally published December, 27 2018 by Susan Dawn)