September Starseed Report: Big, Gentle Purge
I’m sitting on my bed-turned-couch-turned bed, writing this, sick. I’ve been sick since last week, which has accompanied me through my birthday, my workweek, and this blessed rainy day I’ve taken today, where I decided to stay home. To say the least, there is certainly an energy of purging and release going around!
For many of us, when it comes time to release our old skins — release what is no longer serving us, what we are clearly shedding and ready to get rid of, we suddenly cling on — telling ourselves “No! No! I must keep this old version of me! It no longer fits and is mighty uncomfortable to live in AND I don’t really like its style anymore, but I must keep it! I must!
.. Sound familiar?
I absolutely, 100% do this to myself. All the time. I beg for change, pray for transformation, work with and through all the incredibly challenging and uncomfortable parts of the chrysalis, and then when it comes time to emerge from my old-skin-turned-shell, I hesitate. How could the new skin possibly feel better than the old one? How could I possibly be headed towards something that’s more fulfilling, more loving, more nurturing than what I knew last?
This is where we create our own conundrum of love, joy and success. A great somatic teacher I follow, Jonathan Mead, often talks about how one measurement of healing is not our capacity to handle heartache and pain, but instead our capacity to handle joy. Increasing that capacity, when we don’t know it’s parameters and shape, can feel scary.
Emerging from this chrysalis is literally trusting that we can step into the new, dappled, fading fall sunlight, and trust that this new playing field (hint play), will indeed bring us more joy, more love, and more acceptance than where we stood last. It take courage, of course, and it takes trust, but is a truly worthwhile process.
What happens when we lack that trust — in the universe, in ourselves, in the direction we’re going in — is that we’re forced to sift back through all the old crap we just intentionally left behind as a reminder of where we’re going and why. It sucks, it’s uncomfortable, and to be completely truthful, it’s just kind of gross. To have to go back and re-feel all the yuck feelings we just spent and entire year (or more) trying to shed, just to be reminded of why we don’t wanna go back there? Pass me the trash can, please. Barf.
And if you find yourself in the place of having to go through all those feelings again? All those gross places of self-doubt, deep loneliness, and the feeling that you’re truly never going to get out of that “yuck” cycle?
.. Remind yourself that your mind just realllyyyy wanted one more look at the expired, 1990’s lens of why you’re not good enough before it goes that mindset (and its corresponding habits) finally go in the trash, for good. Your brain is just taking one more lap around its expired thoughts before it decides that nope, yup, I realllllyyyy want to let go of this stuff. Get rid of it. Sionara!
If you can meet that process with radical tenderness, instead of the usual pushing away, turning away from, or trying to ‘get rid’ of, you may find yourself a gentler place to land than what you’re used to.
To help with the process, here are a few tips to embrace during this time of (ugh,) shedding:
+ Take up a hobby, sport, pastime or activity that has everything to do with how you feel doing that thing, and nothing to do with your percieved success or achievement doing that thing.
+ Practice radical tenderness. This is a term I made up this morning, and what I mean by it is this:
When the difficult feelings surface (anxiety, depression, (-) self-talk), practice embracing these feelings and bringing them closer into yourself, caring for them and tending to them as if they were a precious part of yourself. Because truthfully, they are. The more we can integrate this difficult parts of ourselves, instead of rejecting them, the more whole and accepting of ourselves we’ll feel.
+ Watch the new moon reading! … Kidding. But only sort of! What I mean here is connect with like-minded people and share your experience. Seriously, there’s no better way to get out of your own head than by getting into someone else’s. ask for support. Offer it.
