When the structures fall away and all that’s left is you. The doing and the rules and the looking good – is let go - and yet, so hard to hold become inescapable. Then what? Then how? (read this one all the way through)

I see the fears, patterns and ideas of myself realizing.

I’ve always been afraid to be out of “shape” – and I’ve gained 50 pounds over the last seven years.

I’ve always been afraid to be broke. And I find myself scraping now to get by.

I’ve always been afraid to be stuck in the south in a mundane way – and I feel like that’s now true too.

I’ve always run from being a kid, a daughter taken care of by my parents or anyone, and now I am that too.

There are more, but those are the main ones I see right now.  

And so, when the running stopped – the running and conforming so not to become these things also stopped –when my protector relented. I became them. Not because I am them, but because I thought I was. And I get to look at the truth of them and in doing so realize and reorient to them - lovingly, with grief, and also see the undeniable baseline truth of me.

There’s a realignment to myself I get to unpack and understand. The magic of me that’s underneath them all - from the inside out in a way I couldn’t see before because I was running on ideas of me.

There’s a relationship with life, a true connection I get to learn from here - real life is brewing, where I learn who I am from life and open to myself as woman, as me. I get to enjoy the slow, richness truth and grow in my relationship with life - as my teacher or me rather than a haunting inevitability.

Who is the you underneath?