Typing the title, I’m feeling a little not right, because the last blog I wrote was in August of 2021, and then I was hoping to be writing regularly.  And that makes me feel guilty.  Like I have failed.  The last five years have been challenge.  In my more optimistic (healthy?) moments, I lean into the seed metaphor.  I was planted deep into the dark, fertile ground of Life.  My shell was extremely tough, and it has taken a good season of darkness and germination to break through that before I could start to see the light.  It feels like it’s for reals this time.

What’s different?  Maybe it’s reaching bottom.  They say that people often have to reach bottom before they are ready to change or heal.  I usually hear this in relation to addiction.  But maybe I have been addicted to the dark.  Maybe it is the years of therapy with an amazing healer (thank you Rhi) or the addition of several other healers to my circle that generated enough critical mass, tipping the scales enough that I had to change.  Maybe it’s Joan Didion and Betty White passing away, two very different women who have moved and inspired me in very different ways.  Maybe it is a rejection I received this year that laid me low, that did not allow me to keep moving forward, business as usual, with the drive that no longer serves me.  Or maybe it is reading the right words at the right time, and hearing that click in my head and my heart that registers rightness.

But something is different.  

I’ve started following Instagram.  That’s not the difference.  I started following it because it’s so much easier and fun than Facebook.  And adds kept popping up for Heatherash Amara’s book Warrior Goddess Training: Become The Woman You Are Meant To Be.  It looked really good, right up my ally, and so I asked for it and got it for Christmas.  

And then, as a typical randomite, overstressed person with Covid brain, I got distracted in every way possible as I sat down to read it.  The cover references don Miguel Ruiz and his book The Four Agreements,  so I sat and thought about that for a while.  The opening epigraph is by Dainne Akerman, so I had to google her (it’s okay if you are doing the same thing now, too.). There is an explanation key to some of the terms Amara uses, one of them being “European Shamanism”, and boy did I go on a bender researching that, and, of course, ordering several books on Amazon about it, and a few more books by Sharon Blackie, whom I love, who writes about ancestral connection to spirit and earth and life. 

Eventually I did start reading.  Of course, I had to stop and find a pencil to mark the great things she says, which led me to notice how thirsty I was, which took me to the dishwasher that needed emptying, and so on, and so on, and so on…  

I finally settled in, continued reading, and came across these words in chapter 2: 

          When I couldn’t control the external world, I tried to make things better by transforming the sense of “Life isn’t right when…” to “I’m not right, unless…” Then all I had to do was fix myself [emphasis added]. The problem was that what I considered to be “right” was an illusionary image of perfection that changed depending on what I thought people around me wanted me to be. 

Ding!  Right?  Done!  I could have saved years of therapy (sorry, Rhi) by reading this book, if it had been published, years ago!  Okay, not really.  Because I knew this.  This had been the focus of the last several years for me.  But here was someone else saying it, and sometimes what it takes is hearing it from someone other than your therapist, friend, mom or teacher.  Or I’m just thick.  

I spent all of my life blending, bending, and camouflaging—aligning with what others wanted me to be, rather than who I truly am.  All in an effort to make things better.  But the reality is, it was never better for me.  Not really.  And there would be times when the real me, my “inner child” would scream, break things, run amok, causing delightfully fun chaos, until the older sister would re-establish control, send the little girl to her room, clean things up, maybe repaint and rearrange the furniture, and firmly submerge any sense of self that might have surfaced.  Because it is so much safer to be invisible!  

Safer.  And for a long time, that was enough.  

Not any more. 

It’s no surprise, then, that Amara’s words, “we try to be who we believe we are supposed to be…our actions are aligned with fear,” resonated in my marrow. And I realized, I have finally arrived at a place where my fear of being inauthentic outweighs my fear of being hurt.  I have finally reached a place where I am beginning to love myself—my whole self, my light, my dark, my all—enough to want to spend the rest of my life living in that realness. I now from experience that life, as Amara also discusses in her book, is cyclical.  It isn’t as if surviving one dark spell means the rest of our life is light.  There is no “one and done.” Our lives mimic Life.  There are seasons.  And like the plant I started this post talking about, there will be times of darkness that we pass through and, if we let ourselves, germinate in.  I can’t hide in hopes the dark won’t find me.  In fact, doing that in the past has hurt me more than feeling it.  Living through the dark also means living in the magic, the potential for change and rebirth!  And, when I have made it through, breached the surface, and grown some new greenery, I will, inevitably, find myself on the other side, maybe losing some leaves, maybe going dormant.  There will be more seasons of dark mystery; times of pain, but also times to rest and reflect, to transform and be reborn.  And one day, certainly, my energy will return to the greater mystery to nourish a new life, a new opportunity for infinite potential. But that is all part of Life, too.

I am looking forward to reading on in Warrior Goddess Training.  I’m looking forward to opening to my continuing journey.  Let me know if you want to read it with me.  You can buy it directly from Heatherash Amara at WarriorGoddess.com, at your local book store, or at any hugenormous chain store.  

Be gentle with your Warrior Self!

Dana