A little about me, if you didn’t already know it, I spent the first 24 years of my life struggling with anxiety, depression, and OCD. Then for another six or so I was still working with anxiety and what was not the most amazing self-image. It was a lot better in those six years than the previous 24, but nothing like the liberation I have felt since being in my 30s.
Why am I sharing this with you? Well, this stuff was pretty debilitating. Like to the point that I would sometimes spend hours getting ready to go out only to take off all my clothes and make-up and stay in bed instead. My anxiety and fear of death was prohibiting me from living my life to the fullest.
Maybe you don’t struggle with anything this extreme, but what I find is that most people do lie somewhere on this spectrum.
The way it might manifest for you is in a fear of cutting your hair in a particular way. Or in not saying what bothers you in a relationship with someone. It might be that you don’t believe you can quit your job and pursue something you really love.
There are myriad half-steps and hold-backs we perform on the day to day.
Each one of these “small” decisions ends up leading us down a path toward a life that feels inauthentic and unsupportive of who we really are. We end up in a place where day in and day out we carry out mundane tasks without any real thought or feeling.
Sometimes it feels like how did we get here? And how do we end up anywhere else?
I remember being in my public policy job, showing up to a box each day to send emails back and forth and sit in meetings. Often I would wonder if what we were doing was making any real impact on the children I wanted to help. Most of the time the statistics showed us we weren’t.
There wasn’t any real joy in it for me and I loathed being beholden to a desk on the daily. I made incredibly good money and had PTO but because of work responsibilities I never took any real vacations, much less traveled out of the country. Dollars were stacking up in my bank account yet my soul was feeling more and more depleted.
At the same time I was pursuing my certificate as a yoga teacher and I felt like this was the opportunity I needed to escape the grind. In one way it is hilarious looking back on it but in another it was my way out.
I kept dreaming of spending the next summer teaching yoga, riding my bike, and tending to a farm. I had no prospects, just a dream. My body longed to spend time outdoors, foraging herbs, and maybe swimming in an ocean.
What kept coming up for me during this time was a memory of when I was in my early 20s. I had fallen deeply in love with someone I still adore to this day. It was the first time I think I really felt love in a magical, spiritual way. The circumstances of our lives at the time made no sense, we lived far apart from each other, and there were many other “blocks” in our way.
But somehow, for the first time in my life, I didn’t have fear. And I just showed up each day and let the universe hold me. I let it show me the way. I remember sleeping over at my sister’s sometimes because she lived closer to him. Sometimes he would come down and we would spend time at my friend’s. It all seemed to work out and yet that incessant anxiety that plagued me was not there.
Our relationship would continue to prove to me what was possible with a dream and some love. One summer we put all our things in storage and decided to drive across the country, a long-held dream of mine since reading On The Road. This was in the days of printing directions or using an actual physical map. There was Couchsurfing but no Airbnb. It was a wild experience that ended up costing me more money than I had anticipated but it changed my life in ways I could never have imagined.
Going back to that dream of teaching yoga and riding my bike and tending to a farm — well, the opportunity did arise to move to Rhode Island. An unexpected turn of events, I had imagined myself somewhere out in Oregon, but the path opened and I took it. I found a place to live on a small homestead with a couple where I wouldn’t have to pay utilities if I tended to the farm.
Not too far away was a yoga studio and I reached out with a cold email to see if they needed teachers. The owner responded saying she was interested in meeting. We had a wonderful conversation and she offered me a job as a sub and teaching the community class at her studio. Wildly enough the first gig I was given was to sub the owner’s class on the Summer Solstice. Pretty terrifying but it actually went amazingly.
I spent the summer biking around, foraging foods, and swimming in the ocean. As the summer came to a close I started to become nervous because I didn’t have a plan or idea for what would come next. What I started to learn in those years is that it doesn’t seem we really need to.
Over and over again, I would find that even when I was terrified, even when I had no idea how it would work out, if an opportunity arose and my body longed for it I needed to take it. The result was always beyond my wildest imagination.
Over and over again, I would find that when I was terrified and an opportunity arose that seemed like the “logical” thing to do, it always led to a dead end. One that I would end up having to find my way out of.
As those years went on I made half as much money than I did in my previous gig, then half that as I would go on to start my own cannabis business. However, I traveled to more countries, went to more festivals, and had more time for the people and things I loved than ever before.
All of this might sound like I’m trying to get you to quit your job and go do the wildest things in your imagination. Honestly, that’s not entirely wrong. If you know in your soul that this would make you come alive and you are up for the task of befriending your fear then I say do it.
What I have also learned in all my years is that the jobs will still be there, the houses will still be there, the cars will still be there as well. You can always go back, there’s no rule that says you can’t.
But we can’t always get back the opportunities we have missed. The Universe seems to be a loving creature, though, and actually I have found she will help you find a way to what you desire if you show her that you want it.
So that is perhaps what Terence McKenna was referring to when he said,
“Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed.”
I remember reading that quote so many years ago and it moved me, touched a part of myself that knows the Truth. I was too scared to do anything about it for a long time, but eventually the pain of cloistering myself away became too unbearable. I had to find out. I needed to try.
I also need to say, I am not a trust fund kid. I don’t have a lot of means to fall back on. I’m a woman and we know how hard that can be on this planet. I do have privileges as a white person in this culture and a lot of the world. There are things we need to acknowledge because in some ways the “law of attraction” is bullshit but in a lot of ways there is truth to it too.
What I strive to do for myself, and in my work, is to help us see that there is no other path forward. Meaning, the only way that we get to a more free, more loving, more wonderous world is by pursuing the path of freedom, love, and wonder.
Of course someone needs to tend to the collective resources, but we can do that while also tending to our souls. This is not abandoning responsibility. If anything, it is stepping up to our full responsibility as divine beings. Making manifest what is truly possible for this planet.
I don’t know about you, but I feel better when I take care of myself and the things around me. That means being in integrity, cleaning up after myself and others, being kind, doing the work whether that be weeding the garden or helping myself become more compassionate.
But again, I have to say, I think that being in integrity and taking full responsibility includes answering those longings of our souls. If we never strum that note within us it will never be heard. And we have no idea the implications that has on the rest of the world.
One other thing I have learned by living in this way is that the Universe also loves surprises. Good surprises. If I take the first step without seeing the whole staircase, she tends to create this elaborate, crystal, undulating thing that shows me heights I couldn’t have imagined on my own.
So maybe the jump you take today is buying a ticket to that thing you’ve been wanting to do for so long.
But maybe the jump is to tell someone how you really feel, and about your needs within relationship. In this way you open up the possibility for that person to show you that they can and want to be there for you in the ways that you need. Or if they can’t meet you there, then their exit allows space for someone who wants to and will.
To me, that is incredible, life-changing magic.
Over the years, with a dream, a bit of hope in my heart and often a heaping of fear I have learned to live more fully. Less regretfully. I have found that when life elicits that feeling of excitement within me that it wants to see it all the way through.
All it needs for me to do is follow each clue, one step at a time.
“Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.”
— Joseph Campbell