It burns.
It feels like my flesh is on fire.
The tears falling down my face are hot.
I’ve invested so much time and energy into my family system of origin, and now it’s laying shattered at my feet.
There’s no going back, only forward unto a vast unknown.
Am I the crazy one? Am I being dramatic? Am I making this up?
I speak demands inside my head to my creator.
Come nearer. I want to feel you now. I know you are here. Show yourself to me.
So is this how it will be?
One by one, the people I’ve related to from a place of survival strategies will all be plucked from me.
I want to go back.
No, I don’t want to go back.
But here feels like too much to be with.
Someone has taken my compass and ripped out the magnet.
I’m spinning, spinning.
Dizzy.
What is up and what’s down?
How do I orient myself in Reality now?
What used to drive me forward is nowhere to be found… where once was a navigation system to program coordinates into is now… a Nothing.
I’m in the passenger seat, and life is driving the car.
I imagine this has always been the case, but I’m clever, so I’ve devised layers upon layers of controlling and manipulating ways - they made it seem like I was driving.
Before.
Now, it’s after.
But after what?
After asking to be cleansed of the programming and survival patterns?
After praying for forgiveness?
After dying a bit more to my illusions of selfhood?
After millions of tears cried?
After giving up (parts of) my addiction to being needed, valuable, and a good girl…an easy-going girl… someone who will make everyone and everything OK?
After being willing to look at the world as it is; the good, the bad, the ugly, the mundane, the gorgeous.
After allowing grief to have its way with me?
After setting and maintaining healthy boundaries?
Who am I if I’m not the person I fashioned from the clay of my childhood and teenage trauma, epigenetic material, and experiences?
I feel naked. Exposed. Found out.
Tired. Over it. Discombobulated.
I feel rage.
Blinding, white, hot rage.
I welcome her. I need her back.
She teaches me about righteous anger.
About putting my own needs in the center.
I am a student.
Always a student of unfiltered humanity in the flesh.
It burns.
I will let it burn.
Deep breaths.
Baby steps.
(*Great* fucking snacks.)
Rising like a Phoenix from the ashes.
🍾 Friends! Celebrate with me! I beckon you! 🥂
OMG! This is the 50th essay I’ve written and published here on Substack since October 1st, 2021.
I don’t know if you know, but this is a BFD!
For me, being able to consistently show up for something for this long is a miracle.
So often, we forget to celebrate all the steps it takes to become.
It’s one of the big humble pies we all need to snack on as humans.
We tend to look toward the goal, the horizon, and the promotion.
All the while, as spiritual people, we know *darn well* that the PRESENT is the holy grail we seek. Aaaaand we forget. I forget. But not today, Satan!
TODAY I REMEMBER TO CELEBRATE!
Play a game with me?
Let me know in the comments one thing I can celebrate with you (big or small) so we can pause for a little minute and remember how far we’ve come.
Sending you all my love from a challenging and beautiful place in my life,
Karna 💜
Not everyone knows how to sit in a raw stream experience where the snakes of consciousness and feeling twist about each other; neither when we are in the heart of it, or witnessing it unfolding in another.
It can seem incoherent, and that is the impulse we feel: to pull away, to look away. It is the wrong impulse. The invitation, both to the one in the raw stream and to the one witnessing, is to feel coherence through feeling the incoherence, the thread that sounds it’s truth in the spaces between the jagged notes.
I hear you. This is real. Keep coming here until you no longer need to. When it is your turn to witness, just be present. We learn this way so that in time it may no longer be needed.
This is pure gold. Your writing is so visceral, vulnerable, and helpful! What a time and what courage it takes to keep showing up, to consistently deliver our gifts, and to make the changes we need to be the strong and true and wild women we were born to be. You continue to inspire me!