Are you struggling too?
In late December I went to a small winter solstice celebration. We chanted, made fire offerings, and wrote down all of the things we wanted to burn away as we welcomed the return of the light.
I knew what I wanted to let burn away:
Anxiety
Scarcity
Anything that wasn’t true
At the end of this ceremony we all pulled a card to make meaning of the coming year. The card I pulled had a pretty clear meaning:
You are in for some amazing shit.
I mean it didn’t say exactly that, but it may as well have. The card was gorgeous and so were the ideas it conveyed: abundance, harvest, success, creativity, health, truth, wealth. All the good things that pretty much everyone wants.
And as December was wrapping up and the Questions You’ll Wish You Asked journals were changing thousands of lives, I felt - dare I say it - pretty damn happy. This card felt spot on.
I’m doing what I came here for.
It’s possible to be successful and creatively aligned.
I can be a good mom, prolific creator, and have fulfilling relationships too.
This life is some amazing shit!
And then…you guys.
(You totally saw this part coming.)
Sometime around the first of the year, things got *really* fucking hard.
Like, unforeseeable amounts of emotional pain, obstacle after obstacle in my professional life, financial uncertainty, huge surges of fear that I will never have enough/do enough/be enough, the pervasive thought that I am such a hopeless/pointless/purposeless sack of insecure potatoes…and on and on.
It has been *rough.*
Now we hear this idea a lot that when you’re “up-leveling” and “burning away” the stuff that no longer serves you, things can get pretty painful.
Photo by Pırıl Osmanoğlu on Unsplash
The caterpillar does not become the butterfly in this really delicate and seamless way, right? It’s probably really terrifying inside that cocoon…devastating even, to lose all that you know without knowing what you’re going to become. We all see the butterfly, but what about the transformation?
I am being forged in the fire, I keep reminding myself.
I trust in my wings.
And I truly do believe that, but I want to add my own caveat to this idea that pain always has a purpose.
Yes, I try to scrape every last bit of wisdom from the deepest parts of my own suffering…
But.
I also think that life is just hard sometimes.
I think that being a human is messy and painful.
I think that if we’re truly feeling it all, that those big wonderful abundant “life is some amazing shit” moments are going to coexist with “I feel like I’m wading through shit” moments.
These dark periods can mean something *and* they can just mean that we’re human.
I think that sometimes we just need to allow ourselves to feel it all, allow it all, and trust that yes, we are being shaped into our most beautiful selves *and* that we are also just allowed to struggle sometimes too.
And if, by chance, you have been to this deeply uncomfortable place recently, I just want to offer you two truths:
Something is being burned away that will reveal deeper and more beautiful layers.
And also…
It’s okay to struggle. Life is really fucking hard. Keep going.
We are the caterpillars. We are the butterflies. We are the beautiful abundant harvest cards and the quivering sacks of insecure potatoes.
None of it is wrong. All of us belongs.
Love,
Melissa
PS: Did you read any good books in January? Do you want a book journal where you can write about them? The Book Lover’s Companion is live and there’s even a version for Teens out now too. Check them out here.
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