Lessons from Hibernation Part Duex: Life In The Cocoon

Last week I shared a breakthrough I had about my self-worth as it related to body image, and the unhealthy story I was STILL telling myself.

This week I want to talk about a second breakthrough I had, while in the middle of my first, because, well... because you can’t time this shit to fit your schedule.

I’d been wading through my cloud of, “wow, how am I going to push through all my horrible body image conditioning?” to no real avail, when I went to brunch with my dad, step-mom, brother, and my husband, Jaren. We don’t see them often, so we were catching up on holidays and birthdays, etc. At the end of the meal, Jaren offered to pay. When my dad finally accepts, he thanks us, and I say (without thinking), “well it’s more Jaren than me.” (You know how you blurt things out sometimes as though you have no control over your speech? That's me most days). Jaren—by now a pro at handling my awkward outbursts—was quick to retort, “no, we’re married, it’s both of us!” and a wave of “yeahs!” echoed around the table and then we moved on.

A couple days later, I found myself at the beach. I’ve been trying to make more of an effort to go there because it feeds my soul. I always feel invigorated and revived—and because my soul has been having such a weird, downer time, the ocean has been really helpful and healing. On this day, I had my journal. So I opened it, breathed in that salty air, and started writing out my declarations for my growth through the new moon in Scorpio, which had occurred the night before.

Here's what I wrote:

"I want to shed old habits. I want to strip the lethargy, self-doubt, and insecurity from my bones.

I want to wake up feeling vibrant, ready to take on the world, shoulders held high. I want to feel as weightless as a dolphin gliding across the pacific ... a descriptor I came up with because I'd been witnessing it at that very moment (!!!).

I want to embrace activity and exploration. I want to feel love for my body - to feel at home in it.

I am ready, universe, to tear this weight from my shoulders, to launch my spirit to a higher plane - to manifest joy, success, creativity, and abundance.

Universe, I am ready. And I believe in you.

Support me, so that I may walk the path I desire.

I am ready to expand beyond my comfort zone.

I am ready to be utilized for my highest design, my highest purpose.

Lead me to the doorways so that I may open them.

Help me guide myself to my truth.

This is my declaration. My privilege. My joy.

I am light.

I am willing.

I am strength.

I am love."

It felt really cathartic. Really empowering. And then I went on with my day.

Later that night, my dad called me.

I let it ring (because, remember in my last post how I said I didn't feel like talking to anyone lately?) He called again an hour later, and I decided to pick up. He said that he'd been thinking about the comment I'd made at lunch.

And he just wanted to know... "are you okay?"

I could have dropped the phone. I had no idea what was happening, except that tears were welling in my eyes and I couldn't form sounds with my vocal chords. I sobbed, quietly. My dad just sat there silent on the other side of the line, holding space for this random outburst, between my feeble attempts at garbling a sentence together that sounded something like, "uh, um, sorry, just, um, one sec..." as I tried to compose myself.

WTF was happening?!?

When I came to, we had a nice chat. I confessed that I guess I still had some unhealthy feelings about money that my comment at lunch had alluded to. I'm not the breadwinner right now—which, for the record, is what I always assumed I would be in a partnership. And it causes me a lot of anxiety. I attached my sense of self-worth to my ability to make money, and because I haven't been bringing in a whole lot recently, I've been struggling to come to terms with it.

Sometimes, when your body blurts out random sentiments... it's worth listening to the subtext. I hadn't done that until my dad called me out on it.

Of course, he, of all people, understood. In fact, he's the one I've modeled myself after. His attachment to self-worth as income has made a staggering impact on the stories I created for myself. The fact that he has been down-and-out in that department for so long, and had such a harsh fall from grace, has made him withdraw from most people close to him, including me.

So to hear the next sentence come from him felt like a very important, very direct gift from the universe.

He said, "I just want you to know, you bring so much more to the table than your income. You bring so much value. But I understand how hard it is to find yourself in a position that you hadn't planned on, when you had big dreams." If you know my dad, you know how surprising and powerful this was to hear. After we hung up, I kind of just sat down for a second and reflected.

How healing it had been for me to hear those words from the person who modeled this unhealthy story for me.

How healing it had been to hear my father ASK ME IF I WAS OKAY. I was so stunned by this question, so overwhelmed by emotion from it, because I GENUINELY CANNOT REMEMBER THE LAST TIME HE HAS ASKED ME THAT. My whole life, my dad has assumed I was the kid who just had it all together. I never needed help with school, with friends, with extra-curricular activities. I was always okay. BUT I WASN'T. Because nobody is ever always okay! And I don't think I'd ever realized how deeply my soul craved for him to ask me that question until it happened. And this insane emotional release was the result.

Emotions areN’T ‘bad.’

That morning I had asked the universe to help me find a way out of my fog, and it pointed a light-up sign toward my issues with worth, and my relationship with my father. It threw me a bone, too. It offered me a little something my soul needed, while simultaneously planting a giant red flag over the belief systems that are holding me back and keeping me from connecting to my higher self.

This is how the universe works sometimes.

And I am grateful that I've finally gotten to a point in my life where I can see it. There was a time when I was so attached to my stories, I wouldn't have been able to acknowledge how they were hurting me.

So, great.

Now I know that I've been attaching self-worth to BOTH body image and financial abundance.

It feels relieving. And it feels paralyzing.

Our brains go crazy when we start to peel ourselves away from old patterns.

It takes a LOT of initial brain power to reform an old habit; the brain would much prefer to keep things as they were. Operation "expend as little energy as possible." So that's happening on a psychological level. At the same time, on a spiritual level, when we have a breakthrough, it allows all the residual emotional gunk attached to whatever held us down to rise to the surface. It's like unclogging a drain. That baggage has to go somewhere in order to get out—and that somewhere is often right back up where it came from.

So, often times, after a happy release, we feel uncomfortable things: angry, irritable, empty, alone, depressed, confused, bitter, or numb.

I mean, it's enough to make you never want to grow at all. Which is why most people don't.

But I'm not most people, and my guess is if you're reading this, neither are you.

Your savior is your self-awareness.

If you can understand that your shitty feelings are just part of the release process, and if you can hold space for them as such, your chances for making it ALL the way to the other side of the breakthrough increase exponentially. If you can allow yourself to just BE in that space WITHOUT LETTING YOUR BRAIN JUDGE YOU FOR IT (its attempt to hold you down, to avoid having to change), you will move through it.

And then, if you can simultaneously do your best to connect to your soul energy as you trudge through the mental muck, the speed at which you move through it can increase, too. That's the phase I'm in right now. I've been buried in this cocoon for at least four weeks. Having peeled back another layer to the stories I honestly thought I'd tackled already, I've been letting my brain say a lot of cruel shit to myself.

But I'm reminding myself that growth comes in waves.

And in this particular wave, I'm seeing that growth is more than gratitude and sending love to myself (though that's all important and is why I've even gotten here at all). It's about FULLY EMBODYING your new stories, the ones you were put on this planet to learn and to achieve.

In Part Three of this series I will write about the ways in which I am trying to connect to my soul more, in an effort to submit to who SHE really wants me to be.

Connecting to the soul as often as you can is key to getting through the sludge with grace. At least, that's what I've been told—and that's what I've experienced in the past. I'm looking forward to diving deeper into this realm than I ever have before, in the hopes of finally casting off these unhelpful stories I'm so afraid to let go of. Looking forward to letting you know how it goes. Lots of love.