I sit with fear a lot these days. And I wrestle with what feels like needing permission.
‘Permission…for what? From whom? Why am I so scared?’
Permission to exist as I am. To speak from the center of my soul without translation. To create without asking if it’s useful, marketable or coherent. To offer my work- my voice, my drawings, my breath – as it is, as I am: sacred, unfinished, vibrating with mystery.
Permission? ……from the legacy that says be competent. Be perfect. Be in control. Be of use. Be polite. (But do not cry too loud. Do not rage. Do not fail. Do not make a mess….…)
………….from myself- from the small-me who was brilliant and strange and radiant and really needed a witness, not a boatload of managers…
I’m scared because I feel my body remembers. It remembers how dangerous visibility once was. How costly failure was. How tight the corset of expectations has always been.
And yet here I am- breathing, speaking, tending to my transformation. Feeling the anger, the fear, the fragility, the restlessness, the tenderness – and not to calcify it, but to offer it ample space. Not erasing my old stories but letting the threads complete a weave through my voice, my art, my life, my becoming.
I speak all day with people who voice fears, cries of anguish, deep sorrows, regrets and lost dreams. I’m learning a lot. Opening up. I see that we all contain radiance and rage, control and surrender, service and sorrow. We are all busy braiding grief and reverence together, in our own beautiful way.
I’m tending to transformation like a rite of passage. A portal to be walked through. A doorway into who-I-could-be at the cost of what I have been. I’m afraid because it’s time. Time to begin without certainty or formula. Not foolish, but sacred. For all of us doing this work, it’s like we are the midwife and the child- birthing ourselves through this sacred mess. Oof.
I’m finding that I don’t have to fight or fix my fear, I hold her, and then I speak. It’s more of a posture, the luminous clarity of belonging to yourself, with fear resting beside you and your voice gently rising anyway.
As for fear? Let her sit beside you. Let her rest her head on your shoulder. You don’t have to cast her out.
Just don’t let her hold the mic anymore.
The Journey 