I did something recently that scared the shit out of me, but ended up really, really good anyway.
I don’t need to elaborate, much anyway, because really, it’s kind of a universal idea. I knew I needed to do a thing, figured out a way to make it happen, sewed an extra pocket into the fabric of time to make it happen, and leaped off the cliff like The Fool.
Yeah, there were many, many moments when I thought I had done something incredibly stupid and dangerous and that things were going to go horribly wrong – but everything ended up going utterly right, even though it was terrifying and hard.
Sometimes, you have to face a fear and leap.
And the most important things I learned from the experience were, that I can totally trust myself to be there for me, and that I can completely trust my nervous system to tell me what my body needs at any given time, and that I am never ever alone because I have me.
And boy, I found a pool of rest and yes and everything-is-gonna-be-alright just where I needed it, and I now know that I can dip my feet in, or dive in all the way, whenever I need it.
I have always been pretty self-reliant, but down deep I’ve always had that imposter thing, felt like a failure or a fraud or a lost sheep or a fuck-up. The self-doubt was well hidden but I did not have to scratch the surface far to find it welling up to consume me. Years and years and years of it. I knew I was good, knew I had skills, knew what I was doing was high-level stuff, purposeful and true. But even so, at the core sometimes I felt like a child playing pretend.
Apparently, this is a huge problem for an alarming number of people. Michelle Freakin’ Obama struggles with imposter syndrome ffs – I mean, how many doctorates does she have? One of the most brilliant and accomplished women of our generation? What?!? But she does, and she has talked about it openly. It was Michelle Obama who made me realize that what I had been feeling for nearly my entire life was actually wrong conditioning and I didn’t have to put up with it anymore.
Wrong Conditioning.
That means that for a period of time, the world we knew, the world that surrounded us, with all it’s love and support and joy, also contained dark threads of shame and disappointment and guilt, and because things with nervous systems are designed to practice pain avoidance, the dark threads often overwhelmed the love and light, and those shadow feelings festered and became monsters.
No matter how well-meaning our parents were, they were young and didn’t know shit. I can’t believe I had a kid when I was 27 and that he grew up basically intact. I wasn’t done growing up at all, and yet, here was this kid, and here was all my baggage, and somehow I managed to carry them both, but jeezus it was a hard road. Our parents didn’t know any better than we did at that age and yet we still want to think they were infallible. I sure as hell wasn’t infallible then, and I’m not now, either. I have so much to learn, so much to learn.
And don’t even get me started on people who never should have been allowed to teach children anything, ever. There are brilliant, inspiring and wonderful teachers in the world – please don’t think I don’t know that. I even had a few. But I had more of the other kind, and so the shadow grew, because those assholes fed it with their bullshit.
Wrong conditioning is never our fault. It’s part of the ocean we swim in, and there’s damn little anyone can do about it.
But once we’re aware of it, we can banish the shadows. There are a hell of a lot of ways to do that. Some fast, some slow, some gentle, some … not. But once we set our minds on a path of letting that shit go, it becomes an inevitability. The Universe nods sagely and brings the resources in that are attuned to our temperament, and we are gifted the time and space to make it happen.
This is the Tarot cycle in action – the Fool sets off on their journey, head in the clouds, feet over thin air, and goes through some stuff, struggles, learns, hurts, heals, and eventually has The Epiphany of the Tower being blasted away to reveal The Star, and the Moon, and the Sun; Judgment/Life Purpose shines through and the World is their oyster. And with their heads in some new and improved clouds, they blithely step off the next cliff. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I had the catharsis I’ve needed for 30 years, and at a critical moment, laying on the floor sobbing, covered in snot and tears, I clawed my way up to kneel at the dining room table to get a tissue and saw an envelope addressed with one single word – “Alma” – and in that second, something huge shifted in me, and I knew who I had become, and it was good.
Look out, next cliff. I can see you from here.