and shed fear-based living

When you are connected to your essence, to the energy of life, a deep joy and irreverent playfulness bubbles to the surface. 

Smiles come easily. 
Laughter flows freely. 

I recognize this place in myself when I feel care bear stares (remember those?) coming out of my eyes. 

For all the reasons, it’s been hard to feel this brightness lately. 

There’s been a maelstrom of stories pulling us into fear-based living. 

I’m on the other side of facing some big shadows and remembering the delight that waits on the other side of this work. 

The severe edge softens.
The sincerity of ‘yes’ and ‘no’ is cleaner.
The playfulness of life spontaneously bubbles up. 

Why? Because joy emerges from love and when we work through the fear-based barriers to love, brightness streams in and the world becomes playful. 

It’s easier to stop resisting reality.
It’s easier to stop hustling for worthiness. 
It’s easier to stop protesting what keeps us stuck and start making meaningful changes.

Rilke said, 

Fear not the pain. Let its weight fall back
into the earth;
for heavy are the mountains, heavy the seas.
The trees you planted in childhood have grown
too heavy. You cannot bring them along.

This is the brave work of shifting from fear-based beliefs to love-based beliefs.

It’s the invitation to stop trying to carry the heavy mountains and seas, to no longer drag the burdensome logs of our past into our present. 

My word for this year is delight. I’ve been exploring all the ways to welcome delight into my being. While outrageous comedy, adventures in nature with my mama, putting myself in the way of wonder, spreading happiness from my body to theirs, filling the neighbourhood with packets o’ love has been wonderful, there’s one thing that’s made the biggest difference – discovering the aliveness that comes from living, and loving, in alignment with my true self. 

Who we think we are is formed as an ecological mashup of what we believe we have to be in order to source safety, security, love, belonging, and worth. I call this your constructed self. 

Living from the constructed self works. 
For a while. 

But, eventually somberness sets in when we realize we did everything we were ‘supposed’ to do and we still don’t feel at home with ourselves, with the people around us, or in our lives. 

When we clear out the shadows of fear-based living and deepen our relationship with our true self, we settle into the feeling of home.  

Find your way home.
Your joy is waiting.