I’m barely big toe deep into this blog and it’s a little surprising how cathartic it’s already been. It’s interesting how something that I was apprehensive to do in the first place could turn out to be the thing that helps calm the voices. Did I say voices?…what voices?…shut up there are no voices. In any case, writing does help me compartmentalize some of my more chaotic thoughts into neat little categories. And I’m just sure I will eventually weed through them all one day. I mean, what’s more fun than intense self reflection, right? Anything. Anything is more fun than intense self reflection. Actually, I think self reflection is one of the scarier things we have to do to level up in life. It can be difficult to assess our own actions, motives, life purpose, etc, without the filter of ego. Then we have to figure out how to navigate life’s more challenging situations with grace and integrity. But I also think that it is almost exclusively in those challenging situations where we learn so much about our own character and strength.
Over the past twelve-ish years I’ve had to do some pretty intense soul searching and all I can say is that sometimes that process is not “pretty” at all. I heard somewhere that our brains are practically mush until the age of maybe 25 (no surprise there), so I imagine a lot of people have had the same experience of getting to a certain age and realizing it’s time to pull ye olde head out of ye olde ass. Personally, my head-from-ass extraction process began around age 28. You see kids, everybody’s brains work differently and process life at different speeds. Some people are lucky to have processors equivalent to the latest Apple technology. Sometimes my processor is equivalent to a ’97 Gateway. Whatever. It is what it is. My experience is that it just takes a little longer for things to sink in and for me to really start mining for truth.
Everyone has different ways to process life. For some it’s church, for others it’s happy hour, and for people like me, it’s a version of “cocooning”. Basically, instead of retreating to a location such as a bar or an island or an altar, I go inward to search for answers to universal questions like, “why am I here?”…”what is my lesson?”…”am I a Carrie or a Miranda?” (please let it be neither ??). I happen to think that the universe is in all of us. When Joni Mitchell sang “we are stardust”, she was right on, man. I read that most of the material that we’re made of is stardust remnants, and that makes total sense to me. We’re all connected. Humans, animals, earth, sky, universe. So instead of looking up or out to find answers, I look in because that, my friends, is truly where we begin and end.
Every once in a while when I feel the need, I check in with different people who possess the ability to see life objectively and are able to give unbiased assessments. Some of these people are “healers”. All of us have untapped abilities. Innately, each person has an ability to be a healer, or a seer, or a feeler, or a thinker, or an intuitive empath, etc. If we quiet the voices surrounding us, the ones telling us what we “should” be, we’ll become aware of what we already are. Every single time I’ve seen a healer they’ve helped me lift a rock I haven’t looked under in a looong time (in some cases since childhood) and I get a little closer to leveling up in a way I never could playing Zelda (ugh that might sting the most).
An intuitive healer once asked me, “who’s driving your bus?”, and I was like whaaa? She explained that we all have different versions of ourselves driving the bus at any given time and it’s necessary to identify which version that is. She asked me to close my eyes and imagine my younger self and take note of the age. For some reason, I imagined myself at the age of about 13. Right on the edge of the teen years that would prove to be challenging in a way for which I was unprepared. To be brutally honest, I don’t have a whole lot of memories from this time. Maybe because of the ensuing teen years, these were the last couple of years where I felt like a trouble-less kid, a happy-go-lucky child who didn’t yet know the dangers that awaited her. And apparently this kid is the one that’s been driving my bus while the adult me is sitting somewhere in the back, holding on for dear life and praying that the 13 yr old driver knows what she’s doing (she does not). This wise woman told me that it’s important to let that child drive the bus every once in a while and to acknowledge her and make her feel cared for and heard. But in the end, it’s the adult version that needs to take the wheel and make sure the bus gets where it needs to go safely. So now when things come up that are difficult to process and I just want to hide in the back of the bus, I try and remember that kid and show up anyway with my uniform and driving gloves on, ready for whatever challenging passengers I might pick up.
At the end of the day, it all comes down to us taking care of ourselves so that we can take care of others. A tree is only as sturdy as its roots. I believe we’re here to love each other and help each other learn the lessons but we can only do that if we take responsibility for ourselves and make sure our roots are strong and secure.
If you read this and it makes sense, fantastic. If you read this and it doesn’t make sense, that’s ok too, but I would challenge you to ask yourself, “who’s driving the bus?” I just also ask that you let me know how it went down that rabbit hole ?