It has been a rough start to March.  I'm mourning the end an idea that seemed real for just long enough.  I'm mourning transitions in my friendships, some of which I need to let go of.  I'm mourning a dream that felt like it might come into fruition, but instead was denied the light it needed to grow.

Logically I know that it's a type of spring cleaning and that these shifts taking place are happening for a reason and with good intentions from the universe. But my heart is aching. The muscles around it are sore and when I stretch to open that space it hurts.

I'm tired of constantly striving to be a better partner, a better friend, a better sister, a better daughter, a better human. I know that at my deepest core I am a good, beautiful, lovable woman, but this constant work is exhausting. 

The last four years I have been on a steady personal development diet and while I know that I have made shifts, changes, and experienced beautiful growth I'm also just really, really tired. It would be nice to just sit in my own company, the company of the people I love and not talk or think or journal about growing. I don't want to fucking grow right now. I want to take a really long nap. I want to wake up and feel settled, at ease.

The irony is that I know all of this work is allowing me to slowly, gently feel more ease in my life. Writing this is allowing me to feel more at ease with my frustration. The work I'm doing is allowing me to feel more at ease with my stories, my history, my past relationships, my love story.

What I want is to wake up, look over, see my partner, get up and feel like all of this metamorphosis finally makes sense.  And I want to be breathe. Deeply.

Personal development and self-discovery and healing are painful, exhausting and run the risk of creating more self-hatred, which is why I think so many of us avoid looking into our dark spaces until we are left with no choice.  That said, many of us will blindly continue to walk through our lives dragging our pain, our stories, our history, our past traumas, our darkness around for the rest of our lives.  But that doesn't really work for me.

It took me a long time to realize that nothing in my life was going to change or move forward until I had made room for what I wanted.  When I was younger I used to hear people talk about how so-and-so didn't make any room in their life for a partner.  As a girl raised in the 80's and 90's this usually equated to the fact that a woman was working too much and wasn't taking the time to date.  No, thank you.

What I know without a shadow of a doubt now is that when we energetically make room in our lives by healing and cleaning up stagnant energy we make room for the light that we ultimately want to attract.  But it's not that simple.  Nothing is ever that simple.

Making room for that light over the last few years has been by far the most rewarding, self-loving, healing and powerful work I have ever done.  It sucked at first, and then like magic the dust started to lift and I started to see the light.

And while I have days or weeks like this one, I know that this too shall pass and that all I really have to do is honour myself.  This is almost always a place of discomfort and unease, but allowing the feelings to surface and acknowledge them is the only way to move forward.  And I am committed to moving forward.

My life is nothing like I had imagined and will never be what I had dreamed it might be at one point.  What it will be is rich and beautiful and bright and loving and full of light in ways that I can't even imagine.  And the promise of this is what reminds me to stay open and soft, and to allow the miracle of the universe to do her magic.  What I've learned from therapists, light workers, energy healers, psychics, yogis, shamans, mediums and  guides is that creating space really means being in a state of allowing, a state of receiving.  Because once I am in an energetic space to receive with integrity and authenticity, what will be gifted to me will bring me to my knees in gratitude.

So for now I choose stillness and silence.  Stillness to ensure that my body is processing what it needs to, silence so I can hear the guidance of my heart.  And once I can't be still and silent any longer, I'll get up and move forward into the light, into the promise of spring.