3. Breakdowns and Breakthroughs
“What am I doing?”
“Who am I?”
“Is this even my purpose anymore?”
These were the questions running through my head as I was getting ready for bed one night, feeling anxious about the lack of clarity I felt around who I was and my business. Coming off of what I had deemed a “failed” launch of one of my major programs, I was left feeling confused, frustrated and incredibly doubtful.
“What did I do wrong?”, was the question I kept asking myself. Without realizing, I was going back to the conditioning and beliefs that if things don’t go as planned, it meant it was my fault and that I did something wrong.
This had often been my default way of operating - feeling that I had to be perfect or do everything just right, otherwise things would fall apart and I would be the one to blame. Sometimes this behavior is obvious to me, but other times it sneakily creeps in without me even realizing that I’m beating myself up all over again.
Rather than seeing the bigger picture of how the divine was redirecting me, I was stuck in self-blame. It’s interesting to me how the human ego’s first defense is often to blame. We either blame ourselves or we blame everything and everyone around us. Why is that?
I believe the answer is multi-layered. For one, it’s the ego’s way of maintaining a false sense of control. If we can assign blame to someone or something, then it gives the ego some comfort of having an answer for why something happened the way it did, even if that answer isn’t exactly correct.
Our ego very much dislikes the unknown. There’s no certainty there. And yet, certainty is the key for the ego to feel safe and secure. So when things feel very unknown, a conditioned response is to assign blame to create a false sense of certainty.
Another reason why we blame is to avoid truly feeling the emotions associated with a certain outcome of a situation. If I blame myself, then I’m justified in feeling angry and it means I don’t have to explore the depth as to why that anger is there in the first place.
Blame is also a way to subconsciously reinforce certain beliefs. The belief around not being worthy or good enough is reinforced by self-blame. The belief of disempowerment or the inability to do something is reinforced when we blame our outer circumstances. It gives the ego a reason to say, “See! You’re not capable of it”.
Regardless of which direction we are projecting our blame, the truth is that we must take responsibility for where we are and where we decide to go from here. For me, it meant owning up to the fact that I didn’t listen to the wisdom of my body and what I was feeling during my launch - tired and overwhelmed - and went full steam ahead with my mind overriding everything else.
It also meant that I got to decide what I was going to do from here. Was I going to wallow in self-pity or was I going to lean into my inner power, look for the wisdom and move forward into the alignment that my soul was calling me into?
At first, I chose self-pity. I danced in the energy of confusion and disempowerment. For probably about a month or so, I held a lot of blame and resentment. I questioned if this was the end of the road for me in terms of my work. I even considered if I should just stop everything, forget about my business and just focus solely on being a mom and homemaker.
It was a difficult time of questioning everything, going back and forth between clarity and uncertainty, and moving through the edge of the unknown that lay ahead. I would have days where I felt very clear and certain on where I stood and that teaching about angels was my thing. And then the very next day I would feel so disconnected from that and wonder why I didn’t feel so excited about it.
That was probably one of the scariest things for me - not feeling as excited or passionate about what I thought I was meant to do. I was looking at it from a black and white lens. All or nothing. I either had to recommit to the path I had built over the past several years or I had to abandon it completely. But there was a third option, which I didn’t realize until a little bit later.
What if it wasn’t all or nothing? What if I was at the helm of an evolution? What if the way forward was actually a blend of everything I’ve learned and everything I’ve become up until this point?
What I realized is that I was trying to fit myself back into the “box” of who I was before motherhood. I was trying to do business the same way. I was trying to teach the same way. I was trying to just be the same.
But I wasn’t the same anymore.
Like any major life change, it’s not just the circumstances that change. It’s you who changes too. Motherhood changed me. It expanded my capacity for what I was able to hold. It had unlocked deeper levels of compassion, patience and nurturing. It changed my time commitments. It opened up a whole new way of looking at the world.
While I was trying to adjust to fit into my old world strapped with two kids now, what I was missing was the fact that I wasn’t meant to fit into that world anymore. I was on the edge of creating a whole new one. A more expansive one.
It’s like what they say about a postpartum wardrobe - stop trying to fit into your old pre-pregnancy jeans and just buy some new jeans that fit you better! You’ll feel and look so much better than trying to fit into something old.
This is exactly what I was being called forward into. This was a huge moment of clarity and awareness. This was when I finally chose to listen to what my soul was calling for. And for the first time in a long time, I felt excited and alive again for what this meant for me and my business. When I accepted this truth and saw that I had a third option, it’s like the creative floodgates had opened up once again.
In choosing this third path to walk as the fully integrated, new version of me, I hit some resistance. Like a flight taking off and hitting some turbulence. It was time to face a huge block that had been lingering around for a long, long time.
Stay tuned for Chapter 4 - Stop Resisting
Comment below: Where have you had to choose a third path in life before?
