I don’t talk about myself or challenges in detail too much because The Constellation has always been about what I can offer others. Over time, I’ve been getting better at being direct about my needs, motivations, desires, goals - the things I validate, amplify, and illuminate for and with others.
When I was first able to imagine a life for myself, sometime around when I formalized this practice, it was unnamed, amorphous - I wasn’t even confident that I wasn’t just being arrogant or selfish. I kept coming up with reasons to count myself out. But I knew there was a whisper of a dream, too, even though I couldn’t even say it out loud to myself. I just wrote it down in the first journal I was ever able to complete.
I wanted to be independent of people who resented managing me because of what my presence reflected back to them, to be free to move in alignment with my values, ethics, and sense of curiosity and bravery. To be able to come and go so that I could be wherever my broad galaxy of family, friends, and chosen community wanted and needed me to be, in joy and in hardship. To be appreciated, valued, and challenged.
I had to begin offering myself what I offer others - the courage to build and be brave. To follow their hearts and intuition. To not let obstacles and heartbreaks be the end of the things that need to enter the world, to enter them. To enter me.
‘Blessed are the cracks for they let the light in.’
//
I got my ‘dream job’ in summer of 2018, and six weeks in, after returning from the most wonderful writing retreat (shout out to my Pink Door Fam!), had an onset of epilepsy so severe that it took my memories, my words, and broke my body. It also broke my heart. No matter how hard I tried to hold things together, I was still forced away from my home, my job, my love, and my city. I lost ‘friends’, community, language, knowledge, confidence, control, access.
I was forced away from my self.
What I have learned in these past six years is that this body is the only true home I have. This mind and heart - my only true skills. I am the only one coming to save me, to heal me, to love me. Maybe that is audacious, but as a Buddhist, I know cause creates effect, and I can at least choose the causes I create in the world. For me, and for those I love.
The more I invest in this lil pocket of the Universe as a home for imagination, dis/comfort, change, love, creation, connection, and expansion, the more I experience those things in my own life. I have never regretted a session, a workshop, an offering. It is an honor. And the closer I get to myself, the closer I get to people who love me, in passing or in perpetuity.
I keep applying for jobs, and with all my ‘qualifications’, all the reviewing, help, and rewriting, I keep getting rejected…but I don’t want something that doesn’t want me. I already know what that path leads to. I can make different choices this time.
People tell me I am brave, but I never had a choice. If only because I know I am too loved to fail, I just have to figure out the path to my freedom. If my ancestors could do it, then I can, too. If I am lucky, perhaps they will be as proud of me as I am grateful to be theirs.
Please help me expand my world past this bedroom again. There’s plenty of space in the Universe. I want this glorious life, with you.
Seph 🌙
They are already proud and expansion is in your favor!