in between?
A welcome secret
Healing feels worse before it feels better.
We’re in pain, but it's familiar; comfortable.
We’re secure in our coffin.
The idea of staying safe any other way feels impossibly dangerous.
Who are we without anxiety?
How does anything get done without endless striving?
How can anyone love us with tears in our eyes?
Staying the same hurts. But change brings another challenge.
In Between
When we melt in the grass and relax our old defenses, we’re left with something vacuous and frightening.
When we change, there’s a moment when we let go of the old, but haven’t quite embraced the new yet.
The Tibetans call it Bardo. Some call it limbo. The in between.
Growing Pains
I recently made a big move out of my home and relationship. I packed all my worldly belongings and drove across the country.
There was a period where I had no home and no familiar faces. The old was gone, but there was no new.
It was incredibly difficult, liberating, terrifying, spiritual, and empowering.
I hope it never happens again.
But I know, so long as I want to evolve, it will.
Vibrant Gardens
We can’t know our future until we acknowledge our present has become our past.
When we raise our standards and lower our tolerance, we create fertile space for more vibrant gardens. Plots we choose and blooms we plant.
Forgetting the dream of who we used to be, we wake up the hero of our story instead of Kafka’s insect.
Impossible New
So many people I talk to confuse how they get love and stay safe with who they are.
And many more I work with can’t imagine any other way of living.
I was working with a client recently. They believed the only way they could be loved was by not needing anything from anyone.
They thought that if they asked for help, people would turn their backs.
They didn’t realize something.
By never asking for help, they never reached out their hand. And so, with nothing to hold onto, their neighbors drifted away.
The idea of stating a need seemed so foreign and impossible.
A Welcome Secret
The first step in shedding our old skin is acknowledging that we’ve outgrown it.
And in doing this, we tell a welcome secret:
To be alive is to be in moving breath; to stay static is to decay.
Pain is often a call for change, if even within us.
If you feel the seams of your life pinching at your limbs, it’s an invitation to grow or wither.
You know what to do.
Warmly,
Lucas