I’ve been avoiding writing. Started before I got sick, when a calling I’d trusted and followed failed. Then I got sick. Then I was simply scared. What I had to say was too confusing, too raw, too personal, too real. Part of it was the words ringing in my ear of someone who said I was too hard on myself. While in the other ear was the voice screaming at me to step up, so up, be real. To say it is exhausting being at the mercy of these fictional voices is an understatement.
The past very years has been a snowball effect of doubt. Perhaps I set myself up to be in the position I am in because I was warned, “It’s not easy to break in to the northeast.” The past few months, the snowball effect has been out of control as I have wondered, is it me? What’s wrong with me?
I realized the other day that it was a solid 8 or 9 years of teaching yoga before I felt like a yoga teacher. In fact, I’d finished grad school and had started applying that wisdom to my teaching before I figured out that I was, indeed, a teacher. A rare version of one, in fact. I was always insecure about entering the studio I loved. I wanted to teach there but I never felt good enough.
It’s funny how time provides the space for learning. I taught at that studio recently. I walked in confidently, comfortable in my old teaching shoes. I felt worthy of being there. The great irony is I can’t pay people to take a class from me outside of the gym freebie where I live now. Whereas people who haven’t had a class from me in 6+ years have come out of their way to join me this past week and said in their own version, “I’ve never found a teacher like you.”
Amanda Palmer in her book The Art of Asking calls it “the fraud police”, those voices of doubt in your head that make you question your worthiness. I get it. My fraud police have been after me for awhile. This week, they got a break, though. This week I have been able to be fully present, fully supported, fully loved and in turn, my heart has given 110% back. It’s a beautiful exchange. I feel alive. And I want to write. I want to start sharing the rawness as well as the wisdom because I know I am not alone. But not everyone knows that and so by speaking up, perhaps someone will see it and know that they can get through because I am getting through it. One slow, sometimes scary, inspired action step at a time.
These may be disjointed streams of consciousness or they may be poignant in-your-face brevity that strikes a view of the truth we prefer to avoid. I don’t know. I just know the damn has broke and I will not shut up again fro anyone. Safe or not, I am here now.