I can’t even tell you how many times I have tried to write this blog.
Writer’s block doesn’t seem to cover it. I’ve been writing rather prolifically of late, and yet, for some reason, this thing I want to share just hasn’t been able to come out of me in a coherent way.
So here goes; one more try to explain how I discovered that my Spirit was sitting just outside my body waiting for me to figure out that I was out of touch.
Each blog attempt has included the line “the irony is not lost on me”
I’m a teacher and coach of Spirituality and meditation. I teach people how to get in touch with their bodies because there is incredible wisdom contained within. I instruct others on the importance of paying attention to signs and feelings from their body because the body knows the truth. And yet, I had been out of my body for quite some time, I failed to notice that I was “thinking” feelings but not actually feeling them.
I’m not sure I actually noticed until I started meditating regularly. The signs were there, but I had failed to pay attention. I had observed that I couldn’t feel the air on my cheeks when I went outside, but it was just a passing thought that I never really investigated. My head was still in the game, I could think “love” but I didn’t feel it in my body. I could think “anger” but the feeling never took hold.
I used to be this emotional being and my body was FULLY engaged. I was also a hot mess at the time. My life was out of control, I was out of control. It took me years and years to become fully conscious, to learn to manage the emotions, to focus my thoughts and to develop the clarity that was necessary to become an intuitive.
So…what happened? After all that work, why did I suddenly find myself acting very much like a robot?
I thought perhaps that I was relegated to this experience in which “the highs aren’t as high, but the lows aren’t as low”. Gone were the extreme fluctuations and the tears and the tantrums. They were replaced by this calm demeanor, this solid foundation, this “Mama Starr” persona. Had I become a victim of my own press? Had I somehow decided that I could not get emotional, that I had to instead be the steady, fearless leader?
This saddened me. There was so much juiciness and fun back in the days before I became awakened. Now my life seemed to be relegated to middle age and well….”oldness”; where had I gone? When did I stop FEELING?? I wasn’t satisfied and still am not with the idea that I could no longer reach those incredible highs…and a part of me longed for the old days; for the adventure of leaping into the unknown without a fucking care of the consequences.
But really, to be honest, I didn’t miss the days of crying on my bathroom floor because I had fucked up yet again or because my flaws had been pointed out to me, or worse because my heart had been broken once again by some fantasy relationship that I tried to create.
I just checked out somehow. I quit paying attention.
I feel like there’s a reason I haven’t been able to write about it until now. Up until this moment, I hadn’t realized how profoundly this affected me. How the loss of the “old me” was something that I hadn’t taken the time to actually grieve.
I mean…I was fucking BOLD. I took risks…I leapt…oh God did I ever!
And now, as I write this…the tears are beginning to flow because I recognize that the price of this new, more in control, more conscious self was the loss of the old me. I never noted her passing, I never grieved for her. I moved on without a thought as to how I could honor her loss.
Because she is well and truly gone.
There’s a part of me that wants to be encouraging, that wants to bring her back in some way; that wants to look at the bright side and find a way for her to “fit” in my current lifestyle. And I think back and realize that I never mourned the loss of the teenage me, or the 20 something me, the 30 something me Those women just merged into my new persona at each stage and I never mourned…or even noticed their passing.
But the 40 something me….damn, she was a sight to behold.
She tried so hard. She loved so hard. She raised her kids, went through two divorces and countless romances. She was sexy and exuberant, she had tons of friends and was this social animal…she drank and partied and lived so many different lives…she LIVED OUT LOUD.
And the 50 something me is so incredibly different. She’s a crone, she’s a wise woman, she cares for her boyfriend and her mom, her kids are out of the nest and on their own. Quite frankly, she’s rather boring.
No wonder it’s taken me so long to write this…
I honestly can’t get 40-something-Starr back. I know too much. I’ve learned too much. Once you are awakened, you can’t go back to sleep…you just can’t.
I know there were days when 40-something-Starr longed for some stability, when she longed to be in love and to feel safe. 40SS looked forward to being over 50. She WANTED to be a crone…a wise-woman. I have all of that now and to be honest, my dear 40SS got me here. She scraped and clawed and went through so much bullshit to get me here.
God, how I love that woman.
Still crying…damn. Maybe that’s just a story I’m telling myself…maybe she’s not completely gone.
A part of me whispers “maybe she doesn’t have to be gone…maybe you just need to get laid more often”
Geez, that’s 40SS whispering to me! She’s telling me “I’m not dead yet”.
The truth is, she didn’t die, she just went dormant because she needed to so that I could emerge. She’s telling me there is room for her passion in this life I’m living; that I can certainly mourn the passing of the good old crazy days and they can (and should) be over. But, I can carry the good parts forward, I can still be a bit crazy and a bit…bold. Maybe she just needed me to notice that I had left her behind and I didn’t need to.
The pain…yep, that had to go. The need for approval and the people pleasing…yep, they have no room in my life anymore. But the part where I live life out loud; the part where I live life with passion and the part where I remember how to FEEL again; these are all things that I must hold on to. These are things I need to remember.
“There wasn’t a price to be paid” she says to me “there was just a transition”.
She paid the dues back then so I can be here now.
The truth is, we can always choose to hold onto the great parts of ourselves and let go of the “stuff”.
The reality is, it’s really ok to be 1000 different women and still be myself.
After all…that is the true definition of a Crone. 40SS would be so proud.
