Emotional and Physical Well-Being

Getting healthier. That’s the direction I’m stepping into. So far I’ve lost 16 lbs. with that focus in mind. I’m feeling a heck of a lot better already. I’m not at my targeted goal yet but I’m getting there a little bit at a time.

“Do one thing you fear every day.” I read that on someone’s carry bag yesterday and I thought now there’s a challenge I’d like to take on. So today, I’m contemplating this, racking my brain to see what fear I could move through and I realized I don’t have very many fears left.

There are the obvious physical ones like those creepy crawly fuzzy creatures I detest but on a more internal level a lot of my fears have dissipated. The crippling effect these fears used to have on me is now relatively minor compared to what they used to be.
I remember the first time I took part in a self-development kind of workshop with other women and I thought for sure I would die. If I remember correctly the workshop was for 35 hours spread over a week but for me it felt more like an eternity.

Making myself go there every day, joining in with other women, delving into personal matters, touching on the internal world of feelings, hopes, dreams, fears, hurts, joys, pains, for me, was right up there with jumping out of a plane without a parachute. Yet I kept going. Something kept making me push through the nervousness, the feeling sick to my stomach and the paralyzing fear.

Something kept telling me, “You have to do this.” “You have to wake up or else you might as well curl up and die.” Now don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I didn’t feel. In fact for the most part I felt too much. Or so I thought. By then I had packed so many years of pent-up emotions inside that I was like a hand grenade ready to explode.

The fear was that if I felt anymore or if someone pulled that pin I would explode. I would self destruct along with whoever else was within 100 yards of my vicinity, but as much as I was fearful and falling apart inside I was just as needy and curious on the outside. I craved what I thought could only exist in a dream world - a place where I could feel what I felt and speak my truth - a place where I would be seen and heard in the essence of my being. And that’s what kept me coming back.

Every day that’s what I witnessed. I saw others go there. I saw what I thought could only exist in my dream world. I saw others share the most precious or the most vulnerable part of themselves and I saw how they were received and supported in who they were. I knew right there and then that this is what I wanted for myself. It was what I had always wanted. I would do what I had to do to get there and not only would I get there but I would also find ways to offer the same to others.

I pushed through the fear and I showed up every day. I wrote what I desperately needed to say. I placed my open notebook in front of me, sat on my hands to stop them from shaking and tried to find enough spit to swallow the truck sitting in the back of my throat so I could open my mouth and read my words loud enough for others to hear.

That’s where it all started this working through my fears. There was a time where I did something I feared every day. Nowadays, whether it’s that I grow less fearful with age or that there isn’t so much to fear, the journey certainly is different. Not that it’s any less challenging but now it comes with a knowing that no matter what it looks like or what it is, somehow I’ll find a way to walk through.