What I’ve Learned: Moving into and Emerging from the Fire
I’ve been searching for momentum, for inspiration, for hope and guidance, and for a new chance to start again...for a while now. And it’s interesting that once these things came, I showed resistance. It was as if I didn’t believe that all I had prayed for was finally here. And so since I believed it to be otherwise, I tried to burn it all down, thinking that it was the Devil here to taunt me. To laugh at me in my face, while I danced and pranced around all the blessings that seemed to be right in front of me. The joke was on me. These were in fact the blessings of God, of Spirit - gifts from my ancestors, allowing me to reap what I had sown. And in response, I began sowing seeds of resentment, bitterness, frustration, anger and jealousy. I was sure that it was just a replay of my past. See, I’ve been accustomed to darkness and deep disappointment. Darkness had become my home, and depression and heartache, my center. And if I didn’t have that, then who was I? Yet, as much as I love living in this home a.k.a. my comfy pit of misery… I want something else. I want a different story, a brighter story -where I don’t hesitate to accept my blessings, where I choose to be here, where I want to be here - to grow, to learn, to allow. Life is strange, in that it is whatever one wants it to be. Well, I’m wanting a different song. One of happiness, bliss, love and success. I’m ready to choose me.
- Personal Journal Entry (Aug 10, 2020)
Five years later and here I find myself standing at the threshold of finally feeling ready to choose me.
And while it’d be nice to tell a story about how back in 2020, I made the decision to choose myself via a one and done situation that led me to overcome the darkness - that just simply isn’t the case.
Since 2020, I’ve learned that choosing yourself is an ongoing and courageous act that presents itself in every moment of every day.
A cleanly shaven me in 2020
So then what exactly has happened over the past five years?
Well, I began setting intentions to move towards redefining and reclaiming my own sense of happiness. I started developing the self-care practices, locating the spaces, and dreaming the dreams that invoked a sense of awe and aliveness that I longed to feel and experience. This looked like establishing a daily yoga & meditation practice, envisioning the ideal types of friendships and community spaces I desired to be in, and embarking on new business endeavors and academic pursuits. Focusing on and calling in these new desires did, in fact, work - but not without some new challenges and obstacles, too.
These obstacles, which I refer to as dragons, arrived traipsing around in the spaces I was starting to invest and spend time in - disguised as false leaders, false promises, and even impersonating those closest to me. All that I had done to become grounded and closer to loving myself was being tested, but this time around I understood that these challenges were not of the "Devil”, but were opportunities to deepen further into my faith, sharpen my intuition, and confidently claim my self-knowing.
Knowing this didn’t make it any easier, of course (smh). To have invested in relationships and opportunities, only to be instructed into isolation and silence afterwards was so shocking and disruptive to my nervous system and sense of safety. I was left dealing with mental chaos and feelings of anger, confusion, and deep sadness. And in those lower vibrational and vulnerable moments, the belief that darkness truly was my home and birthright started to creep up again - whispering to me that I was never meant to experience a life of spiritual/mental ease and true joy.
At the same time this belief was re-entering the chat, so was surrender.
The challenges became about who and what I was actually surrendering to. Was I going to surrender to the external and internal forces that deemed me inadequate, not enough, and unbelonging? Or would I surrender to the divinity within that reflected my truth of being whole and enough as I am?
Things started getting reeeaaal ugly in the silence. I met versions of myself that were existing subconsciously in my actions, neural pathways, and self-talk - dictating the way I moved, spoke, and made choices. I met the Overthinker, the Self-Critic, and the People Pleaser - all of them revealing stories and core memories (those of my own as well as ancestral) that narrated how they’d originally been formed.
These versions of myself were the internal obstacles blocking my path towards self-trust, believing in myself, and leaning fully into my personal power and creative potential. Instead, I overthought every desire and impulse that lived within my body, pleading to be expressed. I criticized my role as a life-long learner and student practicing to live again, hardly extending myself any grace through the mistakes and failures. And I put other’s expectations of who they wanted me to be above my own needs, resulting in abandoning myself time and time again.
In doing so, I found myself shaming, shrinking, and silencing this new version of Chantel that I’d fought so hard to discover, making it nearly impossible for her to fly free and soar.
To acknowledge and sit with the ways in which I was rejecting myself hurt a lot worse than the feeling of being rejected by others. Because in the moments when I was alone not even I wanted to be with me. To feel that way is tough because then where does that momentum and desire to live come from?
For me, it came from God, who would always show up and say, “I’m here, I’ve been here, and I’ll always be here - through your pain, your hurt, your ugly.” And so it was and still is to this day. When all there was left to greet was silence in the early morning and late at night, I would feel and hear God (and my Ancestors) clearly, holding me through the unspeakable, the grief, and deep heartache - and the moment I finally relaxed into this holding is the moment when I chose to step into the fire.
Stepping into the fire meant saying yes to a journey of transformation - one that would ultimately lead me to new versions of myself that I’d never experienced or even dreamed that I could embody. To get there, though, meant first purging and burning away the patterns and habits that I had formed and befriended around my history of pain and sadness. What began to burn away was my negative self-talk and my lack of clarity around my desires, goals, and boundaries.
Taking time to reflect on each of these to further understand their origins initiated a dissolution of the overthinking, critical, and people-pleasing tendencies that were existing deep within my psyche and sense of identity. And in their place, my confidence, voice, self-image, and personal boundaries began to take root, becoming clearer and more refined.
Eventually I began to recognize pain as a portal
as an opportunity for transformation, and in the moments where it felt almost unbearable to push through, I remembered that the pain was a result of beginning to push past my comfort zone as well as proof that I was growing, learning, shapeshifting, and expanding.
At the same time that I was opening the door to greet my pain, I was also inviting in the experience of joy and pleasure. These together led me to finally forming the belief that I wasn’t actually created only to feel pain and suffering, but to experience, be, and feel so much more. After all the challenges I’d experienced in my lifetime, I had finally built up my tolerance and capacity to feel something new and unfamiliar….and so I did, and so I am.
After the fire came a new sense of peace and tenderness that’s somewhat almost indescribable. A peace that feels sustainable, that feels promising, and long-lasting. A peace no longer powered by or dependent on whether I teach/practice yoga daily, whether I consume the suggested portion of daily greens, or whether I reach my weekly targeted step count (and no shade AT ALL if that’s what supports your sense of peace), but for me - I found that leaning on those types of tools to determine whether I was peaceful or not were unsustainable and unrealistic to my humanity.
Instead this peace is powered by connection, by faith, and by the act of returning back to myself after tough times (because mind you, the tough times do still happen), embracing and showering myself in nurturance, love, and goodness the way it’s been modeled to me by God.
While in the fire, I recognized that while I had been desiring to pursue happiness for myself, I was somehow always placing what I was taught or believed made others happy at the center. This would leave me wondering what I needed to do or adjust about myself to “be there” for others or prove that I was committed and worthy of receiving their love, commitment, and consistency in order to experience happiness. This was transactional thinking, believing that by being in community and in friendship would eliminate or replace the feeling of being alone and unhappy. And don’t get me wrong - I’m not saying that being in community and in friendship doesn’t eliminate loneliness, but what I am saying is that
These days I am learning how to check in with myself first .
Before showing up, before giving, and doing, I now pause and ask myself questions like: What do I need? How do I feel? What do I want to do next? And sometimes, I can’t answer because I just don’t know. It’s hard to know what one needs after years of putting other people’s needs first. I feel okay about this, though, because I’m learning that not always knowing is a part of the journeying further towards myself and towards getting to know my desires, values, and beliefs. And through this journeying, learning to trust and lean into my intuition and body, too.
Emerging from the fires and embers has led me to a sense of freedom that I’m in touch with internally - almost like a secret meet up spot that only God and I know about. Where I can retreat to, reside in, or call out to in the moments when my reality isn’t necessarily reflecting or supporting my sense of Self as a free woman.
Now, as I lean into trust paired with uncertainty, I also find myself leaning deeper into my faith and freedom of choice - choosing confidence and affirming my peace when my mind wants to revert back to negative ways of thinking.
I spend a lot of time at my altar and in prayer these days. It’s what the fire led me to in the end - towards an understanding that in order to center myself, I first needed to center God and recognize God as my constant and truest form of support - the one who is always going to hype and gas me up to live aloud fully and express my creativity, divinity, and overall potential no matter what. I’m curious what or who that is for you - is it nature, dance, art, music, religion, a certain practice?
Through the fire, I realized once again that the act of choosing myself will never be a one and done situation, but instead an ongoing, unfolding, and integrative experience of getting to meet, learn, and embody who it is that I’m discovering myself to be.
If you’re existing somewhere between the burning and the becoming, I hope you know you’re not alone (as annoying as it is to hear that - it’s true!) because I’m still there myself - right there with you.