What are you calling in for 2024?
For as many New Years as I can remember my resolutions centered on fitness and weight loss. It’s embarrassing to admit but it’s god’s honest truth. And I don’t take credit for my weight loss goal being my own original thinking. Like I was born with an innate desire to be skinny as if it was the same as a human’s biological drive to fulfill their physiological needs. I came of age when Posh and David were taking the media circuits by storm and heroin chic along with the Olson twins were omnipresent. My friend in 8th grade and I would walk the mile to Safeway and buy fat free candy before sitting on the ground in the magazine section while reading Shape, SELF and every other magazine on “health” they had to offer. Our eyes were trained on finding the 5 moves that would give us arms like Rachel on Friends. I’ll never forget going home and replicating the tricep dip I had just learned about on our dining room chair. Nevermind that we had no food in our house. LOLZ! Culture indoctrinated me with the belief that thinness means goodness and then my own mama made it true when she’d fit into my jeans and call herself fat.
Ever since I began saturating myself in the deep and holy work of facing my shit I’ve been unlearning all that cultural and familial indoctrination at a manic pace. As I unwind and walk back all of my previously flawed internal beliefs–the ones I adopted unconsciously–I simultaneously work with the part of me that held the belief and get curious about what their true nature is. The essence that is uncorrupted by fucked up consumerist culture because, surely, my life is bigger than a smaller pair of pants. While I do want a healthy body I do not want to kill myself and use all my finite resources to look like Jennifer Anniston. For once, finally in 2024, no bull shit diet resolutions! Let freedom ring, baby!! Forcing my body and myself into a size that never fit goes beyond just 6 pack abs though. It applies to other internalized beliefs that I am—at the most fundamental level—not good enough or lovable enough just as I am. This may sound ridiculous and I can hear the chorus of my wonderful loved ones blanketing me with “of course you’re good enough”s but none of that penetrates the hard-wiring of the past. Words really don’t mean shit unless they’re affirming a belief we already hold.
The past only predicts our future when we are unwilling to turn toward our deepest, most undesirable emotions.
The tools that helped me discard the clothes that would always be too tight were sobriety, I’m talking the verb sobriety not the adjective; EMDR with my highly skilled, shamanesque therapist; meditation, spirituality and journaling first thing in the morning; and finally bringing what is true about me out into the world by talking about my real feelings and writing about them in my book and right here on this Substack. Even at my rapid pace of moving through the layers of hurt it has been a slow process. One year of getting through the big stuff of my childhood while still using all the old tools of self destruction and four years of sobriety and deconstructing every area of my life. Taking everything out the drawers, holding it up and asking “how did this come into my orbit and how does it serve my true nature and/or the highest good?” There hasn’t been a single thing spared from this question. Sometimes the answer comes before I’m done asking it and other times, it takes several days or maybe weeks of sitting with it before I have a sense of how to move forward with something or a relationship I’ve grown out of.
Now that I’ve grown out of thinness, and subsequently my obsession of exterior perfection, I can dream bigger for my one precious life. And when I say big, I mean fucking big.
What came out of the drawer of my unconscious in 2023 was the: But…. what if?!
But… what if my kids are needing me in ways I’m not seeing?
But… what if my partner and I are fighting in a bad way?
But… what if I lose my job? The first one I’ve truly loved having.
But… what if my writing sucks and I never get published?!
Literally, at the dawn of 2024 what came roaring up from my deepest Self, my inner healer (I shit you not I could not make this up even if I tried), were those same exact fucking words.
Except.
The tone was not one of doubtful doom but one of prescient promise. In my first meditation of the brand New Year my hand could barely keep up with what Self was singing. Every doubt that my mind had now held a different message.
But… what if I’m hitting my stride right as my kids are needing me the most?
But… what if my partner and I are fighting as a way to figure out the areas in which we’re blocked. Maybe the most love we’ll ever have together is on the other side of this stormy time??
But… what if my job continues on and, although education is fickle, I will be able to evolve with it just like I have over the past 15 years?
But… what if my writing has resonance and my book does get published?
But what if I trust the process and my own life with wild abandon because, actually, what if it all works out??
YESSS this is what feels true. To believe, have faith, trust and relax into the unseeable things that could be just around the corner. It’s actually the exact same thing I tell my son when he’s perseverating with the force of 1000 donkeys.
“You never know what’s around the corner, buddy!”
And listen. I know that it’s easy to be cynical and be all “shit never works out that way, Emily”. I get it. I’ve had life absolutely implode on me in the most horrendous ways. I’ve got the scars on my psyche and years spent in therapy to prove it. If there is any person on the planet who has evidence to show that earth is a bad place and god hates them, it’s me. Also, nothing is gained from that modus operandi (trust me, I tried that too). So just like all the size 4 jeans that took up room in my closet—out with alllllll that old shit. The past only predicts our future when we are unwilling to turn toward our deepest, most undesirable emotions and I am not afraid to blaze into my own darkness.
My blessing to everyone whose eyes land at the end of this writing is for you to dare to imagine your own “But… what if?!” scenario. Text or comment below with yours!
What’s Dosing Me With Magic Right Now
☯️ This Jungian Life (which came from a favorite Substack, Deep Fix) my obsession with Carl Jung continues with this thought provoking listen. My favorite episode so far is the one on Nightmares, the description reads “The monsters that chase you in dreams are not trying to hurt you. They just want to reunite with their creator………...… that's you, dummy.”
☯️ Just finished The Highly Sensitive Person book. Really got me thinking about all the dis-ease people (even the non HSPs) face because of our toxic culture.
☯️ Related to the HSP book, this quote:
☯️ How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told is one of the best memoirs I’ve ever read. It has a strong Christian bent to it in a way that feels in line with my belief in Christ as a rebellious Jewish mystic.
So great! I love your vision board too!