Are you feeling discouraged with where things are?
This has been such an intense year and things just seem to continue to heat up.
Divisiveness is at an all time high in our country, and in many countries around the world.
I imagine you would just love to have some sense of hope.
A sense of ground to know things are going to get better SOON.
Wouldn’t you love to have a magic wand and feel joy on a regular basis?
Most of all, wouldn’t you love to feel SAFE?
This is the buzzword we see everywhere right now.
Riding the NJ Transit into the city this week to have acupuncture, the signs were everywhere with this word on repeat.
Ride Safe.
Move Safe.
Wait Safe.
Hand Safe.
But do you feel safe?
What is going to actually help you right now?
With so much fear all around us, how can we truly find safety?
I used to have pretty intense fears.
It all began in Belgium where we had a very dark basement that was home to many enormous large spiders. Those spiders and the darkness down the steep steps became my two largest fears at the tender age of 7.
The dark and spiders.
They stayed with me into adulthood, right up until the day my marriage fell apart in my late 30’s. I was doing a production of A Christmas Carol and we had a party for the cast from a company called Creature Comforts. When I walked in, I was confronted with my worst nightmare, a table full of tarantulas.
Up until this day, I had thought the spiders and the dark were what I needed to fear, but as I was actually living the worst nightmare of my marriage ending, I decided to face my fear and hold a tarantula…the largest embodiment of my fear.
And when I did, I was completely surprised.
I found the tarantula to be soft.
I found the tarantula to actually be just as scared as I was.
And I found when I breathed, the spider AND I both relaxed.
And in that moment of actually holding my fear, my arachnophobia transformed.
In the face of then losing my marriage and home, I found myself doing something else very new, which was spending time in the dark.
I would come home from a stressful day, and just sit in the dark of my apartment.
What had been a place where I thought evil spirits and the boogey man lay waiting for me as a child, became a quiet refuge.
I found the dark to be comforting and loving.
Much like the spider, my fear transformed. And really it was because I was living my nightmare. I was living my whole life falling apart, and somehow surviving.
What I thought would kill me, actually wasn’t.
As I healed, I came to realize that the dark and spiders were actually my allies.
I did a shamanic dream journey and a giant black female spider came to me. She was enormous, and she was there to help me.
And she said to me,
“your fear is not what you think it is”
I became far more appreciative of spiders, and would marvel at their webs. Most of all, I would take them outside when I found them in my home, instead of killing them.
When I began to get migraine headaches last year, I found myself spending a lot of time in the dark. And the dark felt so loving on my head. I found the light so painful, and the dark would immediately create a sigh of relief.
Quite a change from the fear I held for so many years.
Have you ever felt this?
When you got close to your fear, it actually wasn’t what you thought?
Have you experienced your fears lessening and changing?
Just before my 11th week of pregnancy, I started to spot. I stared down at the toilet paper and my whole body went hot.
And the fear rose,
I may be having a miscarriage.
I called my doctors, and put my feet up for the weekend. The bleeding stopped, and I truly thought I had avoided my fear.
Then on Monday morning, I went to take a shower and there in the shower was a small black spider.
And I froze.
I knew what this meant, but didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t even want to let in the mantra,
My fear is not what I think it is.
But then later that day as my husband and I stared at the ultrasound screen, there it was. Our baby’s heart had stopped beating.
In the weeks that followed, I saw spiders everywhere.
Almost every day, there would be a new one waiting in my bathroom, or one crawling towards me in the kitchen.
Each one, I would put into a glass, and carefully put outside in our garden.
Each one, I felt was saying to me,
Your fear is not what you think it is.
Then, one afternoon as I was sitting in the screened in porch, I saw an enormous spider and realized it was INSIDE the screen. I could feel that old prickly sensation again, and grabbed a large glass vase.
This was definitely the largest spider I had encountered since holding the tarantula.
And here again, I was actually living my fear. The miscarriage had happened, I had lost my baby…so, I knew I could do this. Or at least, I wanted to believe I could. At the very least, I was going to try.
As I got close, the spider started to scurry. It was scared of the large vase and as I enclosed him, one of his legs got stuck on the edge and I found myself panicking. I didn’t want to hurt him!
I quickly emptied him into the bushes and felt my heart racing.
All the hairs were raised on my skin and then I began to breathe.
I didn’t want to lose my baby.
I was terrified of losing my baby.
Yet here I was, and I was ok.
I was in deep pain, but I was ok.
I was healing.
My body knew exactly what it was doing.
The miscarriage didn’t kill me.
Neither did the spiders or the dark.
What if this experience was an ally too?
I had my chart read a few weeks after the miscarriage by a brilliant astrologer and she said,
“You are coming out of a dark period. But people tend to misunderstand what that means. The dark period is actually when you are planting seeds. It’s more like when you go to sleep at night. You are planting the seeds that will grow in the sunlight.”
And I was shocked to see my “dark period” actually began in 2014, not in 2013 when my whole life fell apart. The dark period has been the last six years where I completely rebuilt my life, healed from my divorce, found and married my life partner, and created a six figure business I love. These were the SEEDS.
And then she said,
“The aura of conception is very strong around you now. And the miscarriage didn’t change that.”
What if the miscarriage was a seed as well? Planted in my dark period to help me grow in the light?
Maybe the spiders were right all along…..
One of the largest lessons I learned that allowed me to transform my life was the teaching,
The way is THROUGH.
For decades, if I was scared, I would do all I could to avoid my fear, to suppress my fear, or to distract myself from my fear.
Except every time I did this, I never felt SAFE.
In fact, it just created more anxiety that built and built.
So when my whole life fell apart, for the first time, I actually stopped running from it, and just walked INTO it. And the effect was not what I thought.
It didn’t kill me.
I softened.
My body softened.
And my life transformed.
And I found what I thought was there to harm me, was actually there to wake me up to how capable and strong I really was.
And that was there all along.
And this is the same for you.
When you run from your fear, you will never feel safe, because then you are reinforcing the belief that you can’t handle it, or that you are not capable.
Instead, turn towards it and ask the most powerful question,
What is this?
Truly look at it, hold it, and you may be surprised. What might have appeared as something scary, hairy and menacing might actually be here FOR you.
And when we look at our fears in the eyes, they usually transform. The fangs become toothless gums, and the intense eyes widen and soften.
As the spiders say,
Your fear is not what you think it is.
But you won’t know until you face it.
And when you do, that is where your true safety lies.
Your refuge is within.
Always.
So turn in, and walk through.
We are all coming out of a very dark period. Plant the seed today so you can grow in the light to come.