JUST LIKE JULIA

A current lesson I am working through is to temper these feelings of anger and frustration.

I feel a tension within the body and breath as I navigate these murky channels of self, conflicting emotions and the ebb and flow of faith and trust. I find myself questioning my integrity in the choices that I’ve made in my life. I liken this to the analogy of painting on a canvas.

As you are born, the slate is completely blank. A pristine white with nothing muddying it. As you further along your journey, colors come alive on the canvas in varying fluidity. The colors representing your emotions. Sometimes they are thick acrylics, perhaps fluid watercolors or hard to dry oils. Sometimes the canvas becomes muddy. Sometimes the canvas is vibrant and bright. Maybe things in between. Maybe there are shapes taking form. Or formless taking shape.

In moments of stillness, I find my mind wandering to the choices that I’ve made and the path that I’ve taken. Is it the right one? Am I making the decisions that will enrich and fulfill my soul? Or am I repeating patterns and decisions that are keeping me stuck in a maze? I find that I don’t have any answers and that the more I learn, the less I know.

When I find myself ruminating on decisions from the past or choices I will have to make in the future, I’ve noticed I’ve gotten much better at remembering to bring myself back to to “now”. That, in this instance, I am sitting at the flagship location of Rose Park Roasters in Long Beach, between 8th St and Pine Ave. That the sounds of soulful jazz and lively conversations fill up the space. A cool breeze from the air conditioning unit blows across the room, cracked tiled floors in a mauvey brown, walls that are concrete and lightbulbs dangling from black wires, contrasting against the potted pothos that hang above from iron rafters. Describing the current physical settings and everything that affront my senses has become one of the most grounding activities I can do in this moment.

I find the challenges ethat are currently arising in my life are choices that have to be made. My aging parents wish that I return to their nest to live with them, yet my bohemian and wild spirit knows this is not a choice that I can make. So I work on these feelings of choosing between my two heart of hearts: both present a rich and lively life but I can’t be in two physical places at once. To be with family or to build a life of my own. To build a career that brings me the greatest joy while mitigating the corporate struture that provides me a false sense of safety and security. To feel that I have made the right choice in ending certain romantic relationships or meditate on whether I have let something good go. I am navigating through these fragmented parts of self that I have cast aside years ago, bringing them back into conscious view and being. I find I am ‘trying on old clothes’ in a way, both mentally and physically. The parts of myself that grow through cracks of concrete, like wildflowers blooming on sidewalks, bursting through.

It reminds me that nature has a way of adapting and growing through even the most adverse conditions. So while my social and romantic life seem to be as dry as a desert, I reframe my thinking and look at this time as an opportunity to focus on myself and mold these thoughts like clay.

Sometimes, I want to run into the forest where I can let out the loudest screams that I hold inside. I can see why people breakdown in the most inopportune times: because when you hold everything in for so long, it’s that one thing that’ll set everything off the edge and crumbling down. Like the dam has broken and everything has changed.

I find myself worrying that certain people in my life are disappointed in me or don’t love me or I, somehow, am not doing the best that I can. And maybe, in a way, I feel like I am disappointing myself. I also partially feel like this is such a stupid thing to be worrying about. That I have begun to create these anxieties and dramas because, in a way, I feel that I am unworthy of love by just being. That in order to receive what I want, I must prove myself or achieve something.

We are on the precipice of a full moon, a lunar eclipse and in the midst of a Mercury and Pluto retrograde. Cosmically, the stars are presenting themselves to be in a space of intense movement. As I’ve began this journey through the feminine, I notice that I am sensitive and susceptible to these astrological movements. That I notice these waves of intense emotions and feelings coming up. What I have also learned is that I am getting much better at surfing the waves. That underneath the tumultuousness of it all, there is a calm center within me, riding it out.

So…yeah….frustrated pretty much sums it up.

Anyways, much love to you, xx,

Julia