38-year old wisdom

Here are 10 things I’ve learned in my 38 years on this Earth.

Me and beautiful Emigrant peak on my 38th birthday

I just turned 38 yesterday. Here are 10 things I’ve learned in my 37 years on this Earth.

1. No one is coming to save me. This doesn’t mean people don’t love me. This doesn’t mean people don’t want to help me. This doesn’t mean I can’t rely on and trust people. This doesn’t mean life can’t be easy, wonderful, and magical. It does mean I get to be the one who makes the definitive decisions, take action, and create the opportunities for my one and only precious life. I find this to be totally and completely empowering.

2. If I feel resentment, it’s because I overrode my own boundaries. The solution is to track back to where I made the decision to over-give, to not speak up, or to undermine my own intuition. Then give myself what I needed to hold the boundary, value, or structure for myself in that spot. The solution is NOT to make the party I am resentful towards “see” my perspective or make it better for me.

3. I can soft river my way to freedom. This doesn’t mean I’m always “soft.” This doesn’t mean I can’t bulldoze or burn a trail if I have or need to. This does mean life doesn’t always have to be fought against. This does mean freedom is the opposite of control. As I get older I am learning how to let myself be carved.

4. Make it sacred. When the tears won’t stop coming, the only answer is to deem them holy water. When the anger, frustration, and rage come in heavy and hot and all encompassing, the only what to move through them is to make them a sacred fire. When it feels like there is nothing left in me, the only option is to create a ritual of giving up. When it feels like I can no longer tread water in the deep end the only thing left to do is to let myself ceremoniously sink to the bottom. When my body is tired and aching, the only response is to worship its mortal frailty. When life feels like it’s too much, too painful, too exhausting the only answer is to make it sacred.

5. To choose my mess over their perfection. My life is my life. It is the beautiful and mind-numbingly complex constellation of my circumstances from the moment of my conception in my mother’s womb (maybe even the egg that became me in my grandmother’s womb), to this very moment of my fingers typing this message. Those lives I envy or think I want, those bodies that look easier, those material things, and exotic locations, those are all fantasies. Everyone hurts. Everyone struggles. Everyone has their shit. Any part of me that doesn’t think this is true is not in reality.

6. Sobriety is everything. I don’t just mean being sober from drugs and alcohol (although, yes, that’s everything for me too), I mean emotional and relational sobriety. I mean living a truly sober life. Raw dogging life can be hard, but it is the only way for me to live; it has given me myself back.

7. Your spiritual journey doesn’t even start until you stop trying to use spirituality to fix your ‘problems’. Spirituality is not a self help book. It’s not a linear journey to the top of some mountain where you sit, enlightened. The frustration IS the journey. The depression IS the journey. The pain, suffering, upset, IS the journey. A spiritual journey asking you to become and becoming is hard. Any part of you that believes being “spiritual” means you’ll get what your ego wants will need to be surrendered if you wish to even begin leading a life led by God.

8. Nourishment is greater than aesthetics. Nourishment is radiance. Radiance can increase with age. Radiance is the evidence a person has brought their Soul’s essence into the marrow of their bones. Radiance is matter infused with light. Eat well. Rest well. Honor your needs. Take your lessons in as if they come from someone who loves you (they do).

9. Being open all the time is not the goal. Sometimes we need to close. Sometimes we need to recover, replenish, recoop, go dark, sink into the soil of our own being. Sometimes we need to retract and recoil. This is right and good and true. Being open all the time is not reality. There is an inhale and exhale, a contraction and expansion, light and dark, yin and yang. We need the containment as much expansion. Containment actually directs the power, it can become more intentional. I know what it feels like to close and I know when it’s time to open again.

10. My well-being is a gift. Me being well is the highest gift to the collective. The clear, nourished, fortified, unique expression of my Soul song is my purpose in the world. Pouring into myself in ways that are simply for me is not selfish, weird, extra, or anything but a gift to those around me and the world as a whole. Sometimes I will not feel good, that is life, but I can always be well.