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Imperfect Doesn't Make it Less Awesome

Stephanie Greene October 6, 2014

Sometimes I pick apart my practice. And my body. And my heart. And my ability. And my journey. Sometimes I pick myself apart until I'm raw. I'm never more judgemental than when it's an image of myself, the words from my own mouth, or the thoughts in my own head. Sometimes I am my arch nemesis.

I was looking at this picture today - doing just that. Picking. And then, for some reason, I was able to see that this is actually FREAKING AWESOME. This is fourteen years of practice, thirty three years of life, beauty and heartbreak, brand new miniscule openings in my heart space, the deep sensation of being rooted, the strong desire to soar, and THIS.IS.ABUNDANCE. Not scarcity. 

I'm telling you, friends, I am determined to live freely and lightly. I crash against old, dysfunctional behavior and it takes me a minute to remember that I am NOT that woman anymore. I don't need to obsess over what isn't perfect. I don't need to critique my lines, my posture, or my hindrances. My body holds a whole lot of memory.

I carry trauma and sheer joy in the same vessel. I carry grief and restoration in my muscles and you can tell.

This body is my altar. It's where I bear the marks of a life that has been LIVED and FELT. I am not numb or unaware. I am not disassociated or shattered. I am simply imperfectly navigating a holy and wandering road. I am learning how to open with grace. Everyday I have to choose to accept that THIS, as it is, is enough. I'm enough. I'm doing amazing and fierce things every time I swing out of bed in the morning.

I keep showing up to my mat, to my marriage, to my mothering, to my friendships, to my quiet places, even to this blog. I keep showing up even when I'm a mess. And that, friends, is always and forever ENOUGH. 

You're enough too. You are imperfectly awesome. I hope that sinks into fertile ground. If you catch yourself picking at yourself, I hope you also find the strength to stand up to you. I hope you have the courage to look right back into that mirror and reclaim the youness that makes the world sweeter, braver, and kinder. 

 

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Picking up little wolves like the wolf pack we are 🤟🏽 Here's to the ones who have abandoned the savior complex, who have chosen to live outside of whatever normal is currently in power, who have picked up the pen and started writing their own stories, who know now that love means affirmation and that the point of ALL of this is to walk each other home. Here's to the loud ones, the wild ones, the open hearts that can fit the whole universe inside of their always expanding choices to love love love. Here's to the ones who embody allyship, who know that being quiet isn't an option. Here's to the ones who don't just choose to tolerate or accept differences, but who celebrate them. Here's to the ones who know their wild has always been holy and who are willing to dig through layers of dirt to unearth the parts of them they let people bury before they knew better. Here's to the messy, to the sober, to the healers, to the truth tellers, to the ones who have lost people and things they love because it's just never been an option to not be true to WHO THEY ARE. And here's to the ones who don't ask anyone to be something other than what they are, to the ones who grow alongside one another and own their shit when it's time to own it. Here's to the humble, to the ones who ask forgiveness and who know that shame never has a place in the story. Here's to the ones who do hard things on a daily basis, who love with vulnerability, and who plant new things everywhere they go. Here's to the lovers, to the resisters, to the furious warriors who bear witness to other people's stories without flinching or hesitating. Thank you, you wild, beautiful, honest souls. We need you. Today has been a weirdly hard, emotional day. This is where I have to practice expecting the best outcome rather than the worst one. This is where I have to remember that I’m doing really deep, really hard, really healing work. This is where I have to trust that truth and karma are real things and no one escapes them. And it’s exhausting. The universe isn’t doing things the way I want them to be done. I’m stuck in an unnecessary interaction that feels endless and overwhelming. This. Shit. Is. Hard. But I had lunch with @ginadpollard today and that left me feeling much more clear. And @bex.richards spent a long time on the phone with me, letting me be sad and reminding me how temporary this all is. Because it’s ALL temporary. All of it. And these hard days are where we absorb badassery right out of the air and into our bodies. We stop being so afraid and we start leaning into the hard stuff. Honestly, I’m gonna let myself be raw and disappointed tonight. I’m gonna watch Hulu with my baby boy and my girlfriend. I’m gonna eat comfort food. I’m gonna make Becki cuddle with me all night. And then I’m going to have a good weekend because acceptance is the door to freedom. I’ll let myself feel it and then I’ll accept that this is the way it is. I’ll do whatever needs to be done next. Because that’s the only option and I am the king of doing hard things. So I can do this hard thing too. But just in case, send ice cream and sushi 🍦🍣 The slow leaving of tradition, of religion, of the belief system that had infused my entire life was like a drawn out death. It was tiptoeing forward, inching my way out of an old life and into a new one. Not because I knew what was on the other side, but because I knew I couldn't keep pretending like I fit inside the walls of a church. And not just the buildings. I didn't fit inside of Christianity, inside the brutality of an empire that had traded compassion for a watered down version of truth. I don't know exactly how long ago the church stopped leaning into a mystical Jesus and started serving up the body of a shadow of who he might have been, but I suspect it was pretty early on. Completing my relationship with church took me over a decade and it cost me a life I used to think I needed in order to be loved, to be safe, to be valuable. I didn't lose God, despite how radical and heretical I might sound. I found Them, the presence of God moving through everything in existence. The basic holiness that permeates things and people. Closer and closer to practicing the way of love, and inclusion, and healing, and abundance that Jesus repeatedly said people were just not understanding. Jesus the mystic, the alchemist, the enlightened teacher who lost his life in his resistance of the old way. Good Friday means more to me now than it ever did before. I know what the dark night of the soul feels like, I know what liminal space feels like, I know what resurrection feels like. And, for those of you who are deep in the in between right now, it's okay that you will resurrect yourself in a way that makes you unrecognizable to the people who knew you in the old life. Keep going. Straight into the unknown. The newest episode of @thewildrising podcast is live today and @thechurchwitch and I did this one for those of you who don't know what to do with Easter anymore. Come listen, subscribe, share, and bolster yourself with community ❤️ “Old Rule: Play it safe. Pass the ball. New Rule: Believe in yourself. Demand the ball.” | Abby Wambach | I hope you know you can demand the ball, that you can be louder than the crowd. I hope you know you can be angry over injustice and discrimination. I hope you know that ALL womxn need to be free before even one woman is free. Women of color, trans women, single women, poly women, queer women, abused women, silenced women, immigrant women, Muslim women, fat women, women in recovery, women living with addiction, bold women, loud women, women raising children alone, deconstructing women, witchy women, sex workers, women healing trauma, women conquering eating disorders. Women who are finally admitting that they give a fuck. They've always given a fuck. They're tired of pretending that they have no fucks to give. All together, as the world of women, start demanding the ball. Start believing that you are capable of catching the ball and worthy of having it passed to you. Eyes on your own inner strength and hearts committed to the rising of ALL WOMXN. It has to be all of us if it's going to be even one of us. It has to be our hands at each other's backs, our voices getting louder for one another, our platforms passed to the marginalized womxn among us who have been screaming into the wind. | In frame: @bex.richards #stephaniegreenephotography | Today I read something by Mark Nepo in #thebookofawakening that felt like the exact thing I was meant to read. He wrote about that scene in Indiana Jones where Indy has to cross a chasm to get to the thing that will save his father’s life. His dad is yelling out ideas and possible interpretations, but Indy has to do the riskiest thing and just start walking across dead air. He has to put his body weight out into nothing and trust that the nothingness is going to hold him. And it did. The path appeared under his feet the way only magic things infused with hope, and faith, and wild desperate wholeness can. I feel that because I know what it’s like to step out into chasms, to lean myself out into them, and to conjure up solid ground under my feet while knowing I might be meant to fall. Faith isn’t about trusting a certain outcome. It’s trusting that whatever the outcome is it will ultimately be a catalyst of freedom. Everything is ultimately about freedom. I’m healing some things that are much deeper than I’ve gone before. I’m acknowledging the parts of me I had forgotten were hiding in crevices meant to keep me safe once. I’m feeling the younger versions of me that are still waiting for peace. And I’m choosing the work that takes me out into the chasm. That’s where healing is, where freedom beats her wings against the wind and wakes me the hell up. That’s where I am, out there in the wild nothingness, waiting to be brought home. We’re only ever brought this deep when we’re safe enough to face it. This kind of underworld work is a sign of power, and voice, and love, and healing, and strength moving through us like streams under the desert floor. Invisible, but rushing through our veins. It means the old life is fading out of sight and the new life is flowing around us, bringing us home to our own wholeness, our own belonging, and our own sacred motherfucking rising. “The ground of warriorship is fear itself. In order to be fearless, first we have to find out what fear is.” | Chögyam Trungpa | You can. And you don’t owe apologies or justifications for stretching out past the lines of the way it’s always been. Someone had to draw those lines for them to exist in the first place. Which means you can draw new ones now. You can be so non conforming it changes the entire game. You can be so wild it rewrites the story. You can be so brand new it conjures up something ancient and primal. You can be so whole it leaves you shameless. You can be so fluid it changes the course of the river. You can be so strong it leaves the world softer. You can be whatever you truly are and you can do whatever it takes to live the whole thing out loud. Forget what you were taught about being human. Start over. Start with the goodness of your heart and go from there. You are divinely human. Whatever makes you you, that is a manifestation of divine love and there is nothing to be ashamed of. Be loud. Be big. Be bold. Be soft. Be overflowing. Be too much. Be evolving. Be independent. Be wild. Be clear. Be healed. Be still. Be open. Be free. Be complete. Be true. Be honest. Be growing. Be loved. Be creative. Be smart. Be teachable. Be genuine. Be different. Be weird. Be joyful. Be complicated. Be deep. Be angry. Be silly. Be whatever you really, truly are. You have never needed permission to belong or to do your work, but if you’re waiting for it today’s your day. Give yourself permission. You most certainly fucking can. I honestly think our souls are divinely unbreakable and that the breaking we experience in our lives is just the shell cracking, the hardening of our hearts chipping away. What if it’s all mercy? What if it’s all kindness? The shameless stripping away of everything that has kept us numb to the world. ⁣ ⁣ I spent 30 something years of my life like the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dam, holding back the leak in a way that was never going to be sustainable. Looking back, I know the dam was always going to break, always NEEDED to break, regardless of how long I stood there temporarily holding back the flood.⁣ ⁣ I’m not ashamed of how long it took me to finally pull myself away from the wall, stop numbing the fear of being alone, & let it all crash, break, flood, burn, explode, crumble, & crash. Even Jesus said it once: either you fall on the rock or it falls on you. The breaking will come eventually. Not as a punishment, but as a healing. Not as a consequence of sin, but as a shedding of the shell that made us so afraid of sin in the first place. Not as a backsliding, but as an awakening.⁣ ⁣ We don’t break to lose ourselves. We break to make peace with ourselves. We don’t break to get smaller. We break to finally take up space. We don’t break to punish ourselves. We break to heal ourselves. It isn’t US that breaks, it’s the energetic cement we poured over ourselves in order to survive.⁣ ⁣ Remember how @glennondoyle said that anything we lose by being honest we didn’t have to begin with? Taking our fingers out of the hole in the dam is just how we start telling the truth with our whole lives. Letting whatever mess was always behind the wall spill out into the light gives us the freedom to stop trying to be anything other than what we are. And THAT IS SOME MOTHERFUCKING HEALING. So yeah, I guess we sometimes feel like we’re breaking or splitting apart. And then we feel like we’re finally coming home to ourselves in a way that lets our ribs expand with a whole, deep gulp of air. I hope you feel like you’re finally breathing, friends. I hope you feel like healing is finally coming. PC: @alllllthekittens “Don’t fuck around⁣ when it comes to the⁣ energy you let into⁣ your life.⁣ Choose places, partners,⁣ and conversations wisely.⁣ They become you.”⁣ @createthelove⁣ ⁣ | @bex.richards and I got to play dress up with @lisaboehmbeauty and be photographed as pretend brides in the desert with @nadiab.photography and @carmichaelstudios tonight - this is an iPhone pic, so image what they captured 😍 |
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