Issue 45 - Two Things Can Be True at Once

October has always been an incredibly transformational and reflective month for me.  It is the month I got married. It is the month I launched Manifest in Motion, and we are now approaching our one-year anniversary. I lost my dog of 17 years around this time last year. And in just a few days, we will be going back to court, still fighting for the safety and well-being of my children.  There has been so much life held inside this one month.

For the past five years, there have also been a lot of disappointments within the court system and a lot of worry surrounding things that are completely outside of my control.  This week, more than anything, has been a week of release.  Releasing what isn’t mine to carry while continuing to build a future for myself and my children.  But release does not mean the heaviness disappears.  Trust does not erase worry.  Alignment does not remove the very human experience of remembering what has happened before and wondering if it could happen again.  I’ve had to allow myself to actually feel that this week.  The sadness, fear, hope, excitement, exhaustion, and the concern… All of it.

I have immense trust in God, the Universe, Source and in the direction my life is moving. But that trust doesn’t erase five years of experiences that taught my body to anticipate disappointment.  I think sometimes we expect trust to feel peaceful.  Like once we decide to surrender, the fear should disappear.  But I’m learning that trust can exist at the exact same time as discomfort.  I could feel that truth in my body this week.  I was more tired than usual. My feet felt heavier when I walked. Emotions that I thought I had already worked through began surfacing again.

And instead of seeing that as something going wrong, I started seeing it as information.  My body was communicating with me.  It reminded me again just how deeply connected the body, mind and spirit really are.  You can believe wholeheartedly that you are being guided while simultaneously feeling the weight of the reality you are currently living.  That is where movement has become so important for me.  Not as a way to escape what I’m feeling.  As a way to move with what I’m feeling.  To walk, breathe, release, to recognize what I can control and surrender what belongs to God, the Universe and Source.

There is something incredibly freeing about realizing, I do not have to carry what isn’t mine to control.  When I began this journey, my understanding of that was nowhere near what it is today.  And yet, even with everything I have learned, the heaviness around my children, their safety and their future can still exist.  Maybe that’s part of parenting too.  The circumstances may change, but there will always be seasons when we have to love someone deeply without being able to control everything surrounding them.  Maybe today it’s court.  Years from now it may be watching them drive away alone for the first time.  Sending them to college.  Watching them make decisions we cannot make for them.  There will always be moments that ask us to love deeply while simultaneously letting go.

And I don’t find it coincidental that while all of this is happening, I am also writing the 49-Day Becoming experience and continuing to build Manifest in Motion.  I am quite literally practicing what I am building while fully immersed in the realities of being human.  And maybe that’s one of the reasons this methodology means so much to me.  Manifest in Motion was built from the ashes of a life that had fallen apart.  But it wasn’t created after everything became perfect.  It has continued to be built while I have been building my new life.  It is a living methodology.  I don’t practice it because I went through one difficult experience, figured everything out and arrived somewhere where hard things no longer happen.  I practice it because life continues to have inflection points.  There will always be another season that asks something different from us.  Another moment that stretches us.  Another unknown.  Another opportunity to choose who we are becoming.  And this is why I believe so deeply in movement.  Because even this week, while feeling everything I am feeling, I am still here.  I am not freezing.  I am not abandoning myself.  I am not destroying what I have already built because something feels uncertain.  I am allowing myself to feel what is real while continuing to move forward.  That, to me, is embodiment.

It is very easy to write about a journey from the other side of it.  To tell the story once you know how everything turned out.  It is very different to write while you are still inside the unknown.  To build while you don’t know the outcome.  To continue believing when you haven’t yet received the evidence.  And right now, that is where I am.  I’m right alongside you in the unknown.  But I’m also in the hope.  I’m also in the excitement.  I’m also watching things happen in my life that I wished for, prayed for and imagined for years.

Two things can be happening at once.  Life can feel heavy while something beautiful is unfolding.  You can be afraid and still trust.  You can be releasing and still care deeply.  You can feel uncertainty and still know you are moving in the right direction.  You can be standing in the middle of something incredibly uncomfortable while simultaneously becoming the person who will one day look back and understand why this season mattered.  Maybe trust isn’t about reaching a place where nothing scares you anymore.  Maybe trust is knowing that even when you cannot control what happens next, you will not abandon yourself while you wait to find out.  And that is what I am practicing this week.  Still trusting.  Still releasing.  Still moving.  Still becoming.