Go Back to Go Forward

Our path in life is often offered to us through the old, overlooked parts of ourselves.

Picture this: a fresh sunny morning. The dark of the night is still burning away, and that grayness is slowly waking up to the light of the day. The sun is everywhere, its rays are hitting the cars that drive by, the sidewalk, the people walking by, and a big yellow school bus, too.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

I remember this day like it happened yesterday. I was eight years old heading to Mill Creek Elementary School. The bus faced east as we sat at the stoplight on the corner of Michigan and Donegan.

The bus was loud with beautiful brown kids cackling, some finishing up their homework and others talking about grown folks’ business that their parents told them not to repeat. And then there was me. My head was tilted to the side as if I were listening closely as someone whispered in my ear. My eyes gently closed, with my nose in the air as if I could smell a delicious home-cooked meal. 

A feeling overtook me, unlike any I felt before. It was a feeling of pure connection.

As if speaking to an imaginary friend by my side, with my eyes still closed, I whispered, “Hi, God,” and, “Today would be a perfect day to die.”

God can be so many things, different to each of us. To me, it is the feeling of being home, in the world and in myself. To just have a “head knowledge” about God doesn’t satisfy us, we yearn to feel God. To experience God. But how do we do that? How do we feel something that is so “out there,” so hard to put into words?

Let’s go back to that day, sitting alone on the bus on the way to school, feeling this connection to everything. After I whispered that phrase, my eyes popped open. I noticed how the sun was shining on everything, opening up and blanketing over all of it: the sky, the trees, the grass, the birds. It was all so perfect and beautiful. I was certain God was there. The more aware I became the more it intensified. Like a game. I didn’t want it to end.

If you looked at my life at the time, you’d think my desire to die was because my situation was so hard. But that wasn’t the flavor of this feeling at all. While I was going through a lot of hardship at the time, the reality of what I was feeling in that moment was so much more than my circumstances. This desire to die right then and there on that school bus was a feeling of complete peace, a total recognition that I had everything I needed and always would.

So often we ignore these old parts of ourselves; they’re too painful, we don’t want to revisit them. What I have found in my own life is that the very things which have defined me, caused me pain, brought me intense feelings, held the keys to my future, my happiness, and my joy. They offer us a window into the truest parts of ourselves. The more we look back on those times in our lives, the more clues we have as to how we should be moving forward.

To not be curious about a part of ourselves means to disregard yourself. To forget the old is like telling yourself you are not valuable enough to look at the experiences that have shaped you and to harvest the goodness out of them. I am here to tell you that you deserve that experience, more than anything, this is what I know. It is worth the journey of going back, going in, going inside to see. Because if there is a possibility to harvest some beauty out of your life, it is worth the inquiry.

That memory on the school bus? I completely forgot about it until very recently. It took me 37 years and so much of my own transformative journey to realize I had the answer given to me all along. 

We are who we are long before we know who we are.

I look back on that day now and it all makes perfect sense. At the time I would never have known that moment was giving me so much of the peace, meaning, and sense of connection I would need and fall back on for years later. That memory still affects me now. It has shaped who I am and what I do.

I urge you to take the time to look back and see if there is something there, something you overlooked, something strange. We may not think there is anything there worth inquiring about, but those murky memories from our past could be the very thing that God is trying to bring us back to, the essence of what God made us and wants us to be. These memories are a reminder to us that truth is always with us, even when we aren’t yet ready to recognize it.

My life’s work is to encourage women to wake up sooner to the truth of this reality. I offer the guidance you need in order to go into these old places with less fear, more support, and a fresh perspective. By doing my own work of going back to the parts of myself that made me most me, I am able to align my life with a sense of purpose and connectedness.

Even if your life doesn’t appear to be “good” now, you can shift that by finding something to love about it in order to become more grateful. Even now, God is here and your life is still worth celebrating and still worth living and still worth being curious about what is possible. Regardless of all of those experiences in your past, you are a part of something so big and so beautiful and so valuable. You have the ability to transform your life and that comes with shifting the way we think about experiences and ourselves.

So, keep daydreaming, keep pondering, keep being an adventurer of life and of yourself. Don’t stop. What we’re feeling within, it is not always destructive, or scary. A lot of these memories and parts of ourselves we’ve forgotten are creative. When we were children, that was our sole aim, we sought to express. God seeks to express too, both through us as children, and as adults.

To become co-creators of our lives again, active participants, this is what God wants from us. It is how we feel love for ourselves and how we share love with others. I want this life for you, one of deep love and connection. If you need help removing those blocks that are hindering you from feeling this love that is ready for you, just waiting to be experienced, please reach out. I am here for you, so you can feel it all.

Are you someone who often daydreams about what your life would be like if you were happy and more aligned? Do you yearn to be more creative and want to lean into your unique gifts and abilities? Are you sick of being controlled by your emotions, stuck in fear and boredom, and afraid you won’t fulfill your life’s purpose? I offer 1:1 coaching sessions to help guide women back to their essence and get clear on their path in life moving forward.

Please email me at soundhappiness2@gmail.com for your complimentary Shift Session.

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