30 years ago, when I finished university, it was time to get out into the world and earn money. We didn't dub it adulting then, but it felt just as foreboding. School was always my safe space, so I was gripped with anxiety at the thought of leaving. I didn't realize it at the time, but graduation triggered a trauma response. Mom sold our house at about the same time, and because school was like home to me, I felt like someone pushed me out of a plane when it ended. Suddenly, I hoped I had a parachute. I had to figure out how to land safely, then I had to get back home, somehow. I wasn't sure where home was anymore.
I didn't talk about how I felt with anyone. I didn't even know what anxiety was. But I did recognize quietly that my real problem was something much bigger, and I couldn't ignore my childhood trauma any longer. It wouldn't go away by itself. I knew I had to earn enough money to survive, so that meant I had to find my own way, find a way to heal, and gain more self-confidence.
I did know how to put my head down and work, so I leaned into it. I learned that caring and trying could lead to success. Inevitably, I over-did it and I burned out at work more than once. Success is an endless rat race when we let other people define it, however, my confidence and self-awareness grew as I continued to figure it out. Over time, I noticed how love energy (compassion, kindness, joy, patience, listening, generosity, appreciation, gratitude, etc.) makes the energy of people, ideas, even spaces expand, while fear energy makes them contract. I wanted to keep expanding.
We hit a spiritual tipping point. A lot of people are talking about it now. Ideas about spirituality, healing, energy and frequency (being "high vibe"), intuition and ascension are everywhere now. We're not just concerned with how to grow up but more importantly how to glow up. Before the internet, I was discovering it mostly on my own.
Although I didn't have a word or label for it until recently, I have been transmuting energy my entire life. I was also quite conscious of what I was doing even 40 years ago. That's mostly due to my situation growing up, but more on that later. At this stage in my well-storied life, and as I continue to transmute dense energies in my own way and in quiet service, I'm also here as a guide.
So I keep an eye on the various ways love shows up. Love energy takes many forms. At a basic level, it can be a generous thought, a thoughtful comment, a helpful action --- something we do that bolsters, lifts, or expands our own energy and the energy felt by others as it moves through us, between us, and around us.
I keep an eye on fear too. Fear is slippery. It can seem as harmless as a bit of idle gossip. Sometimes it's complacency, a complicit silence, a little side sneer, our inside jokes, our intolerance of someone who's different. Typically, the fear we put out there boomerangs right back at us.
Nothing is black and white, however, and the title of this blog, Love vs. Fear, is a misnomer too. I say that because we all love and we all fear. It's always love and fear side by side, defining one another by contrast.
My most important goal in life is to choose love. It's sometimes simple, often challenging, and always in the moment. It requires self-awareness, intention and often a bit of wisdom. It happens every day over hundreds of little moments in hundreds of ways. Sometimes I succeed. Sometimes I don't. I always try.
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