Is that even a real thing? Sounds weird and might be too out there for me. Plus, my friends and family would judge the hell out of me if they knew I was even glancing in a hippy-dippy, new age direction.
True. For me, for a very long time. Too long. It took me decades to talk openly about exactly what it is that I do. The backlash from “normal” friends and especially family was a price I wasn’t willing to pay. Until I was.
When it came down to it, the people I talked out loud to were the ones who wanted to know more. That’s how it always is when you stop trying to be palatable to everyone. I’ll never be admired and liked by everyone, and that’s okay. It’s more than okay, it’s normal.
I haven’t felt like I need to justify my point of view for about a decade now. That was always the problem, the thing that held me back: feeling like I had to defend myself against all comers. Growing up the mark of school-yard bullies will do that.
It’s a strange state of mind: wanting to be normal, despising what it takes to be normal. It always felt fake. Embracing my weird is when I’m most powerful, most at peace. Those things are not mutually exclusive. Peace of mind over piece of mind.
The other change that transformed my life was being willing to not know. To be seen as not knowing was my level up moment. Because of course none of us knows everything. Of course!
Appearing stupid, or worse than that, uneducated. Worst of all, boastful — which is how my brain categorised talking out loud about anything I was naturally good at. You know, the genius that people quest for, the talent creative folk delight in.
Nope. If it came easily to me it can’t have been worth much. That, or everyone could do it or already knew it, and knew it more thoroughly than I did. So, do shut up. You’re only going to make a fool of yourself.
Maybe I should wish I’d been brave enough to be a fool earlier in my life, but I don’t. All the experiences that have lead me to today, to writing this blog article for you (for me), are exactly, perfectly placed along the path I’ve trodden.
My personae have been simultaneously an interface to and protection from the world. So many Sondras, so little honesty. Note, I don’t say, so little truth. All of it was true for the particular me it was being projected by. The honesty required some serious shadow work to find.
It took fifty years to learn my craft, to be the artist, author, teacher, guide I needed. Nobody else needs to need me. I needed this stripped back, vulnerable self. She’s bursting with expertise in bodywork, energy medicine, and shadow working as a lived experience.
I have pieces of paper that announce labels, say things about study I’ve done and dates that mark achievements. Each of them was the beginning, and mark me not as a qualified anything apart from The Fool stepping into the void of not knowing. Ha! The things I thought I knew.
Each of those “qualifications” served as permission to do things I had already studied and usually practised for years before I’d even gotten to that point. And it was always permission I never quite believed. I hadn’t given myself permission back then, you see. Lifelong just-in-time learning is something it’s taken me until I’m here in my second half-century to appreciate as valuable.
My speciality is bringing you into the dark and letting you find your own way to the light. Or not. Letting go is not just a catch phrase for me. “Open hands, mum,” I’ve taught my daughters to say to remind me when I start to micro-manage. This stuff I teach? Yeah, there’s a reason. This is my spiritual practise.
Make no mistake, I’ll push all your buttons. That’s my job. It’s glorious when you let yourself go there, into what you think is the ugliest part of yourself. Women find me when they’re ready to get honest, when they’re ready to be kind to themselves.
I do not have it all together. I don’t know what I don’t know, except this: you’re here at the end of this article, and that means something — something important.
You’re more powerful than you think you are.
