A New Chapter

We're always starting new chapters and closing old ones too. Our lives are much like the pages in a novel. We’re writing our story each day. As it unfolds, the next chapter reveals itself, and we need to close the page of the previous one, though sometimes this takes us a while. We spend so long reading the pages of the previous story. We read, understand, forget, and re-read it. The words in the book, and the words and recollections in our minds and our hearts. We can spend so much time understanding our past stories, that we forget we’re creating new ones, that each day is the start of something new.

Sometimes closing pages in our lives is challenging. We find ourselves in waves of grief, holding on tightly to old patterns in our lives, to coping mechanisms and fears, some of which we don’t want anymore and yet grip to, as if we do. Sometimes we’re unaware that we do this, which is why we need each other. We see ourselves through others, intimately.

Sometimes letting go is hard for us. We hold onto people, places, parts of our lives that we don’t feel we’re able to let go of for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes fear, that we’re afraid something might happen, that we might let others down or disappoint ourselves, perhaps a little part within us.

Sometimes, hope. That things might change, that we might just find contentment within our experience and never imagine us holding on to what we thought was some type of momentary aspiration that vanished just as quickly as it came. We’re content again and second guessing the desire we felt in our hearts that we wanted something else, something new, more. To become more of ourselves. Or, just, ourselves.

Healing old patterns is really hard, it requires awareness and thought. It requires patience. We are naturally going to move in spirals and loops and lines and so individually in our own way, because we all have different paths here.

Because like any form of changing something, the change wheel shows us that there are all sorts of stages of readiness, and we also gradually move from dysregulation to regulation like a ticking clock, and we need to work with this too.

Change is slow. And to be slow with this process, we need to be gentle with ourselves.

Maybe you have had a vision or seen some type of image or even felt a new behaviour within yourself, one that you enjoyed, one that you want more of, and want to work on healing the patterns that tangle you up, and hinder you from being there.

It's within wanting to live with more ease, for me it's that. It always comes back to trust, and choosing to do less, to honour this evidence that is right in front of my eyes, not from a story that plays in my mind, that my life really does align and work out so graciously, in its own natural way. When I am between effort and gentleness.

I hear whispers, I see the future, we all do. When we make the space for it. When we are quiet.

But can we trust it? Can we trust that so much of it comes when we just allow? Sure, we need effort, we need to follow this thread that asks of us, but we probably don’t need to lean into so many stories, so many of which aren’t even ours.

And letting go is a practice that requires us to surrender to all sorts of things. To disappointment, to grief, to hurt, to letting people down and letting other people in… What are you letting go of?

What new chapter are you within?

Are you in a new job? A new version of yourself? A new relationship? A new story? We’re all in new chapters, and sometimes talking them out loud and talking our emotional state out loud helps us anchor into them and makes them more real, more known, and tangible.

It requires vulnerability, but with vulnerability and as Brené Brown says, when vulnerability is shared in safe spaces, something really magical does happen. We soften. We hear what we don’t when we move from fear.

If you need to talk through a new chapter you're entering, or have the desire to let go of the old one and bring your focus there, reach out. I’m here, navigating so much newness, and whilst it’s challenging to let go, it's exciting too. Change is for the best, because without it, we’re not really moving, and I believe that so much of life is about movement. We can’t expect to be stagnant in our lives and feel good, and yet, with all the colour and growth, and sometimes fast pace, we need support, we need safe people to help us remember that there is natural movement that guides us, and that it is always found in our hearts.

We all forget to find compassion for ourselves and others through change, and thats what support can offer, and even if you take away one thing to go gently, to be compassionate as you navigate change, take that and leave the rest.. The rest, more often than not, with intent, works itself out. If you find yourself not being able to tap into compassion, ask for a helping hand, because it can make it feel just a bit easier and sometimes that is all we need. Someone to see us, and to help us by reminding us of what we all forget. Compassion.

Happy week ahead.

Alana