a day to remember

Wow, so this has been quite a day. I woke up this morning not really anticipating what breakthroughs would occur, but I am coming to the close of this Thursday realizing how much I have changed in the course of 8 or so hours.

It all began with fear. I, along with many people I believe, live a portion of my life fear based. I am afraid of rejection, scared of how my actions appear, fearing of being misread...you name it, I am sure that I have felt it and allowed this conditioning to control my behavior.

So much of my behavior that related to fear however was unconscious. I really didn't have a true awareness of how it permeated my experiences and how so much of my daily life had a string attached to some kind of fear.

I feel like in the past, and really since this morning...I have had so much resistance to being verbally honest. And I don't necessarily know where that comes from, but there is something that genuinely prevents me from saying exactly what is going in my mind and expressing it exactly as I feel it. I don't know, and I have tried to navigate and understand it, but I haven't yet figured out where it comes from and when it arrived.

But I do know that with a simulated class experiential this morning, I was given an opportunity to come face to face with a friend of mine that I have been estranged with for quite some time. I was instructed to go up to anybody in the class and come into contact with that person. I didn't even realize who I was picking until I was face to face with this "stranger friend."

And there I stood, afraid to be real. Afraid to be honest. Afraid of rejection, afraid of how people would think of me, afraid of judgment. And then I was pushed. And I resisted, and then I was pushed some more. And my heart broke open. And I my core beliefs were exposed.

I felt real. For the first time in a long time. And there I was, opening my heart and spilling out my feelings...exactly as they were happening. It is something I have never done before, and I didn't realize how I longed and ached for it. Until it happened. So here I am. Wanting to apply this to all of my relationships. I want people to see me.

It began with fear. And it ends with ease and grace.