Coming Into My Own

I guess I’ve always been fiercely independent. Well, to be honest, it was more like a balancing act mostly – sometimes being fierce, at other times being independent. Let’s just say I have always been intense – both in my ferocity and my independence.

Yet, there were times when I would feel like the protagonist in the duck metaphor – successfully and calmly swimming my way across the pond, paddling furiously under the surface – but keep that smile pasted!

But, somewhere in this above-the-surface-below-the-surface mismatch, there was a disconnect – somewhere in this affray, I sensed I wasn’t being honest with myself – at least not totally, not brutally – not in the way I expected of myself.

So I set about doing nothing about it…. only to realize that I was actually getting myself entrenched in this wholly wondrous world of discovering ME (or at least the parts that I wasn’t totally in love with!)

Self-work is not necessarily hard, but it is serious work. You can’t get into it as a toe-dipping session. It isn’t something you opt-into when you have the time for it – it is a complete immersion – you get fully wet – and if you don’t know how to swim, you drink in some of the water too! There’s no room for hiding and masquerades, but there are plenty of mirrors and reflective ponds. There are volume boosters telling you about what a shit you are and how you’re not good enough for anything, but there even louder ones that you find to turn up the heat on those quiet whispers that say, “I got you, babe!” & “We’ve got this!“

It took me six months of this year to to align myself to ME. And it took me all of those six months to remind myself of who I am and what I wanted. ‘Soul questions‘ as Deepak Chopra taught us – so I asked myself every day, every month – and asked others while leading meditations and beyond – those questions that tickled the very deepest parts of our selves – and eked out a response so deeply buried under all the conditioning of ‘What will people say?‘ or ‘What would someone think?‘ or worse, ‘Do I deserve this at all?‘

That was when the penny dropped!

I was like, “Hey! Wait a minute…“… “Wait for just one bloody minute!“

Who exactly was in charge here?? Who was driving the shots and me taking a call on what mattered most for me? Who was validating my need, my desire, my want for happiness? Who exactly was allowing me (or disallowing me) my connection to myself – to me being me??

And I FELT it. I really, truly FELT it – in my gut, in my chest, in my arms, my legs, my head – I felt the WHOLE ME – I felt ALL of me come to life – in tingles and bursts and fireworks. I felt my cheeks flush and my blood rush to my head. I felt it love – with myself, with the world, with people around me. I felt the kinship to that beautiful roaring fire of my Martian Pitta Aries nature and personality! And all of them came to the fore.

OMG!! OMG!! I felt ALIVE!

I FEEL alive!!

That sexy glorious sparkling feeling of being IN your element! That awesomeness!

I realize that this journey of self-discovery has been my springboard to reconnection – to the real me. What I do is in synch with how I feel and what I want. Unapologetically, truly me – forging ahead without the need for anyone’s approval or validation. Conscious of my falls, yet unashamedly willing to dust myself off and step out – again and again…. Yet, keeping it real enough by pooling in the wisdom of hindsight and the expectation of foresight – tinged on the boundaries with the courage, confidence and passion of fire.

No more the furious paddling below the surface – because what you see is what you get!

Yes, I have come into my own…. and dancing to my own rhythm, my own fire…

Being OK with Being Me

Last week something happened…  No, wait, a couple of things happened actually. Without going into the absolute details of what happened, I’ll jump right in to what the events got me thinking about – uncomfortable things, for sure, personal insights for certain.

It got me thinking about relationships.

Pretty much a universal thought anyway, but this time, relationships got my goat because here I was faced with a relationship prospect of significant implications.

Now I know some of you must be wondering if I’m going to be spilling the beans about a romantic, passionate liaison. If so, I guess I’m going to have to disappoint you immediately, but you never know…  I’m not really here to spill any beans, this isn’t entirely a romantic wait-till-you-hear-about-it – but let’s just wait to find out where I’m headed with this.

So as I sat with these relationship thoughts in the middle of all the chaos of ER visits, daughter’s pinkie finger fracture, pop-up exhibitions, assignments and work, I also became aware of this deep sense of awareness – a realization that with all the chaos around me, there was this one part of me was still, unaffected and well, happy.

It was strange getting in touch with this part of me – stranger still that I was surprised it actually existed! Now, I’m no self-realized, saint who  has attained that level of detachment or any of the things that many of us aspire to attain – no I’m not that, yet, and this post isn’t about that either. What it is, for sure, is the recognition that the moment I stumbled upon this part of me, I also stumbled upon a whole list of feelings that I really didn’t know existed – at least they existed till some years ago until they quietly muted themselves.

So this quiet, inner self came with its own plethora of feelings – and emotions. Feelings of excitement, thrill and a sense of want or desire and at the same time wisps of doubt, confusion and inner conflict. But underlying all of them was this strong undercurrent of recognition – a recognition of womanhood – my womanhood – my identity – a sense of being in touch with ME.

It took me a week, but it brought me up close and person to what I was feeling in this moment of radical choosing. I felt liberated in the knowing of what really matters to ME and what I needed to allow that to happen.

And above all, that I was OK with it – ALL of it!

I was OK with ME.

This is where the lines go a bit blurry, right? Because even as I read it I’m thinking ‘Oh c’mon, Luvena, this definitely sounds like an intro to a passionate ta-da-da-daaaa story!’ So it is, in an odd way – it is a love story that I’m spilling the beans about. My love story with me – my love affair with myself unabashedly recognizing what I need and what I want – and what I choose to do about it. And I guess, in that equation, sometimes, well, other things also happen!

But …

These radical choices that I was making came with a whole bagful of existing complications. You see, I started thinking about what other people would say. And I thought about for a whole 10 seconds (yes, I gave it 10 seconds) – and realized that I didn’t really care about society being ready for my choice. I also wondered if it was something about it being my fortieth year and all that (still true, you know, the women-get-naughty-when-they-turn-40 bit).

So here’s the thing that was getting me worked up.

Values!!!

Everything about The Curvy Yogi was talking #BeyondStereotypes, #Diversity & #Inclusion. Yet, faced with my own deeply personal ‘in-touch-with-me’ moment, and faced with the probable ‘complications of the radical choice’, I was left challenged with my own values – a face-off between my personal ethos and my professional tagline.

I was questioning my own authenticity.

It was an ugly question.

It needed to be answered.

So I took a few deep breaths, grounded myself and just asked myself what the source of my discomfort was.

The answer, in all this simplicity, surprised me.

The ‘discomfort’ as I called it was, in fact, a new feeling of a grounded investment in ME. It was the sensation of change, the sensation of a shift – a telltale sign of me operating from a place of, ‘This is Me’… and it wasn’t going anywhere, at least not in the near future.

When we are invested in our own values, when or values are an authentic expression of who we are and what we stand for, they define the who, why, what and how of everything we do and represent. Our values vibrate with authentic integrity when there is no shadow of doubt that everything we do arises from that energy. Our personal and professional foundation rises from the same set of beliefs.

Living on purpose = living truly from my set of values, owning them, embodying them – and knowing when to drop guilt out of the equation.

Going beyond stereotypes was my mantra of purpose – of being rooted in my essential nature. (Well, yeah, it is also a Pitta thing like some of my friends would recognize)