New Year: Transformation vs. Remembering?

I've been thinking about the concept of transformation for a while. Truth be told, I've felt like a butterfly going through a metamorphosis over the last several years of my life. Those of you who have been following these newsletters (or know me personally) for that long, have no doubt seen shifts happening in how I express myself and consequently, in the shape of Wander Free Wellness.

Over the last six months I've been going through a deeper shift in my being. As I've been saying in my classes, 2019 was a doozy, and I know so many of you have felt this. During these last six months, I've probably felt into my murky depths more than any other time in my life. Some sort of "Dark Night of the Soul" has had a grip on me during this "dark moon" phase in my life.

What do I mean by that? The dark moon is the time when there is no moon visible in the sky. It's the end of the moon cycle when one phase has ended but the new cycle hasn't yet begun. Spiritually, emotionally, mentally, perhaps even physically, I've been hanging in this void for about 6 months. I've felt like there was a significant death of parts of me, but wasn't quite sure what was dying and what was on the other side. Perhaps you can relate to times like this in your life?

During this time, one of my gazillion contemplations has been the idea of "transformation" and the wellness industry's (and my) use of this word. If you go to my website you'll see that part of my mission is facilitation of self-discovery, transformation, and healing through my services. Well...the word transformation, according to the Cambridge Dictionary, is "a complete change in the appearance or character of something or someone."

Hmmm...I'm now challenging whether a transformation is really an ideal goal. What I want to help you with is not a complete change, although it may appear to be from the outside, especially if you've been living life according to someone else's rules for far too long. What I want you to feel is a returning. A remembering. Of who you truly are. A return to your true nature. You don't need to change, because it's already there, within you. You just need to re-discover it.

I think of it as taking off layers of falsities and niceties and all the conditioning we "put on" throughout the years from birth till now. Most of us are walking around wearing sweaters, jackets, and goose-down-&-bullshit-stuffed parkas of conditioning. Swaddled in the lived-by rules that aren't ours, and never were. We have been taught, we have been molded, to be a certain way by the society and influences around us. And all that is making us heavy; don't you feel it? That sneaking feeling that something is just not quite right, or you're just not quite satisfied? I sure have felt it over the years, and I've been slowly stripping down during this hot-flash-of-awakening to my true nature.

You don't need to carry these layers. In 2020, how about you let some of them go? What is keeping you from feeling free? What rules about "the way things should be done" are you following blindly without ever having thought whether they serve your soul? What beliefs about yourself or others are operating in your psyche without your full permission or agreement? They are hard to identify because most of them are subconscious and have been with us for our entire lives...but it is possible to shift.

For me, 2020 is not a year of transformation.
2020 is a year of continuing to take off my jackets, my layers, my chains, and continuing to remember who I truly am.
2020 is a year of returning to my wild nature.

You and I are amazing, free, creative beings capable of so much more than we can comprehend. I know this to be true for all souls. We are more powerful than we can even imagine, and life is more than this grind we've fallen into.

Strip. Shed. Return to you.

In 2019, a friend of mine said to me that a crow needs to caw loudly so the other crows can recognize it and find it.

Who are you? What will be your call?
We are listening.

I'll be cawing and cackling my way through 2020.
Some people won't like it. Some people will love it. Some people may leave my life. The right ones will stay. New ones will find me.

It may be messy.
It's going to get weird.
But it's going to be damn beautiful. 

Will you join me in your own quest to wander free?
Happy New Year.

Love,
Jen