Hi friend,
The personal growth world can be out of control sometimes.
It can convince us that all we need to do is manifest better, think more positively, heal more deeply… and we can have everything our hearts desire.
But we are co-creators in this life. It would be egoic to believe we are in total control of everything that happens.
The truth is, we don't have full control over our life paths.
If you wanted to have children, find a partner, or build a career, and those things haven’t happened for you, you’re not broken and there’s nothing wrong with you.
It's not that you have a negative mindset or that you need to do more work on yourself.
(Because let's be honest, plenty of people get married and have kids and haven't done their inner work.)
Sometimes, life simply doesn't unfold the way we imagined it would.
We don't always get the life we dreamed of. And that isn't a punishment from God or the Universe.
If you aren't currently living out the life you imagined, it's ok to mourn that.
Allowing yourself to feel the grief will clear the way for you to embrace your present reality and find the joy in how your life looks now.
Remain open hearted to what wants to arrive in your life when you least expect it. It's never too late, it just may not happen on the timeline you hoped.
It's ok to hold both longing, and acceptance. 💕
Inside Today’s Newsletter:
📱Instagram: On the people whose pasts move us, and what we choose to do with our pain.
✍️ A Practice + Journaling Prompts: To make room for the life you imagined and find your way toward the one that's here.
🕊️ Latest Instagram Posts
✨ Practice for the Week: Making Room for What Is
When a life we longed for doesn't arrive, we often brace against the ache of it, or rush to fix ourselves so the wanting will stop. This practice helps you feel what it's like to let the longing and the acceptance sit in your body at the same time, without forcing either one to win.
Many of us learned to treat grief as a problem to solve, the thing we get past so we can move on. Turning toward it on purpose is how we let it move through us instead of settling in. This is a way to feel your present life as it actually is, before the thinking mind starts building a case for what it should have been.
Set aside about ten minutes and find a space where you won't be interrupted.
Step 1: Settle. Find a comfortable seat or lie down. Take a few slow breaths, letting each exhale be a little longer than the inhale.
Step 2: Arrive. Let your body settle. Feel the surface underneath you holding your weight. Let your shoulders drop and your jaw release.
Step 3: Picture. Bring to mind the life you imagined for yourself, the one that hasn't arrived the way you hoped. Let the image come into view without pushing it away or reaching for it.
Step 4: Locate. Notice where the longing lives in your body. Maybe a heaviness in your chest, a tightness in your throat, a pull behind your ribs. Rest your attention there for a few breaths, letting it be exactly as big as it is.
Step 5: Allow. Instead of fixing this feeling or explaining it away, let it be here. You're not agreeing that something is wrong with you. You're letting the ache exist without a verdict attached to it.
Step 6: Widen. Now let your attention include the room around you, the life you're actually living. Feel the ground, the air, the ordinary details of this present moment. Let them be here alongside the longing, not instead of it.
Step 7: Hold both. On each breath, see if you can let the ache and the aliveness share the same body. Longing in one hand, this real life in the other. You don't have to choose. You're just letting both be true.
Step 8: Return. Take a few breaths back into your own center. Notice how you feel now compared to when you began. Any more room around the grief, any more ease with what's here, any small opening toward what might still arrive.
However this landed today, know that you're not doing it wrong. Making room for a life that looks different than you planned can take time, and every time you practice, you build a little more capacity to hold it all.
Journal Prompts
What is the life you imagined for yourself, and where did that picture come from? Notice which parts feel like your own longing and which parts you absorbed from family, culture, or the personal growth world.
What grief have you been holding at a distance because feeling it seemed too big, or because you worried it meant you'd given up? What might soften if you let yourself actually feel it?
When you imagine embracing your life exactly as it looks now, what comes up? Notice any resistance, and get curious about what it's protecting.
Where might joy already be present in your life, in a form you didn't expect and maybe haven't fully let yourself receive?
What would it look like to stay open hearted to what wants to arrive, without gripping the timeline or the shape it's supposed to take?
Let this be your reminder that you're not broken, and you're not behind. You're co-creating a life you can't fully see yet, and there's freedom in loosening your grip on how it's supposed to look.
Stay open hearted. Hold the longing and the acceptance together, and let the joy of your present life find room to grow.
Love,
Shay 💕