In the circle I gather all the women I used to be.
I decide to celebrate the women of my roaring twenties.
Easily, I could bolt for that door about to fling open and usher me into my thirties.
Restless and ready for a new decade to dawn, I could almost abandon my former selves.
I could almost disregard them and leave them in cool judgment.
I could almost forget all the courageous ways they loved and blazed and taught me about unraveling and questioning and loving into becoming.
Instead, thankfully, I do what these women have taught me to do, the lesson we learned the gritty, hard way – pause, breathe, slow down and receive.
I brave a pause.
I soften my inner gaze to illuminate in deep shades of grace each leading lady, and her own chapter brimming with passion, creativity, heart-beaming in desire for purpose, connection, belonging.
And oh, an exhalation to exhume and examine from the edge of almost thirty, the anguish of feeling misunderstood, of accidentally giving power away and forging the tools to discern (a life-saving gift of a word from the 20s) and determine love-bright boundaries, and the striving to succeed as a way to prove lovability.
And here the fact that I pause offers the inhalation of hope.
I’m beginning to relax behind this tendency to push ahead, and in the witnessing there’s a reacquaintance with the trusting of ease.
Ease breathes in an energy of flow that mirrors my home frequency.
Ease will be what saves me again and again, if only I just remember the magic, the kind magic of the PAUSE.
So I pause.
I stand tall with an open heart replenished in the waves of radical compassion and call upon all the women I used to be.
And I meet each woman with eagerness and excitement. Befriending my own currents of humanity invigorates my forgiveness, and I look her in the eye and I soften into an all-encompassing embrace.
This is how I bid a gorgeous goodbye to my twenties – in a kindness that makes me strong.
On the brink of thirty I feel freer, lighter, peaceful and urgently alive.
I am gentler now, so the women of my twenties did the soul work, are doing the soul work, and the ongoing weaving shimmers in a grace that roots me into my feet, into brighter heart-centeredness that’s more fluent in discernment, curiosity and playful spontaneity.
In the circle, I gather the women of my twenties and my palms press together into a prayer.
I bow.
I see you. I celebrate you. I forgive you. I thank you. I love you.
And to the women of my thirties, palms open, heart open, eyes open.
No agenda, baby.
You’re lushly liberated to live in the wild awe of uncertainty, of staying courageously open like those West Texas plains. Just the serious and joy-lit commitment to soul-listening, so when the call comes, you take the next aligned step, always toward love and braver becoming.
And for YOU, yes YOU, I welcome you into this circle, too. I send honeyed gratitude for journeying with me as I’ve written my way forward through my twenties.
Let’s write on.
Let’s open our palms to this moment and receive ourselves in a kindness that includes all our former selves, the iterations we shift through.
Let’s choose to land in a breath that merges our past with our present and promises the future will take care of itself as we lovingly take care of ourselves here.
Let’s choose celebration or just an appreciation that arrives to us with sugared serenity.
Thank you.
I love you.