The Path Back to You

As we close out our chapter on removing shame and shedding limiting beliefs, we’ve gotta talk about triggers and glimmers. 

We all know what triggers are. Trigger warning! Painful stuff is coming! Triggers are ways we respond– even in ways we can’t control– to things that bring up past pain. It’s a way our body remembers threats, to try to protect us. 

Glimmers are similar, except instead of remembering pain, our bodies are remembering joy. They are welcoming back beauty and saying, I see you. I remember you. 

The thing is, both triggers and glimmers are good things, because they act as arrows pointing to growth.

How am I still dealing with these same issues, I wondered. I thought I had looked through everything. I had peeled back layers. I had done some major healing. For a year. 

And that’s when I woke up to the real cause– and purpose– of these wounded cycles we inflict upon ourselves. 

In general, Virgo symbolizes the goddess in her perfection, and therefore Virgos tends to be in control. This is amplified during the full moon; the full Moon illuminates these tendencies, allowing us to see them clearly and encouraging us to relinquish the need to orchestrate everything. 

Often, a limiting belief isn’t something we even realize we agree with until we… stop believing in it. That’s what makes them so hard to identify! But typically these are beliefs we have about what leads to success, what’s going to get us a “good” life or make us a “good” person. 

It’s like some sort of script we believe we have to stick to if we want the fairytale ending. And usually, we’re so young when we get handed this script that we don’t even have the tools to question whether it’s true or real or leading to any kind of happy ending that we actually want!

Let me give you an example… 

Like most women throughout history, but even specifically those growing up like I did, in the American south in the last half a century, showing any amount of skin was met with disapproving glares, gossipy whispers, and choruses of “bless her heart.” 

Can you relate?

Our bodies aren’t evil. They’re not bad. There’s a reason we’re not disembodied souls floating around a spirit world made of fog and twilight. But we’re often so busy telling our bodies what to be, what to do, and what to look like, that we forget to listen to their inherent wisdom. 

Your mind will often lie to you about your body. But your body never lies. 

Have you ever been going about your day, doing something totally normal like getting groceries, logging into your email, picking your kids up from school, or going on a hike, and something happens that stops you in your tracks… some little coincidence or a moment of deja vu, or a text from a long lost friend you just had a dream about the night before?

I think most of us have.

If you’re following along week by week, you know that last week we talked about the difference between ego and soul. This week, we’re going to talk about what soul freedom looks like. 

My kids recently lost their great grandfather. It was an open casket. Before the visitation, I told my kids that even though they’d be looking at their great grandfather’s body, his soul was not there. 

Have you ever noticed that the body never really looks like the person did in life? There are many reasons for this, but the most important one, to me, is that a body isn’t really anything without a soul. 

Sometimes, whether slowly or all at once, you realize that your life is not and will never be what you thought it would be. Even if it is more beautiful than you thought possible, even if you are more fulfilled than you could have imagined, even if you wouldn’t take that first dream life back for all the money in the world, you eventually need to grieve the life you fought so hard for… the life you’ll never have and maybe never had.  

Get ready for the powerful New Moon in Pisces! The New Moon marks the beginning of a new cycle. This is an excellent time to use the energy of this New Moon to manifest your dreams. So how can you make the most of this energy? Let’s get into it!

I remember when Brian and I moved to Nashville after our year of traveling the country in an Airstream, and I was convinced that putting down new roots in a new city would be the final step in our healing journey. Both individually and together. I thought Brian would finally be able to meet new friends, get excited about getting a job, we could go on dates to places we've never been before, and enjoy the culture of a big city. There was nothing I wouldn’t do to help us move forward. I just didn’t realize at the time that the one thing I couldn’t do was move Brian forward with me. And I tried. 

In general, Virgo symbolizes the goddess in her perfection, and therefore Virgos tends to be in control. This is amplified during the full moon; the full Moon illuminates these tendencies, allowing us to see them clearly and encouraging us to relinquish the need to orchestrate everything. 

In order for something to grow, it first has to be pruned. If you’ve ever lived in the south, you’ve seen Crepe Myrtle trees surrounding houses and lining neighborhood streets in cities all over the place. There is nothing more jarring than seeing a Crepe Myrtle in springtime. They prune back those trees so much it’s hard to believe they’ll ever produce growth again. 

And yet every year, they come back bigger and more beautiful than ever before. And if they hadn’t been pruned, they’d be weak, scrawny, and more susceptible to damage. 

The same is true with us.

For the first four weeks of The Path Back to You, we focused on energy, digging into what it looks like to raise our vibrations. Now, I bet I can guess what’s happened since you’ve started that journey. 

Sh*t got hard. Really hard. 

We have the phrase “growing pains” for a reason. 

When you start growing, everything gets harder before it gets easier. You’ve decided to wake up to yourself, which means casting off all the old coping mechanisms and numbing techniques you’ve used to get through hard things in the past. 

The New Moon in Aquarius marks the beginning of a new cycle, one where you may feel a shift to focus on justice, freedom, speaking out, and fighting for the greater good.