Evolutions

When I look at how long it has been since I have published something here, I am aghast. And yet, I feel this slight smile curl at the edge of my mouth and I exhale, “well that’s okay, you’ve been living life”.

This last year, from April to April, has been entirely transformative. And as we know, with that comes a lot of pain, internal deaths, and deconstructing. But it has also been a lot of owning what I really want and desire in my life. What I want my human self to experience in this time I have on earth. A lot of learning to say No and Yes when that is precisely what I want to say. It has been a year of new love, and raw friendship. It has been a lot of reaching my limits, and capacity. It has been a year of feeling my body scream out in anguish because she is no longer willing to tolerate the old patterns, behaviours and narratives that I have embodied for years. I am able to look at those patterns now and recognize just how hard they were trying to protect me, and help me. They did their job well. And, now it is time to retire them. To free them, and let them play in the world.

Gabor Mate writes,

“Much of what we call personality is not a fixed set of traits, only coping mechanisms a person acquired in childhood.”

If you know me, you know I am unashamedly fascinated by, and endlessly curious about personality theory. Any system that aids in self-knowledge and understanding, I am probably buying the next book or listening to the latest podcast on it. The eternal question of, “Who am I at my core? Where and how does personality emerge? Can it shift? What parts are innate?” These have been, and continue to be, some of the greatest questions of my life.

I have challenged some of my ‘personality’ this last year. I have been challenged to look at aspects of myself that I recognize more now were like ‘clothing’ put on me. Attire that doesn’t actually belong to me. I have found that this clothing has often been the product of societal and religious expectations, family system dynamics, and protective mechanisms to keep my core wounds from taking over. I have tried to stop looking at these things as “good or bad” — they just are. Some have been more harmful, and some more helpful, and I am okay with that.

Some of those behaviours and clothing however, were my own doing. They were a response to those expectations. Protests in the name of me being a woman in the 21st century. Inner protests to live a different kind of life. To be more fluid, to be fiercely independent, to let my wild horse instinct be free in the world. To give myself other options and narratives rather than the one’s I was taught or saw paraded in Disney movies. This is a theme that will be an entirely different post – there is so much here that I look forward to writing about, and unpacking, but it is not yet the time.

Identity, personality, even reality, seem to be an ever evolving phenomena. This is where I land these days. I suppose it has been where I have been adventuring the last few years – exploring the unconscious, the conscious, and what it means to be human, while also being magnificent transcendent creatures. So much of our realities, and how we understand ourselves and each other are simply because we have our own lens and projections through which we experience life. I don’t see this as a threat, nor need it be a threat to our ideas of what “truth is”. I just think, why can’t they all belong? As Jeffrey Kripal says (and this is my own paraphrase), Can’t they all be on the table? As soon as we have to take things off the table, it’s as if we are cheating at the game of life. It’s like we are deliberately choosing to blind ourselves from other options, in order to prove our own beliefs or views? Seems like the easy more spiritless option. And that’s a big no thank you for me.

Why can’t all the versions of me from the past have been true and real, just like the me now is true and real? There isn’t one “right” way to be. How boring and limiting that would be. No, there is just becoming. There is just experiencing. And I imagine, the me in five years will be another evolution of Melissa. And I am excited to meet her.

Kripal writes:

“We are all future butterflies who think, wrongly, that we are just slugs. And we are evolving, whether we admit it or not, into something else. Something with wings.”

I want to be that something with wings. Over and over again.

Often it is either great love or great suffering that catalyzes such transformation, as Richard Rohr reminds us. For me, this last year, it has been both. I have experienced my own deep pain and inner suffering that made me confront myself very honestly. And eventually, from the deepest parts of my being I heard her say, “No more.”

Chapters of a life closing. But not lost, and not forgotten.

I have also though experienced a deep, profound, and safe Love. One that has opened me up to being seen, and to receive just as I am. One that has been consistent, and patient, and equal. I did not expect this to invite the change and growth and healing in the ways that it has, but it has. And I am so grateful for that.

New chapters of a life beginning.

All of this impacts the way in which I show up in the world. All of it shapes me, and influences me. As I would want it to. It is why my inner circle is one I am very intentional about. One I am being more mindful of than ever. We are always in the business of impacting, and being impacted when we enter the worlds of one another.

I am evolving. We are always evolving one way or another I think. There will be people who do not “recognize” you as you change and evolve. There will be people who grieve the version of you that you were to them, and what that means for them. This is not a bad thing, this does not mean you are evolving wrong, or that they shouldn’t have their feelings. You can be exactly where you need to be, and there still be grief. You can be becoming the version of you that makes you feel the most proud and happy, and still be disappointing people. In fact, YOU are allowed to grieve, even in the midst of your own happiness. You are allowed to be sad sometimes, even in the midst of you experiencing the comfort, the cozy-ness, and delicious pleasure you were once blind to.

With any change, with any choice, there is loss. But, there is also possibility. Possibility that will beckon you into unknown territory; to the places you would not have travelled otherwise, and it is there you will get to use your wings, and you will fly.