Dance your own dance: on separation, emotions and finding your own strength
I want to tell you something I have not said publicly before. A little while ago I made one of the biggest decisions of my life. I chose to separate from someone I had in my life for a very long time. I chose to become a sole swimmer. I am not writing this because I have arrived somewhere clean and resolved. I am writing this because I am still in it. Still recovering. Still feeling the weight of it on some days and the strange, terrifying lightness of it on others. And because somewhere in the middle of all of that, something shifted in me that I think is worth sharing.
What happens when you stop running
I did not run from this pain. That is not because I am particularly brave or evolved. It is because something in me knew, this time, that running would not work. That if I left this pain behind without looking at it properly, it would simply follow me into whatever came next. Even a thought of separation was scaring me a lot. Then I thought things were too complicated. Then I felt fear. And then that brought me to anger. Anger started covering fear. That anger was towards me and I did not see it. How come I am dragging things for so long. How come I am not acting on something I knew for years. It fascinates me how emotions are here to show us things. And all it took is one person. The one who brought the resonance. This is how we find our tribe until we move on. That resonance created a tornado inside of me which brought to surface what was hiding inside. So I stayed with it. I went into it. I lived the best day and the worst day sometimes within the same twenty-four hours. I felt things I did not know I was capable of feeling. A deep human longing for luv. A grief that had no neat edges, a river which needed to feel the shore. And alongside that grief, something else. New people appearing. Connections that mirrored something back to me I had forgotten was there. A lioness. Not hiding her face anymore. Roaring and moving forward even while hurting inside. I did not expect to find strength inside the pain. I expected to find more pain. And there was more pain. But there was also this: the discovery that I am stronger than I thought I was.
What the shadow taught me
If you have been reading this journal, you may have read the blog I wrote recently about shadow work and spiritual awakening. About how the darkness is not the enemy of the light. About how the parts of ourselves we most want to reject are often the very parts that are holding us. I wrote that blog from a place of teaching. And then I lived it. I have felt through my own shadow these past weeks in a way that was not theoretical or conceptual. It was physical. It was 3am and a silence that was too loud. It was the moment you realise that the life you thought you were living was not quite the life that was true for you. And it was also the moment, somewhere on the other side of all of that, where you catch a glimpse of who you actually are when everything else falls away. And though I have no idea what I am doing and I am scared and in pain, I choose to see it. I choose my darker side and I am giving it a cuddle. I am still in that process. The shift is real but it is not complete. And I think that is important to say. Because this is not a story with a tidy ending. This is a story that is still being written. You can read more about what I mean by the shadow and why facing it matters in that blog here.
Emotions are necessary
There is a moment in Enola Holmes that I have not been able to stop thinking about. Sherlock says to his sister: you are being emotional, and that is unnecessary. And later, she says it back to him. But she changes one word. You are being emotional. And that is necessary. I have been sitting with that for weeks now. Though if I am honest it has been my truth for years. Because I think we have been taught, most of us, that emotions are the thing to manage. To regulate. To move through as efficiently as possible so we can get back to being functional. And there is some truth in that. You do not act on every emotion. You do not headlessly dive into everything that triggers you. When the intensity is very high, you step back. You give it space. But the stepping back is not the same as the shutting down. Because if you can step back far enough to look at an emotion without being consumed by it, and ask: what is this for? What is this giving me right now? What is this trying to show me? That is when the emotion stops being something that happens to you and becomes something that serves you. Emotions fill your life. They add taste to everything. Sometimes sweet and warm and so good you want to stay inside them forever. Sometimes bitter and so hard to swallow you wonder how you are going to get through the day. But that bitterness is not a mistake. It is information. It is the body and the soul saying: pay attention here. Something true is happening. We are here to live fully. Not to manage our way through life from a safe distance. To actually live it. Feel it. Be in it.
Dance your own dance
Here is what I know now that I did not know before, or maybe knew but had not yet lived. We each have our own dance. Our own rhythm. Our own particular way of moving through this life that belongs to no one else. And the sooner you stop trying to match someone else's steps, the sooner you start to actually feel the music. But dancing your own dance is frightening. Because it means pivoting. And pivoting means making new decisions. Sometimes life-changing ones. Sometimes decisions that cannot be undone. And fear will come. Fear always comes when you are moving towards something true. It is not a sign you are going the wrong way. It is a sign you are going somewhere real. I am dancing my own dance right now. My legs are shaking. There are days when I am not sure I know the steps. But I am moving. And the moving itself is the answer. If you are in a moment of your own where something big is shifting, where a decision is sitting in front of you that terrifies you, where you are feeling more than you think you can hold: you are not broken. You are not failing. You are living. And living, really living, takes everything you have got.
P.S. Ramana Maharshi said: the greatest service you can render to the world is to realise the Self. Not to become comfortable. To become truly who you are. That is the work.
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The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.- Carl Jung