I am coming alive: on patterns, fear and what happens when you finally let go

Since my decision to swim solo, so much has changed.

Not in the way I expected. Not in a clean, linear, everything-makes-sense kind of way. In the way that real change happens - slowly, then all at once, and usually in the middle of the night when you are not looking for it.

I want to tell you what I have seen.

What comes to the surface when you finally stop

I carried this inside for about four or five years. I tried to fix it for over two years. And what I did not fully see until I had something of my own - my work, my space, my own ground under my feet - was that I did not feel attached in the way I thought I did. The relationship was there. But I was not anchored to it the way I once was.

What kept me close was not luv. It was fear.

What if I leave. What will happen next. What if I am wrong. What if I cannot do this alone. Old fears wearing the costume of loyalty. Old patterns dressed up as commitment. And I stayed inside that for longer than I needed to because the fear was louder than the truth.

Until something shifted. Something inside said: that is enough.

Not with anger. Not with drama. Just a quiet, clear, undeniable knowing. I am not afraid anymore. I am whole. And whole people do not stay inside things that no longer fit them out of fear of what comes next.

What I saw when I stepped aside

When I finally stepped aside I saw it all.

How much had lived through that relationship. How much had surfaced. All the resonances, all the patterns, everything we could possibly bring to each other - we brought. All of it. And past some time I looked at it with no fear, no pain, with gratitude. Towards what relationships bring to both sides. Towards what had unfolded. With my whole being knowing that what was present is not there any longer.

And it is not bad. It is good. To see clearly. To be real. To be calm about it.

I wrote in a previous blog about how relationships are mirrors. How what you call a trigger is not a trigger - it is a mirror showing you something about yourself you have not yet been willing to see. I wrote that from a place of knowing. And then I lived it even more fully.

I needed help to see why I was reacting to certain things. Why I was triggered when no trigger was actually present. Old story. Old pattern. Something that needed attention inside of me. Something that was mine to look at, not blame on anyone else.

And what I found underneath all of it was something very simple and very human.

I need luv. I need loyalty. I need depth. I need true connection. Without meaning there is no meaning for me. That is not a weakness. That is who I am.

The pain of total freedom

Here is the thing nobody tells you about becoming free.

It hurts.

I feel pain like I have never felt before, and at the same time I have never felt so strong. Because I can choose anything in my life now. Anything. And that is painful. Because it means everything is up to me. Every direction, every decision, every next step. There is no one else to factor in, no one else to wait for, no one else to compromise with.

That is fucking empowering.

And it is terrifying. And it is both at once, fully, without apology.

This is what coming alive actually feels like. Not the Instagram version of freedom where everything is golden light and open roads. The real version. Where you feel everything with every part of your body and you do not run from any of it.

Where this strength came from

I want to say something I have never said quite like this before.

The way I am taking things right now. The strength I have inside to deal with it. The ability to step back and look from the side without being consumed. The precision with which I am holding my own life while staying fully open to what is present.

I could not have dreamt of that. Not once in my life did I have this.

I thought I was strong. I lost my dad at 14. I was raped with deep cruelty by two strangers. I lost my child at 15. I have gone through all of that and come out the other side. I thought that was strength.

And it was. But what is inside of me now is something different. This is POWER.

This is what PRISM™ did to me. From the inside out.

The fear I talked about earlier - the fear that kept me inside something that no longer fit - that dissolved not because I thought my way out of it or talked my way through it. It dissolved because the work went somewhere words cannot reach. Into the body. Into the patterns held in the nervous system. Into the places I had never allowed anyone, including myself, to touch.

PRISM™ empowers. It opens you to you. Still through pain. Still through the moments when you have to face your own shit. It does not bypass any of it. But it made me myself. Fully, completely, without apology, myself.

I know my why now. I know why I do this work. Not from a place of theory or training or wanting to help people in an abstract sense. From here. From having lived it. From knowing in my whole body what it means to go from surviving to actually being alive.

If you have ever felt that there is a version of you that is stronger, freer and more real than the one you are currently living - that version is not somewhere in the future. It is already inside you. PRISM™ is the thing that helped me find mine.

Gratitude for all of it

I am grateful for every person who has stepped into my life.

The ones who smiled. The ones who judged. The ones who laughed at me. The ones who ran away. Every single one of them brought me something. Showed me something. Opened something in me that needed to be opened.

Thank you. All of you. Genuinely.

This is a new chapter. Not because the old one was wrong. Because it was right, completely right, for exactly as long as it needed to be. And now this one is right.

A chapter where I realised I can make any decision because there is something bigger than fear in me now.

It is me. Coming alive.

I am growing. I am ready for life to show me more. And I move forward with gratitude and with so much luv, as always. Because i can’t do it otherwise. With all my doubts towards AI I am so grateful that it helps me to write this in a way where you guys who are native English speakers can follow my thoughts. I am grateful to AI too D.

If this landed somewhere real for you, I would luv to hear. Find me at @nataliabareikis on Instagram or hit reply if you are reading this as a newsletter. I read everything personally. There is no team here. Just me.

With luv, Natalia x

“

The wound is the place where the light enters you.

- rumi