A Beautiful Mess

I’m a mess right now.

A beautiful mess.

But a mess. 

Truth is, I just deleted 3,000 words, two blogs, that I had written and I went…

“This is absolute shit.”

Command + A … delete 

It was trash. Let me explain this mess. 

I feel like my entire way of looking at things just got turned upside down, inside out, twisted, broken to pieces, smashed all back together again and given a lovely burn with a nice Crème brûlée hand torch.

I’ve experienced things in the past week that have essentially snapped synapses and I can’t think in the way that I used to think. That started off as a bit of a “oh shit” moment, but it’s not the worst thing in the world. I’ve seen things, heard things, and gone places I have never gone before…my world expanded drastically…and now I’m feeling a bit like I’m a newborn deer trying to learn how to walk. 

Hence the mess part. 

Some people hear mess and think disaster. 

This is the farthest thing from it. I am loving my life. I get to heal people for a living, I am experiencing a lot of new thing and meetings tons of new people, and I’m really taking care of myself. 

But good lord do I feel like a beginner again. 

I’m really having a hard time thinking. Thank god that my heart can guide me in a lot of things because I would probably just be staring at my desk all day trying to figure out what to do next. 

All humor aside…I do feel a bit raw right now. 

But raw in the best of ways. 

You see, for a long long time I felt like this past week was going to be a moment that would break me wide open. Boy was that an understatement. Well, maybe just a tad bit shortsighted of what actually happened. Things happened to me that I will never be able to understand. And frankly, even after that moment, it only got more interesting as the beginning of this week continue on. 

I put myself in the hands of a healer/teacher who took me even further. 

So, there’s a pretty big sense of …what…the…hell…is…going…on right now. 

Best way to describe it. 

So here I am, on the floor of my kitchen, drink in hand, writing to you with a smile on my face because I truly realize…I’m not supposed to figure any of this out. Hard for my internal critic to let go of that idea…but it’s the truth. 

Because my heart knows what it knows.

And here’s what it knows. 

All of the things that have happened this year, and to take it even further, in my life…connected in that moment I was in the depths. I saw the perfectly packaged lessons, even though some of them were incredibly hard, and how they taught me irreplaceable lessons. 

Patience. 

Compassion.

Holding peoples suffering. 

Fearless love. 

The list goes on. 

And in that moment, I was shown a deeper purpose. I thought I was here to encourage. While that was true, that’s not the root of it. I’m here to heal. I saw why I was given an old soul. I saw why I went down the path I had traveled. 

And to take it even further, I saw where I was now, the situations brewing in my life and what I needed to do…and another path ironed into the ground heading off into the fog.

Woah.

Woah in a way that’s hard to explain. The reason why I had deleted the previous two posts was because I was trying to make sense of things that were insensible. And…they will continue to be as time goes on. That’s exactly what my teacher told me…that’s exactly the way I think about it now.

But here’s what I do know.

I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that I was put here to fearlessly love people and to heal others in any way I could.

But with that lesson this year, came the lesson of learning that I really did need people around me who were going to nourish me. One of my coaches gave me the gift of a “new story”…the story of the Healing Tree. She made it very clear to me that a tree without roots…is a dead tree.

So I grew roots. I surrounded myself with people who constantly encouraged me, who would listen to me talk about what was going on in my life, who would reach out to me and support me, and who sent me all sorts of good energy.

I finally grew roots, and when life ever got stormy, I firmly planted myself in the ground and enjoyed the wind.

Here’s what my heart knows as well…

When I look back, I can see the reasons for why things got quieter and quieter and quieter. There’s an old saying that things all happen at once or nothing happens at all. For a long time, things got very very quiet. And in truth, I think I was being told to slow down.

I had been going at a million miles an hour for such a long time that I had no idea what it was like to connect with what was right in front of me. So that’s what life gave me. Quiet. And it made me anxious as all hell for a while. I truly struggled being in silence.

But as time went on, I grew to appreciate it…and as I lived more and more in the moment, pulled myself off of caffeine, got more sleep and took care of my body in more gentle ways…I started to see things and learn things that were probably always there.

I let myself get lost.

Lost in the woods.

And when I got really lost…I saw that what I was meant to find…as the dead honest truth in the moment.

What was that truth?

“You’re a lover. Never stop loving.”

Throughout my life, there have been many times to hold my love hostage. I felt my wounds scratched from time to time, and when that happened I would recoil. I would shut myself off to the world and lose my way on my path.

I really learned this lesson well…although…it took me god knows how many tries.

But after this weekend, I learned how to hold these wounds and understand that they didn’t define everything about me. I truly did learn that there was a massive part of myself that wasn’t wounded…far greater than the deep cuts…and that I could take care of myself no matter what was going on in my life.

I could stay open. I could leave doors open. I could continue to experience life as it was even if I felt like I was bleeding a bit.

This was new for me. Very new. But what it brought me was far greater.

It brought me a brilliant perspective. One of knowing that this world is full of moving, shifting, and changing things. Things happen. Things change. We make mistakes, we fall, we screw up…but the most important thing of all is that we own it and continue trying.

And for the first time in my life, I truly owned everything about me. The parts of me that were full of light, and the parts of me that were full of darkness. The happiness, joy, laughter, and mischievousness and the wounds that harbored shame, abandonment, grief and betrayal.

In that moment, of truly seeing myself for the first time…I learned how to love all of me. Not just the persona, but the shadow as well.

And when that moment passed, I knew that I could love all of someone else as well…in a much deeper way than I had loved before (which I still think was pretty deeply but wasn’t the entire thing). I could see their entire soul…light and dark…and love it to death.

Where does this all lead me?

Frankly, after a very interesting day, I feel pretty content sitting here on my floor enjoying writing.

I have incredible friends in my life, some of which are family to me. I have a very fresh way of showing up in the world, even if I feel like a newborn deer right now, and I have me. All of me. All of me for the first time. And the crazy thing is…the world now has all of me as well.

So I’m not really sure what’s going to happen tomorrow. Who knows? But I can tell you…I’m open to it…because you never know…lightning may strike.

Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project