Make my life an offering.
Winter Solstice Reflections on individuation, learning to be disliked & more
It’s the morning after the longest night and the first light has crept in over my right shoulder. It’s casting a glow over my solstice card pull; the cards were hopeful and reassuring. Thank goodness. My chest is wide and if you threw a penny into her cavern, it would land with a hollow thump. Morris, my grumpy black pug is under the covers in my lap, and I’m sipping Christmas tea from a dear friend.
People keep forgetting my name lately, which has become frighteningly frequent. One person, a wise guide, told me they felt my identity was in flux, which only felt part true. I feel more myself than ever… and the outer world seems to be what’s rearranging. 2024 was the year of unveiling my rage, disappointment and seeing reality as it is, not as I wish or ever so earnestly will it to be. I’m excellent at seeing what I hope is true, rather than reality itself. I love this about myself until I don’t. This year I’ve experienced nonsensical friendship ruptures, a breakup, a repair, clarity, answered prayers and holy loneliness in a way I never wanted, but desperately needed to.
It’s been a year of letting people be wrong about me & increasing my capacity for being disliked. A year of letting people be right about how they feel about me. Letting them keep their stories and learning when it’s time to stop explaining. Letting reality be what it is and neutralizing energy through feeling it all. Naturally, I’m quite conflict-avoidant. But luckily for me, my neurocomplexity means I’m not always privy to what others consider a conflict. Which means I can be direct and clear when stating the obvious… sadly, the obvious is often what many of us try to hide to stay comfortable and safe.
I’ve never been all that great at sweeping things under the rug even when desperately trying to avoid ruffling feathers. The juxtaposition is quite agitating for everyone involved. I am honest to a fault, and have had to learn to slow the avalanche of oblivious sharing coming hurling out my mouth. Tact had to be learned manually, and I really am trying I swear.
The grief and loneliness of unmasking has revealed something more like individuating than revealing the new & sparkling “me” under the mask. I feared this. Most of us do, which is why a thorough process of individuation is truly so rare. I’m noticing I am stepping into a greater layer of my own sovereignty & self belonging, and I’m a little unmoured by it to be frank. I’m moving from the truth of my heart but I remain uneasy. I’m disappointed and I’m disappointing. I’m not keeping up and I’m not calling back; sometimes for a week, sometimes forever. I’m allowing people to tell me who they are and out of respect for us both and as little judgment as I can muster, I’m believing them. I’m still judging though. Actually, I’m judging more than ever… it’s a healthy shift for me. This is what I stand for. This is what I’m not okay with. This is what I value. This is what I don’t. I’m in a sifting process, it seems. Life is flowing through me with ease, and my newfound clarity is parsing through every last detail, sorting what’s right and what no longer fits.
It’s simple clarity and discernment, and I’m adjusting accordingly. I’m honoring my boundaries by being in right-relationship to reality. It’s the most well, awake & alive I’ve ever been. Which includes so much disillusionment of the way I thought it was, the way I thought it was “supposed to be” & who I was “supposed to be.”
The bummer of letting go of “supposed to be” is that I was really good at it. I am really good at it. Excellent, some might say. Give me the guidelines & tell me your expectations. I’ll exceed them. I’ll blow you out of the water. I’ll be your glimmering star. Except this is the fixation (Enneagram language for my flavor of Ego) that keeps me so far away from myself. It’s not new, healing is a spiral, so I continually bump up against the voice of how successful, rich, loved and adored I’d be if I just stayed in line and did what I should. I legitimately feel grief for who I’m choosing not to be. Grief for realizing that our patriarchal, supremacist society doesn’t actually have room for my wholeness, even if I can play the game & win. (It’s not winning when you claw your way into rooms you realize you don’t even want to be in).
“I don’t want it anymore,” I hear Elphaba sing.
Me either.
The choices I’m making when I’m not doing what I “should” are nonsensical, backwards, last shall be first kind of choices— the choices many scoff at when they haven’t experienced grace or miracles firsthand.
Are they the right choices? I have no fucking idea.
But they are choices I must make. Choices to forgive. To risk. To sacrifice. To choose both wisdom and the fool at once. To make no sense & let people be confused. To let them keep their assumptions. To stop correcting them. To lay down old ambitions and get curious about what I would desire if positive consensus wasn’t my goal.
These are choices— which in and of itself is new.
To choose reality, and be fully, 100% responsible for each choice. To no longer be persistently fleeing from what came before, and even before that.
These are the miracles I speak of. This is grace: to have the opportunity to choose.
Who would I be if I wasn’t running from anything? If my heart got a say?
Who would I be if I didn’t have an audience— even one person— to convince of my goodness?
What would I work for if upward mobility and wealth weren’t my goal?
Where would I go, what would I create, how would I serve if the gaze of others turned away completely?
Who will I be and what will I choose as I continue to age and lose the pretty white privilege that will never offer the payout I am continually promised?
I’m getting a taste. I’m still scared. I’m choosing and I’m confronting my fears. And I’m choosing again. I’m welcoming the wonders of having a strong Self and the newfound ability to let the disapproval of others pass me by. My continual work.
Last night I offered my own bright & idyllic image to the solstice fire of transmutation. May I stop managing perceptions or trying to be more than I am. May my own perception be cleared & renewed. May I show up for what’s mine to do. May I grieve my self-abandonment as my primary loss. May the orphaned ones within me find their home of belonging. May all that’s not for me pass me by.
As I spoke to it & played my tambourine to the cackling fire, my friend Melissa reminded me it was a potent night with a potent fire, and not to mince my words. So I offered them with potency. What’s done is done, all that’s left is to meet reality.
I received an image of me laying down my life at the feet of God as I bowed.
Make my life an offering.
Others keep forgetting my name. At first offended, now I understand. Who I thought I was - however glimmering - is no longer here. The world is rearranging.
