Who are you when life is good?

Alive Again - part 5/5 | Guardian all things good.

The time has come, to turn your heart into a Temple of Fire.

-Rumi

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The shift began about 3 years ago. 

Up until that point, my healing journey had centered the pain of my past. (Rightfully so, I had a lot to heal from). 

Because of my challenging childhood, I had become strong, competent, and willing to turn any challenge in my path into gold. While these are beautiful qualities on their own, it kept me looking for challenge, oriented to difficulty, unconsciously and habitually seeking problems to fix. 

Something different was needed. Something new was emerging. 

My spirit was starting to ask me: 

Who are you when life is good?

And I hadn’t a clue. 

I had spent my entire 20’s outrunning my childhood– striving for success, self-sufficiency and when I got stable, I devoted myself to deconstructing and divesting from toxic systems. 

I’d walked away from harmful and supremacist religion, and in doing so lost 99% of my community. 

I’d gone no-contact with my abusers, reckoned with my deep seeded codependency, and started taking responsibility for my life (and my life alone).  

I had handed back my role as the “perfect/golden child” and began reclaiming my True Identity– which, through trauma, I’d lost access to.

I came out as queer. I got divorced. I stopped explaining myself so much. I stopped tolerating the intolerable. 

Through multiple dark nights and dead ends, I stopped seeing myself as a problem to be “fixed.”

And what was left in the aftermath was… so. much. empty. space. 

Who was I, if not the one leaving, healing, disrupting?

Who was I, when my abuser was not the center of my life?

Who was I, when there was nothing to burn down? 

Who was I, when life was good?

I hadn’t a clue.