Who are you when life is good?
It was the unlikely combination of opening to reality and orienting to goodness that the pain of the past and all those years of striving were alchemized into something new
The time has come, to turn your heart into a Temple of Fire.
-Rumi
Alive Again - part 5/5 | Guardian all things good.
The shift began about 4 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.
Following the question, I enrolled in my friend Marianna’s class about ceremonial tea. It was exactly what I needed: grounded wisdom, simple practice, and a community focused on filling life up with something good.
Through 90 consecutive days spent in tea ceremony, prayer, and sobriety, I began to hear the phrase “become the guardian of the good” whispering to me.
“Guardian of the Good.”
I sat with the phrase for months without telling it to a single soul. As a result, two realizations emerged:
1- The “good” I was to guardian of was, in fact, my own Sacred Heart. Up until now, it had never occurred to me, not once, that my heart was good. Truthfully, I’m not sure I’d ever regarded my heart at all.
2- Life was meant to center the good– and my boundaries need not just “keep out the bad.” In fact, the more I added goodness to my life, centered it, amplified it, focused on it… The less space I had for anything else.
In the almost 4 years since deciding to let life be good… to regard myself as good, the floodgates of grief and beauty have opened.
The more I tried to “ascend” and “transcend” the pain of my past, the more it ran my life. It was in opening to reality - grief included - that I gained palpable access to my goodness. It’s in opening to reality, in the acceptance of reality, that we alchemize it into something new.
The “new” I am now experiencing feels much like a return–
A return to the Innocent One I left behind years ago.
A return to a sense of Authenticity my Soul remembers.
A return to the One with wonder– with access to possibility and the tenderness that comes when callousness melts away.
A return to community - discovering myself, gratefully so, neither better nor worse than any of my fellow humans.
A return to the Sacred.
All those years centering my abuse, focusing on “what was wrong with me,” striving to get free… they were not lost. They served their purpose: offering me validation, anchoring me in stability, healing from trauma, and getting distance from what was harming me. Thank God for the decade spent focused on the problem. You’ve got to identify the problem to know what medicine you need!
But it was the unlikely combination of opening to reality and orienting to goodness that the pain of the past and all those years of striving were alchemized into something new:
Childlike Wonder and Sage Wisdom. A Heart on Fire. A Beginner’s mind. The willingness to follow the path deeper into life, not out of it.
Your life is the portal to the divine.
We are not meant to hustle our way to wholeness all our lives, nor will trauma-work help us transcend our human biology.
We are not meant for endless digging, poking at wounds that are trying to heal (if we would just stop jabbing at them). We are not meant to center our pain, our abusers, or toxic systems our entire lives.
We do not need endless self-optimization, nor to rid ourselves of all the “bad” qualities. In the words of my mentor Holly, “There is nothing to be added to or taken away - only accessed.”
This is the beauty of backwards wisdom: Liberation is meant to be lived in the now.
We must only access it.
And this, my friend, can be a decision you make. It was a decision I made.
I decided I get to enjoy life as it is.
I decided feeling stuck is not the end of my journey.
I decided my boundaries are the guardian of the good.
I decided to reinvent myself.
I decided I cannot step off my perfect path.
I decided I can create my own abundance.
I decided to let it be easy.
I decided to embrace my cringe.
I decided I am already free.
You can decide (just like I did on my 30th birthday) to follow the nudge of your Sacred Heart and orient yourself to a new way of being. The time has come.
Intrigued to try this on for yourself? Try this–
1- Decide.
Decide to stop digging at your wounds. Decide life gets to be good. Decide there is nothing to be added nor taken away… only accessed.
2- Make contact with the Innocent One inside of you.
Nothing needs to be added nor taken away. Pause and get present. Can you sense the space within that is already free?
3 - Take a peek at what you are FOR.
We are well-practiced at what we find repulsive. Bigotry. Hatred. Racism. Injustice. Abuse. Rightfully so. And, decide for yourself what you are living FOR. What are your values? What is the practice of living them day in and day out?
You are the guardian of all this goodness. You are sovereign over where you place your attention and give your energy. You and only you.
4- Sit with this question for a week:
Who am I when life is good?
5- Join me inside my year-long program The Fortress, starting this May.
A space where you will learn to be the guardian of allllll the goodness.
And my friend, if life has treated you especially harshly, and you’re having a hard time accessing the good, this is especially for you. I’ve got an upcoming sliding scale workshop if you want to dip your toes in & see what it’s all about. Get on the waitlist here.
Because I know when you tune into your own sacred heart, you’re going to find a radiant, innocent, wise soul. You don’t even have to believe it yet– I’ll believe it for you.
The time has come,
Madison
❤️🔥🕊️🌈
Current offerings:
THE FORTRESS—
This orientation to life & this kind of healing is what I facilitate on inside The Fortress— my year-long membership program for alchemizing shame and living your liberation. Registration is closed until May, but you can hop on the waitlist right here.
PRIVATE COACHING—
Delightfully full. Please register your interest for future openings here.
