My ability to attract what I was ready for was so uncanny.
Every single time I thought it was time to spread my wings, the wind showed up.
I remember one year, on our drive home from the Christmas holidays, writing “I will teach meditation in 5 states this year, and at least one of them will be unexpected.” By the end of January, two unexpected opportunities came to my doorstep, and I already knew where my five events were. I was riding high.
It came to scare me, and not in the traditional, “It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us,” Marianne Williamson kind of way (though that was in there was well).
It came to scare me because these were exactly the things I would be sweating later in the year. Should my attention REALLY be outside the household when I was needed at home to steady emotions and be the beacon of predictability? Was my absence from the home destabilizing? Could my husband handle the household needs alone, and was it even fair to expect of him?
Was I a BAD mom?
So I was a little scared of the kind of trouble I could get myself into just by chasing my dreams when I knew I had responsibilities to humans I loved.
This was an era where I learned to say no—a needed skill—but it was borne of no lack superstitious fear, for sure.
(I am dangerous. I get myself and my family into trouble when I chase my passions.)
That’s why this recent reading from the book “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield really made me take about five beats:
“Resistance seems to come from outside ourselves. We locate it in spouses, jobs, bosses, kids. ‘Perpheral opponents,’ as Pat Riley used to say when he coached the Los Angeles Lakers.
“Resistance is not a peripheral opponent. Resistance arises from within. It is self-generated and self-perpetuated. Resistance is the enemy within.”
I am NOT sharing this to shame myself or anyone else—I learned long ago that no one knows the life of a caretaker parent, though many ludicrous souls (often male productivity experts, female spiritual bypass leaders, or the cupcake-bearing idealist next door) have pretended to understand and oversimplify. (And yes, right now, my parents of high-needs kids are nodding; remembering every eye roll they’ve given in secret, or twinge of pain they’ve felt when perfect first day of school photos flood social media.)
But I AM sharing it because challenging statements like these make us pause and discern: “Is this really still my truth?”
And the fact is, that while my growth once resided in learning to say no (while still putting my work out there, no doubt), NOW it resides in learning to say yes to the right things.
Right now, given what I’ve got after years of loving effort, it can and should be called resistance if I keep playing small.
Steady, aligned, present.
Where are you in your journey of discerning yes and no? Where are you still living into your passions? Where must you hold back? Is this resistance or is it what’s real? Do you know how to tell the difference?