A Personal Post on Commitment.

This is a personal post. I haven’t written one of these in a while. A long while.

But it is time. I know it is time. I have been avoiding vulnerability. I have been avoiding sharing my writing. It has been a few months since I have written a piece that I felt called to share with the world. 

The last few weeks I have felt this one building. I have been both terrified of and longing for its arrival. Tonight I sat down and it all came out. Each word nourishing. This is how I know. It is time.

So here it is: A personal post about commitment. And letting go. And justice.

2017 was year of all of these things for me. 

At the beginning of the year I declared 2017 to be about mastery and love: deep devotion and commitment to the people and things that matter to me. The declaration was one that came from the deepest part of me: the peaceful alignment of my soul, and the powerful ache – the longing – in my heart.

It was, and is still, true. I so want to master the crafts I am learning – writing, advocacy, facilitation and speaking. And I so want to enjoy deep intimate relationship with women I consider sisters, and to fall in love and build a home and a family with a man who sees me, loves me, and understands my soul.

None of these things ‘happened’ in 2017. At least not in the way that I imagined.

I do believe they are ‘happening’ though. On a spiritual level, I trust.

I am gaining skills and confidence in my legal work. I am showing up more consistently. I am becoming someone who can be relied upon; someone who can be trusted to show up and take pride in my work; someone who has decided to stay.

There are now a number of things in my life I will show up to every week come rain or shine – my legal work, my writing workshop, my health and my home. Knowing this feels good.

Learning that I can trust myself to stay feels good. Rewriting the story of who I have for so long believed myself to be – someone who leaves – feels good. I am no longer that person. I do not feel trapped. Running away no longer appeals to me. I can trust myself to choose something and to stay. Yes. That does feel so good.

I can feel in me the budding of a true leader. Someone who can show up for others and be of service without needing it to be about myself in some way. My capacities to hold space, to assert my opinion and to have boundaries are all expanding. I am becoming the powerful woman I have somewhere deep down always known I was and could be. 

It hasn’t ‘happened’ yet, but it is ‘happening’. I can feel it.

There are also people I would move mountains to show up for if they were in need, at any time. Family. And people I hold in my heart like family. People I respect and trust enough – and who respect and trust me enough – that we can be honest and true in our opinions and in expressing what we want.

I am getting better at saying ‘yes’ without resentment and ‘no’ without guilt. This. Feels. So. Good. 

This has been a large part of what the last year has been about. Honesty and freedom in relationship. It has at times been messy. To be honest, many of my intimate relationships had been harbouring landmines of suppressed truth. In 2017, with varying degrees of grace, I set them all off.

To the people in my life who have remained close to me through my sometimes harsh and painful honesty, thank you. I know I have pushed the limits of my relationships in this realm.

To those I have hurt because I did not have the courage to be honest earlier, I am truly sorry. I am learning.

And this – this is where Justice comes in. A visceral karmic learning.

I am learning it never pays to suppress the thing that is true, even – especially – when my truth means the relationship will be required to transform, or to end.

Some of my closest relationships were obliterated in 2017 when I revealed things that were deeply true for me. Had I spoken my truth earlier, I don’t know whether my relationships would have survived, but I do know there would have been less pain. Less heartbreak to those that I love.

In 2017 I came face to face with the patterns I run to keep myself ‘safe’ in intimate relationships. The ways I hide. The ways I lie. The masks I wear. The ways I trick myself into believing I want things I don’t really want to avoid the pain of letting go. The ways I create flaws in things that could work to avoid experiencing deeper joy and intimacy and love. The ways I run when things get too vulnerable and real.

I have learned a lot, and I have healed a lot. I have exposed the places where I was pretending.

My heart has finally let go of a man whom I deeply loved, but who had never chosen me in the way my heart needed. My relationships with women in my life are deepening, slowly, in a way that feels honest and free to a degree I have never before experienced. And I have found the courage to open my heart to a man who could meet me in all the ways I long to be met.

The sisterhood and the great love story haven’t ‘happened’. But they are ‘happening’. I can feel it. 

2017, you were sure as Hell challenging, but I have faith in your Justice.

I have finally admitted and chosen what I want, and I am cultivating the discipline and the boundaries to hold my heart open every day to receiving it.  

It hasn’t ‘happened’ yet. But it is ‘happening’. I can feel it.

I am becoming the woman who can live the story I so deeply want to live.

xo,

Danielle