Onwards and Upwards



via Mari Andrew

I'm learning to trust myself again. Do you ever feel like the older you get, the harder it is to trust yourself? I've heard that by the time you turn 40 you have loads of confidence because you just stop caring about the worries of your 20's and are free of the mothering and career building that consumes your 30's. 40 year olds, please weigh in.


I've come to a bit of a crossroads this year. I feel myself pulled towards something I'm just beginning to name:  a creative's life. Yoga and writing and art and radical hospitality.


Having long been the "responsible one," fear always stops me from fully diving in.


Maybe it's because I'm financially minded, or maybe it's because I grew up only hearing about what I should do. But that's changing now.


When I doubt myself (and I do!), I force myself to remember that I'm still me. I'm still the same girl who at 4 somehow got out of the campus housing we lived in at the time, and marched across the quad right up to the office where my mom worked, then demanded to see my mother. I'm still the 14-year-old who flew to Mexico City to immerse myself in religious iconography and to see and taste and experience alongside 20 complete strangers. I'm still the 16-year-old who walked into a local coffee shop and asked them to display my art, which they happily did without hesitation. Who knew that if you only asked, you would receive? I'm still the girl who at 20 studied abroad in the jungles of Ecuador. (Next time, I would pack differently though! I would trade my blow-dryer for water proof boots, just saying). And I'm still the 21-year-old who a few months after college graduation moved across the country for a job near the US-Mexico border.


I'm still her. She's still me. And maybe she's the only one I really need to impress.


I may be a little bruised and wind blown. I may be a little more burdened by a mortgage and meetings and taxes and adulting.


But I'm still here. I can still be brave. I can do hard things.


I can trust the tiny voice within me that whispers "write." As if it's the simplest thing in the world to carve out emotional space and time for the process of creating.


I'm finding, too, that I no longer have another choice. The "shoulds" are no longer fulfilling and the trusting is no longer an option. So write I shall.


Onwards and upwards,
Laura Jean Kathleen