Fear.

The four-letter word that nobody talks about.

It’s one of the biggest reasons for the racial and religious prejudice in the world.

It can drive you to action, or send you running for safety. 

It can make you stronger, or weaker. 

It can open the door to strength and bravery, allowing you to face things even though you are afraid. Or, it can open the door to anger and hate, making you resentful towards those people, or things, or ideas that cause your fear.

It can be so debilitating that you can’t leave your house, or it can be so strong that it drives your transformation.

You can choose to allow it to alter everything you see until everything you see is a threat to you, or you can choose to figure out what it is you fear and learn about it. Get to know it. Understand it. Move beyond it. 

It sounds easy. It isn’t always. Sometimes it is very hard to let go of that fear because it’s comfortable. It’s what you’ve always known and it’s safer than learning how to be UNcomfortable. Going along the road well-traveled rather than taking your own path, because your own path is blind; nobody has been down it before so you don’t know what to expect.

I know just how intimidating fear can be if you let it. We sold our house and bought a bus to travel around the country with our 15-year-old son for the next 3 years. If you don’t think that was a scary prospect, you don’t know me. I am an eternal introvert. I told Andy for years he would never get me in his YouTube videos. I told him I would live on a bus...maybe...when the kids were both living on their own...but I was more inclined to live in a just-a-little-bigger-than tiny house. I told him I had no desire to write for other people or work for myself because I didn't want to deal with all the crap that goes with it.

Here I am, writing shit I’m sure nobody gives a single fuck about because my soul NEEDS me to, being in all his damn videos and actually finding that I enjoy it...mostly...and living on a bus while we convert it. Encountering the very real awareness that I am starting a business that will include my sisters, something I never knew would be possible. All the while trying to cram in time to study tarot more than just infrequently, time for meditation, herb-tending, and getting my feet in the water. Literally. If it didn’t scare me at least once a day, I think I would have to do a double-check that I was still alive! 

The thing is, I am learning to embrace that fear to keep going, to make it small and insignificant. I know that the life I was living before was not a fulfilling one. I know that this one already is, and it’s just begun. I know that if I am not enjoying what I am doing, if it doesn’t make me feel like I’ve done something that matters, if I go to bed at the end of the day and say “Thank the Gods this day is done!”, then something needs to change. I need to do what makes me feel good, no matter what anyone else says they think I should be doing. The people that matter most in my life support me and embrace me as I am. The ones I am taking with me through this lifetime love me wholly and without judgment.

And that's just the way it should be.