Hello my friends,

wow, it feels like forever since I’ve written here… so much has transpired that I don’t even know where to start, so I guess I’ll start where I am.
I’m inspired. exhausted. excited. groundless. scared. But mostly, I’m completely blessed.

I just got home from WPPI and my mind is still spinning from the amazing week, trying to process the whole experience. It’s funny that throughout the week I kept finding myself crying- not from sadness, but from pure inspiration. Before going, I was really feeling blocked.  Maybe not even blocked…. simply dried up. I’d been doing the Artist’s Way group & working with my amazing life coach, but  I was struggling deeply with finding inspiration & joy.  I know I’m not alone in this feeling.

And this week, so many light bulbs went off.  I feel like I have both clarity and groundlessness…. because it’s clear that things need to shift. It’s clear I have to carve out a new path for myself, and it’s both scary and exciting.  I realized that for the past 3 years, my love and my art had become “work”.  Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE everything about my work!  But I slowly became a photographer who only takes her camera out while working- so much so that my friends and family even made jokes about it….  “The only photographer who never has a camera” they’d laugh.  But sadly it wasn’t a joke. It was true.

So in Vegas I suddenly had this deep urgency to not only create art, but to be with my family and in my community… for me they’re all so closely linked perhaps because they’re the things I love so deeply.  Suddenly, I could feel the ground shifting under my feet.  and with that groundlessness came fear. fear of change, fear of the unknown. fear of being inadequate. All those same old voices that kept me away from the camera for so long in the first place…. the same fears we all have hidden deep in our cells.

So I thought I’d share some of my old writing on fear since it seems to be smack in my face today.  This is from a little  book I was working on years ago…..

dismantling. (2003)

When I was a trauma counselor I’d often have women ask me why their lives had fallen apart…. As if I had some answer that they did not harbor deep within themselves.  I believe that we have to fall apart, let things crumble…. dismantle our old ways of thinking and being to manifest into a greater way of relating in the world.  It seems that when we hold on too long, or too tightly to things that are not good for us, either we change our circumstances, or our circumstances will change us.  When I was pregnant with Madyline she came to me in a dream and told me just that….

I was scared – drowning in my fears of becoming a mother,  not wanting to give up the self-centered life I was living. “Your life is going to change” she said, “Either you bring me forth and see your life unravel in love, or you choose fear and hold on.” I don’t know which one made me more scared,  but here I am….  A mother.
And it’s scary to let go.
I can own that fear.
I can feel it lurking in my body, in my bones.
Letting go into the darkness, trusting the process is no easy task.  Every great teacher will preach it.  But when it’s time to let go of all you know, when it’s time to step into the darkness, It’s damned scary!  I’m often reminded of the time I went bungee jumping in Thailand….  It was all fun and exciting from the ground,   but to step out and fall into the pure nothingness of 150 meters of air takes a huge level of trust. Trust that I really can fly through the air and not splat dead on the ground. Trust that this tiny lifeline will catch me.

Yet most times when we are confronted with darkness and fear, We have nothing, no lifeline or indicator that we will be transformed… that we will make it to the other side of our fear.  These are the moments when we have to close our eyes,  take a deep breath,   and feel deep within out cells.  This is when we have to abandon the mind with all it’s logical thinking. Because the mind will always, always, lead us away from our fears and not into them.   I have followed my mind and  my logic into dead end corners too many times to know it’s tricks.  But my heart, when followed, has only ever let me to my center…. through my fears and back to myself…..  And so this is all I know to be true, and this is what I will strive to live until the day I die:  I will risk everything for love, risk everything to follow my heart. Because the greatest joys in my life have always been preceded by the biggest fears- as though a wiser part of myself calls from across the fire of fears, luring me….. “come if you are strong enough, come if you are brave enough, come if you are willing to forget everything you thought was true.”

Are you willing? Finally, I can answer yes to this. Yes, I am willing because I have nothing to lose but fear itself.

-Melanie Jaramillo

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