What if the path to lasting transformation and joy is not through self-improvement but rather self-remembrance? Doesn’t that sound more enticing?
This journey of life is ultimately about remembering…remembering who you were before life shut off your voice, fiddled with your gifts and passions, diminished your power and dimmed your light. It has nothing to do with becoming someone new, as culture and media have led us to believe. Here’s what I have learned about self-remembering and what it means for you.
I used to believe that it was necessary for me to become someone I’ve never been before to find any happiness or peace. If I could just be more this or that I would be happier, whatever the latest craze was at the time. It was like I was seeking a new me, someone who wasn’t there before.
Isn’t that what the whole self-improvement movement has been about? To become someone new and improved. That’s the idea I had bought into, as I’m sure many of you did as well.
The process of forgetting begins in childhood and over and over, experience after experience, you forget a little more of your true nature. That’s just the way it’s meant to be, as painful and challenging as it can be.
You came into this world only knowing how to be one thing — YOURSELF.
Then cultural and familial conditioning slowing took hold and bit by bit you changed into someone others expected you to be, losing your original self. I became the perfect, good girl.
Who did you become?
Your journey then is to uncover You, removing all the veils, chains and locks that have kept you out of relationship with your true self and out of your joy.
A practice I’ve been guided towards on this remembering journey is to return back to the activities I loved as a child, before I decided that I was too grown up to engage in such “nonsense”. I’ve returned back to meandering under the trees whose branches I loved to climb and play house under for hours, lost to time. I swing. I cartwheel. I twirl. I dance every chance I get. I loved to dance as a child. Not the ballet recital kind of dance that was important to my parents but rather just letting loose in the living room kind of dance, leaping and twirling until my sister and I collapsed in giggly exhaustion. I also take long soaks in the bathtub like I loved as a child.
Some of these may sound silly. To me these playful activities are my most important form of self-care, of self-love. They return me back to my essential nature. They open my creative flow. They help me remember what life is really all about…joy, pleasure, love.
What did you love to do so much as a child that you lost track of time?
By re-engaging in my lost loves of dance and being amongst the trees, I remember and reunite with my original qualities. I remember my playfulness, my rebelliousness and free-spirit, my creativity and intuition.
You see, the idea as a purpose-driven woman, is to remember the parts of you that were lost in a grown-up, patriarchal land.
This is the land where daydreaming was frowned upon. Where the end result was praised more than the process itself. Where left-brain activities such as math, research papers and spelling bees were emphasized much more than right brain activities such as art, pretend play, movement and creative writing.
So now I am in a process of unraveling and undoing. I am ultimately remembering.
What are you being called to remember right now?
Your voice? Your sensuality? Your intuitive self? Your fierceness? Your feisty side? Your wildness? Your wise self? Your playful, fun-loving self? Your rebellious self?
I’m finding remnants of myself that are deeply familiar but so covered in cobwebs, dust and grime caused by years of shame and “not good enough” thinking, that they have to be coaxed out gently and compassionately.
I’m discovering parts of me that I never knew were there — the part of me that can sit and daydream or listen to the same song over and over, lost in the melody and words or be so enchanted by the aliveness of my skin.
I find myself flaming with rage and bowed down in grief for losing these parts of me for so long.
As I type words to the screen, I’m aware of my shoulders tightening, my throat locking up and I remember once again how I used to write as a child, for the pure joy of it. I put aside the editor self and drop into my safe space, letting the words pour forth like an open faucet.
Step by step, risk after risk something in me unravels, comes undone. Piece by piece, word by word, I am set free.
All I have to do is remember.
It’s time for you to stop trying to become someone you are not. Plus, self-remembering is way more fun than self-improving.
Photos and videos are not needed for this kind of remembering…just a willingness to follow those nudges, explore and be open.
Reengaging in our lost loves of childhood is a powerful way to remember our true nature and summer is a perfect time to do it.
So, once you’re done reading this, put down your device and get up and play!
Karen works as a certified life coach, Reiki master/teacher, & sacred circle facilitator. She also teaches workshops and leads retreats. Her powerful spiritually-based coaching will ignite your inner goddess, release your good girl and guide you to living the life you crave.Grab your free guidebook HERE. www.karentasto.com
*Swing Photo by Olivia Bauso on Unsplash