Here to Stay

Did I want to stay behind the glass? Yes, sometimes.

I’m going to be honest. In the haze of my own insecurities around showing up, sharing, tracking engagement, and trying to grow my business, I lost the part of me that actually has something valuable to share. Her heart, her questions, her genuine and messy, yet somehow poetic musings. They started to disappear.

I went off socials for two years, and in that time, I found ways to steady myself into a new era of sharing, building something new. It was slow and human… just an extension of me. It felt different and more aligned. But the need for validation kept creeping in. And I began to track again… who is reading? Who cares about what I put out there? Am I valuable?

As I continued to move through this awkward wrestle between self-discovery and self-doubt, I could feel the tug to perfect and protect grow fiercer. I started wanting to polish and edit through AI to avoid the “what ifs.” What if my opinion is proven wrong? What if I’m made a fool? What if I look back and cringe? Can I create certainty here so I’m not a disappointment?

Under the cloak of false confidence, AI and I became an exhilarating duo. My whole website was transformed, every blog post, a smooth, tidy rhythm. Deep and meaningful themes or ideas were continually condensed down into polished or stylized phrases that seemed to make it all too easy.

I was losing my voice.

I sat back one day and was shocked at how I’d managed to write myself out of everything I had been working on. Where was I?

It felt involved. Like there was more to it than, Oh I just got swept up in the AI phenomenon. An elephant in the room, but much harder to notice. It was, however, hard not to notice the way my heart felt squeezed by whatever was going on.

As I turned my attention to the brewing unrest at my core, I met an old friend. My armor. I saw my foggy reflection in its well worn facade. It felt easier, like this, keeping my heart locked away in a jar from what I was putting out there.

But my armor wasn’t the only thing contending for my validation. I kept waiting, searching in the dark corners of my chest for what else was there. Oh, there it was. My courage, ambitions, agency, life-force… crumpled up like it had all been tossed away. And as I stared at that crumpled ball of me, an overwhelming sense of emptiness flooded in. It all just felt so useless and numbing being stuck in the armor.

Soon after this revelation, I started to see that while my time offline had been so necessary, it was now feeling like another way to stay safely at arm’s length from those what-ifs. Nothing could go wrong if I was tucked into that cold void.

I debated for a long time what I should do. Did I want to stay behind the glass? Yes, sometimes. But I could also recognize a desire to share and be seen, even though that terrified me all the same. So what was the answer here?

I landed on the tension. Realizing it may always be a part of me, I decided to honor it. Lean into it. Can I be courageous and scared? Can I let myself be seen without losing connection to an appreciation for what’s sacred, what’s mine?

I finally decided to come back online with this newfound footing, alongside a slow and important return through all I had hidden behind. Reworking myself back into the center of my website and blog. The first attempts being a little timid and more like a halfway point back. I was practicing being gracious toward myself in it, though. And I was encouraged by the idea that I don’t have to push past the parts of me that aren’t ready. I also don’t have to erase my heart from what I share and publish. I can have both.

I had no idea how to do this, though. Trying to find a way to share and stay present in the hustling scape of social platforms wasn’t easy for me. I felt all my old hypervigilant alarms go off. The urge to put aside my shaky voice and stick to outsourcing my next move to AI or the measuring stick of comparison was still there. Yet, despite being back in the middle of all that noise, I could no longer ignore the small nudge from within.

I kept hearing her… I’m here. Please feel me again. Know me again. Find me in the pause and know that to be connected to me is the validation you need.

I’m finding my way back to her. Back home to my voice, my heartfelt Songs of Deep, my gift. The more I find her the more I feel inspired to keep turning inward, to write from my connection to her rather than an external goalpost, even in the face of doubt.

I love her. I need her. She is here to stay 🫶🏻