The Vulnerable Unknown of Transformation:

Inhabiting the "Messy Middle" as an Woman Becoming

What does it take to allow yourself to really change, on the deepest levels? What sacrifices are necessary for this threshold crossing? And, has social media inhibited this process or supported it? Does it freeze us in time, and then we look at the freeze framed version of us, and consider how people like it so much that we kept recreating it? And when does the day come where change is necessary? Imperative? Vital?

What does it take to lay down old versions of the self while being seen, and to transform completely?

These are questions I ponder often as a woman, walking in the world, being public, creating, and being seen. Before the internet and social media I could change and evolve usefully and fluidly, without pause, but when social media started to tell me (and possibly you) who people like you to be, did yours and my evolution slow down, or speed up?

I love the last phase of my womanness. I was wild and free and single. And people LOVED seeing my adventures on socials. You could see me in my bath, on trips, outside of ayahuasca ceremonies, on planes, my spiritual single gal life was yours to gobble, and as my friend Erica Matluck once said: “You’re like Julia Roberts in a spiritual rom com, searching the world for her mate, on her spiritual path. It’s delicious to watch.”

When I met said “mate,” it all changed. I couldn’t bring the phone into the bath, or bed, or onto each plane. Instead of staring into a screen of thousands of unknown faces on my Stories, I stared into the eyes of my Beloved.

My wise friend Dave Burns once said: “You’ve made Instagram your lover. I wonder what will happen when a real lover comes in.” I took this as a spiritual challenge of sorts: where was the heart-beam-of-me aimed? What was I devoted to?

He was right about the shift that would occur. There would indeed be a little rub here when my devotional attention truly shifted into the deep waters of sacred, conscious partnership. I did have to choose between loving my audience all day and bearing my soul to them…Or loving this mortal beautiful man I was yearning for for years and years and prayers and prayers with most of my presence and attention.

I chose the latter. (And yes it was a choice. It needed to be that clear.) And what a scary time emerged for me, going from sharing so much and being on my “Eat, Pray, Love” Badass Spiritual Woman meets sexy empowered and free time in life…to being seen and witnessed by a man I was falling in love with, which strangely felt way more vulnerable than the internet. And this man is no dummy, his presence *required* me to shift from “free and empowered” into deep devotion. In order to meet him on the altar of love, I had to battle many of my own demons and he his. I had to shed identities and personas that were emblematic of who I thought I was.

This is the crossing of the threshold. For me from a maiden, wild woman, princess place into a place of woman, roots, and softening. Going from “me, me, me” to “we.” In a culture obsessed with youth and filters and fame and money….what does it take to choose love and compassion, maybe looking less sexy or hot or empowered, but feeling more like love? For me, it meant (and means) a serious of ongoing spiritual death cycles, or transformations. For any women becoming, this is the case.

In order to meet the next version of yourself, you must surrender your control, and you must release the idea that from where you are standing you can see who it is you’re becoming.

If you’re standing in a misty morning forest, then there is no way you can see what is beyond it. You have to bear the discomfort of walking to the edge, not knowing what’s there (is it swamp? it is more and more and more forest?) and yet continuing on into the unknown.

However, social media and media with their youth obsession often say: “I like exactly where I am. So I think I’ll stay here.” It’s seductive to stay where you are when people like you in one way, as one version of you. Allowing that to change is risky. I’m not talking about a rebrand here, lol. I’m talking about a deep shift in the framework of who you are. This is what happens in the healing process. We meet core wounds that have created personas and identities that have defined us and so when we heal some of those slip away, and it can feel like losing an old friend. My wise mentor who I have been working with since March 2021 reminded me recently to not be mad at these older versions, born from wounding and trauma, to celebrate them in fact, honor them deeply. They did their job, and now they can be on their merry way, set free, integrated.

The other thing I see people do, is try and LEAP into the next phase before it’s ready. To use the misty forest metaphor, it’s like seeing one tiny spot of sun and running to it and saying “I knew there would be a sun patch in my future!” When just a few steps ahead there is a glorious cave, or a blue lagoon awaiting you…but you become so obsessed with the dime sized smidge of sun that you stay there, lost in the illusion of “this is where I was meant to be.” We can project our own ideas of who we think we are becoming from our past selves onto the future and it skews where we are going.

Think about it: if you are learning painting, and you’re in a 101 class, and from that class you decide the paintings you want to do, you are deciding from your limited view. You likely haven't heard about the techniques of layering ten layers of paint, or shading halos of golden light, so you conclude where you’re going from the sweet small place you are in, instead of just painting and painting until where you’re going emerges.

It’s not that we cannot dream and vision and intuit where we are going and who we are becoming, but if we do so from past selves, they are controlling the view. There is a sweet spot of listening, yearning, and being with dreams of who we want to become, but allowing ourselves to be in the unknown, “the messy middle” as Glennon Doyle says. From that middle place we don’t need to hide out and not share, but we also don’t need to harden or conclude “who we are now.”

If you are X now, you will have to let go of X to become Y. Who are you between X and Y? X.5? Or just a mushy TBD?

Or a more vivid example…If you are roots in the earth, you will have to let go of your root identity to become stem, then let go of stem to become bud, then let go of bud to become flower. Imagine if the flower was stuck in her stem emerging from the earth phase cause it felt so good that she never went into the tender blossom time? That would be a tragedy! I imagine as she leaves behind (no pun intended) what she has learned as a stem, she has no idea how intense it will be to blossom from a bud and reveal her inner workings as a rose in bloom.

I want to live in a world and culture where we allow each other as women to be in the becoming, to not conclude: “I am this. I am that.” But to say: “I don’t know who I am becoming. I can feel tendrils, but I don’t know, and I am okay with that. I’m excited for all to be revealed in time!” Instead of fearing the in-betweens, cherishing them, just as much as the space of arrival. Also, noticing where we cling and grasp to old selves, and where we are being called into deeper surrender and letting go of them.

This is the soul work. If we avoid it this life, then why did we come all the way here into this dimension of density and light, of high contrast, and deep forgetting? We made an inter-dimensional journey and we are here (IMHO) to awaken, and learn. There is a Ram Dass quote, which I cannot find verbatim, but it has always stuck with me, and to paraphrase, it’s something like: “You didn’t come to Planet Earth cause you didn’t have some stuff to work on.” I think this planet has a vast opportunity for awakening due to its contrast, the darkness provides a way into much light. I don’t know what other planets or dimensions are like besides glimpses in dreams and psychedelic visions, but I do know I am here, in the thick and dense, and light and beautiful, to evolve, to be in the process of transformation. To not accept one cycle as better or worse than another, even if one feels way better, but to see the value for my soul in all of it.

I’ve been between definable selves for almost two years, I clung to past me for the first year-ish of my partnership, and have entered the soft in-between where I am now gently walking, and despite the discomfort in not knowing who I am becoming next, I am enjoying the tender tread through the misty forest, spotting butterflies and snakes along the way, stopping for naps and song, and curiously wandering towards what is at the edge of the mist, with a deep surrender, sometimes with fear and bubbling anxiety (let’s be real,) but mostly deep breaths of trusting my soul’s knowing to ramble on, and enjoy the whole journey.

(If you’re longing to be amidst women in sacred transformation, circle and ritual and and mentorship my group Coven, first 3 month group called ALCHEMY begins in February. Join me as you continue with your deep soul work this life.)