Trusting The Process & Protecting My Peace
Reflections on a two-year journey of wandering aimlessly, liberating myself from the clutches of societal judgment & comparison, and discovering the profound wisdom in simply being.
Dear Fatima,
It’s true that our lives have seemingly run parallel more often than not, and I am so grateful for it. Chances are, if one of us is experiencing something, the other is experiencing it at the exact same time, has experienced it previously, or will experience it soon.
Sometimes I feel as though you understand me & experience me on a deeper level than most of my other friends & acquaintances. I know its possible for soulmates to be platonic, as I’ve found mine in you!
Funnily enough, in this phase of life, while you are feeling comfort in losing control, I am feeling empowered in regaining mine. I have floated around aimlessly for the past 2 years, and truth be told, I needed it desperately. It is true what they say, that not all those who wander are lost.
Sometimes, wandering is good for the soul, in that it allows you time & space to heal & find yourself. It affords you the privilege of being, instead of just constantly doing. And there is a lot of wisdom to be discovered in the being.
The years spent in the online coaching space were grueling, to say the least. It taught me quite a bit about the skills needed to run a business, but it brought with it a heavy amount of toxicity that, like you, took me years to shake off.
By the time we decided to take our sabbatical, the damage had been done, & I felt absolutely burnt out on all things related to the studio. None of the work brought me joy, and instead drained my creative reserves. I wasn’t sure if I would ever get my creative spark back, or my desire to work in design again.
I made the decision to ebb & flow with the tide, and for the first time in 4 years, I had no goals in mind. I had no overarching destination I was reverse-engineering & strategizing my way to, and I felt liberated.
There were times on this journey that I came close to panicking at the notion of losing my identity. If I didn’t have a goal I was working towards, or a passion to associate myself with, who even was I? Luckily, I kept the faith that it would eventually work itself out. My projector self thrives on rest & trusting the process.
Now, because I have taken the time to wander aimlessly, I am feeling called back to work on what I’m passionate about—brand strategy & design. The desire to dive in again keeps me up at night, my brain constantly reeling with ideas when just a year ago, it had been burnt out, overwhelmed, & empty.
If I had pushed myself when I was in a more vulnerable state, I fear I would have driven myself away from it forever. But it really is true what they say—if you love something, set it free, and if it comes back, it was meant to be.
Now that I’ve spent the last 2 years withdrawn from online spaces & focused instead on my internal world, I try not to bother myself with the rest of society—what they think & what they are doing are none of my concern. I’ve been in a place before where I cared far too much about what others thought of me, and how they would judge my actions.
While I can’t say I don’t still feel that way from time to time, I’ve done a lot of healing & a lot of reprioritizing. I’ve come to the conclusion that I must protect my peace—ruthlessly, if I must—above all else.
Now that I’ve learned to prioritize myself & my growth above all else, it’s easy to see how everything unimportant just falls away.
Though I have not yet left my 20s, and won’t for a few more years, I know many of your trials & tribulations as my own (we did experience so many of them together, after all!) and can completely relate to the feeling of being so much wiser now for going through them.
I feel more set in my ways now than I ever have. I feel more sure of myself (and more full of myself, some may say). But there is a difference between arrogance & confidence, and I proudly claim the latter.
There’s a certain knowing, a certain trust that I have in myself now that my younger self always had an intense craving for but could never quite satisfy. There are actually quite a few things she was constantly reaching for, wondering if she’d ever know what they felt like.
Now that I possess them, I wonder if it is a testament to my manifesting prowess, or simply a product of all the prerequisite experiences I had to go through first.
Regardless, I feel more clear, more sure, & more happy now than ever. I feel like I am truly living in the present, and for that, I am extremely grateful.
Warm regards from frigid New England,
Taylor