Today we're discussing a topic that is both taboo and dear to me - and - happens to be coming up a lot right now. In this Fall season (energetically, metaphorically) and also literally...
You're going to die one day. It's that simple and blatant fact that has steered the course of my life. From a very young age, I've witnessed the way humans hold onto regrets, confusion, trauma and turmoil that go onto last a lifetime and beyond.
Between being raised by my grandparents, having parents with mental health struggles and other misc. events in my life, death has never been unfamiliar to me.
At 14 years old, after a suicide in my family, I found myself plagued with questions like:
“What if you died tomorrow?” and
“Can you ever really know and trust yourself?”
These questions became my catalyst for wanting to be genuinely happy, satisfied, and content with myself and with life. I've always sensed the world as a set up for depression or a slippery slope toward psychological warfare. Did I believe I could rise to the challenge of being truly happy? And if so, what did that even mean?
I had no conceivable notion of the path such questions would lead me on. All because of the one truth: we are but a hairsbreadth away from losing everyone and everything we hold dear. I've been led to see how living a deeply fulfilled, meaningful and peaceful existence comes through the embracing of fears and knowing your own pain, intimately. That it is possible to transmute pain into joy, dark into light, heavy into soft, grief into pleasure - but more importantly - life is not about always being happy. As a human being, you have the capacity to hold it all and that is where your resilient nature resides.
Somewhere within this concoction that, for simplicity's sake, I reduce to stress-management and discovering oneself, comes a spiritual awakening and thus the self-care lifestyle is born. It is an immense honor and responsibility to guide others on this same path, as I believe a collective shift is not only possible, but required, for ancestral healing, interpersonal relations and the future of our planet.
👉 Next week I will be sharing a peek into my personal practices around honoring death.
Questions for conversation:
What is your relationship like with death?
How does this article land for you?
What have been some of the biggest, unexpected teacher in your life?