How Do You Trust Your Expansion When It Means Letting Go of People & Things You Love?
As global disruption and chaos increase, most of us feel the impact through spikes of anxiety, fear, and overwhelm.
Social media continues to educate us through raw, unfiltered images and stories. The information age has placed us in a unique time. During previous decades, national news and media platforms had the ability to conceal any information deemed unfit for public consumption. They had the power to leave us in the dark.
Now, we are privy to the mass extinctions of species occurring on a daily basis. Fossil fuel-driven wars. I see multiple exposés every day on social media related to unethical animal treatments, poisons in our food sources, unsustainable deforestation causing excessive carbon emissions and the displacement of animals through unsustainable palm oil industrialization.
In addition, there is a growing awareness of how some corporate money has been funneled for capitalistic gain to exploit children through pornography, and sex trafficking.
This is a time to be bold. A time to pay attention. A call for each of us, in our unique way, to consciously take a stand for what we yearn for.
To open our hearts and to embody our power, requires each one of us to look within and to see the truth of how we give, take, or withhold power. When empowered with self-awareness, we are able to evaluate how our choices result in separation, suffering, and power-over.
As the turning of the year and decade was approaching, I asked myself:
What do I most yearn for?
Am I living a wholehearted life committed to my desires to love, empower and heal?
I want to share my yearnings with you...
I yearn for a world in which we co-create a safe environment to heal wounds of separation, self-aggression, disembodiment, isolation, fear, and hatred.
A world where all life forms are treated with mutual respect and dignity.
A community of committed allies who each own how their own shadows, and influence of power, create exclusion, exile and scapegoating.
A global community that encourages and embraces expressing vulnerability, emotional intelligence, intuition, and somatic wisdom as a compass for shared empowerment and integration.
A world in which we find a way back into our hearts and away from the strangulation of fear-based greed, compliance, blindness, and avoidance.
A collective recognition that we are living in a cultural field of trauma, isolation, loneliness and increasing suicide rates which calls for more empathy, presence, listening and prioritizing one another.
A world in which we expand our consciousness to embrace the fullness of love, our human imperfections, and our wholeness.
What do you yearn for?
What secret dreams and hunger do you push aside to remain focused on the demands of daily life and "shoulds"?
What are you holding back from feeling, saying, reaching towards — for fear of the unknown?
What would it take to listen to your heart, and not allow self-doubt, comparison and fears to paralyze you?
How do you engage with the resistance patterns that distract you? Or, the seduction of habitual busyness that interferes with the prioritization of what you most yearn for?
Do you make time for self-care, connection with beloveds, rest and listening to your heart wisdom?
Expanding often means saying goodbye and letting go...
Taking the first step towards what we truly want can often seem irrational, and terrifying.
The path of being a revolutionary asks us to let go of what we've outgrown in order to expand beyond the known.
Sometimes, we are magnetized towards a creative project, a passionate business endeavor, or an intoxicating romantic exploration, without knowing where it will take us.
How do we manage our fear of the unknown, failure, heartbreak, doubt, and uncertainty when the journey ahead, and its outcomes, remain a mystery?
Most creative endeavors have periods of abiding in the dark with only our vacillating hopes, fears and self-doubt.
Will our vision open new doorways beyond our imagination? Will it lead us beyond our greatest hopes and fears? Or, will it flop and leave us with heartbreak and disappointment?
Our resistance to the unknown, and our fear-based thoughts, can shred our dreams into confetti and interfere with taking action and creating movement.
Shedding skins: the process of evolutionary birth, death, and rebirth
A caterpillar turns into a sticky goo inside of its chrysalis. It waits in the dark until it realizes it's time to move and shed its cocoon to take flight into a new form of life.
Similarly, the innate impulse to expand towards the next phase of growth is seen when a snake sheds its skin and a hermit crab vacates its shell for a new one.
We, as humans do something similar. We shed outdated beliefs, expand our hearts, minds, and bodies to welcome exiled parts of ourselves back home. This process of embodiment and remembering the wholeness of our being is how we evolve and integrate.
To expand, sometimes means we must shed the skins of the known, like a form of death, and await signs of rebirth, which doesn't always occur as quickly as we'd like.
Waiting in the darkness of the unknown can cause anxiety but it also holds the fertile ground of new possibilities, potential, and life.
How we navigate the darkness determines the degrees to which we suffer, resist and feel powerless versus feel discomfort, surrendered and thus empowered.
The birth-death-rebirth cycle is a natural part of being human. Death and loss create a vacuum of space, which gives rise to the birthing of the new.
Change rattles our sense of orientation and sometimes our sense of self.
Homeostasis is eventually destabilized to evoke change and growth. For example, children leave the nest; relationships come and go; forms of intimacy, depth, and love shift without a warning; entrepreneurs grieve the loss of an unmanifested vision, and health challenges rock our world often suspending ways of doing and being that we've taken for granted and grown accustomed to expect.
Each time we interrupt patterns and dynamics that have kept us (and those we love) bonded in ways that no longer serve us, we allow the shedding of these skins to expand us into new ways of relating, listening, loving and creating.
Each time we take ownership of the impact we've had on others, instead of justifying or defending, we weave another stitch of love back into our own heart. And, this naturally braids our connection to others creating more trust and safety. In addition, honor and respect for one another amplify each time we self-reflect and take personal responsibility for our impact, imperfections, and wholeness.
Depending upon our attachment to the person, dream, project, or sense of purpose, the grieving process, and the following rebirth can take much longer than we would like. And, yet no state lasts forever. Navigating the darkness is a dynamic playground to move between states of surrender, resistance and surrender again.
Goodbye, and a deep bow of gratitude to you, Your Erotic Nature.
To evolve is to let go, expand and lean into the emerging next steps, even when they appear close to imperceptible.
2019 was a year filled with letting go both personally and professionally. One of my most significant outcomes of this shedding process has been letting go of my brand and second business, Your Erotic Nature. Launching this work last year called upon all my courage, faith and trust. And, now I let go to make way for its expansion and next iteration.
A few months ago I shared some intimate details of this process through the article, My Revolutionary Heart Leap and Devotion to Love, related to my birthing process with Your Erotic Nature.
I shared about the grief, shock, and confusion I felt when I discovered my vision was too narrow. I heard a voice that said, keep going, don't stop here. Which meant throwing months of my creations of an erotic architecture map, and body of work, out the window.
During a strategic visioning day this summer, I embarked upon a wild frenzy of mapping concepts and desires on post-it notes. As a result of listening deeply, the aperture of my awareness opened. I realized that Erotic Nature was trying to expand itself into something even more comprehensive and integrated.
During the final days of 2019, I had a ritual and said goodbye to Your Erotic Nature. I thanked this aspect of my creation for all it has taught me about stepping into the unknown, following my heart, and trusting my inner guidance over other people's opinions of me.
Your Erotic Nature is now woven into a larger body of work related to Embodied Leadership, Embodied Power, and the Power Reclamation System.
Welcome to my renewed platform: http://www.Anne-MarieMarron.com
Who are the people I want to serve, love and play with?
I work with visionary and revolutionary leaders who are devoted to shifting consciousness and amplifying embodied love on the planet through the transformation of their own fear, shadows, and struggles.
These embodied leaders apprentice to embodied power and presence. They curate the artistry of being open-minded, curious, compassionate, and they take personal responsibility for how they influence their environment — from the inside out. They embrace their shadows as a way back into love, integration and authentic connection.
For those of you called, my desire is to help you cultivate a conscious relationship to your mind-heart-body wisdom and to confidently express your integrated power and presence in all aspects of your life.
The nexus of my work is the embodiment of wholeness, presence, and expansion of consciousness.
I invite you to join me on this journey of reclamation, integration, and embodiment.