keeping a soft heart may not be simple, but it’s worth the stretch

letting go of inner opposition and sitting in the transformational discomfort of becoming new

If you’ve been here for a while or know me well, you know I’ve talked about being softer, letting life flow through you, allowing yourself to be open and tender even in moments of difficulty. And to truly get closer to your center so you can live a fuller life there’s deep importance in welcoming more softness and openness to your living. But it’s always one thing to intellectualize, to think on, to consider. It is a very different thing to sit in those moments, to trust yourself enough to be open when you want to run, to allow yourself the grace to become new while in the midst of unraveling what was.

It can also feel deeply uncomfortable when softening asks us to release control. When it asks for enduring faith in that which can’t yet be seen. When it asks for you to transmute all the patterns and behaviors that kept those older versions of you protected.

But I often wonder, when does self-protection become self-harm? Self-limitation? Self-delusion?

When does this sense of “protection” keep you riding the same cycle on repeat, choosing fear, similarity, and the safety of known-anguish over the new terrain of surrender?

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As someone who has spent years of my life being quite cruelly exacting of myself—and thus less able to extend grace in the toughest moments to others—I know quite intimately the immense discomfort in letting these things go, in finding more kindness, compassion, bravery, and innerstanding for my own heart.

The Hood Healer recently reminded me about how much control patterns steal true growth, progress, and deepening in relationships of all types. Growing up I thought if I could control myself, control how much I share with others, control unfolding dynamics then I would find a way to stay safe, to be seen safely, and hopefully even be well-loved. But looking honestly, I didn’t believe—deep down—that anyone would actually love me how I hoped and dreamed, just as I was. So I leaned on these mechanisms of control that simply band-aided the most blatant pains.

Feeling unworthy, desperate, controlling, and afraid became this mashup of emotional instability that would keep me from the circumstances I truly wanted. I would sabotage and sink good things before their time. I would go all in on investing in situations that quite clearly would never fully invest in me. I’d make up stories as to how and why the people I loved couldn’t or wouldn’t love me. I’d run from softness and surrender every chance I got and then wonder why I felt so lonely, angry, sad, depressed.

But it was because I was always living preemptively, attempting to control instead of live and allow. Always dreaming of a future that the present didn’t support. Finding problems in partners before I found openness and gentility. Deciding that loved ones wouldn’t or couldn’t hear my needs and choose to meet me in them even while I would devote myself to meeting theirs.

Looking at it from here, it looks a lot like control without conscious decision. I’d control the narrative from fear before allowing myself to be open to the best possible outcome. I wouldn’t attempt to enact this control in hopes of the most fulfilling experience, I would always be deciding the worst. So when it didn’t go how I wanted I was already prepared for sadness and heartbreak, a state I’ve been realizing I ultimately felt was my destiny.

It took me years of digging, underworld journeys (Scorpio much?), and facing myself in the mirror to start recognizing why I felt that way. Growing up, it was normal for folks around me to always have a tinge of misery, limitation, victimization, and so did I. We were less likely to be found discussing possibilities, hopeful outcomes, expansive dreams as we were to be communing over miseries. If you learn to expect disappointment, supposedly it’ll hurt less when the other shoe drops.

But of course, because the universe gives us everything we believe regardless of what we could have, the shoes were always dropping. Self-fulfilling prophecies from folks that didn’t believe themselves to be prophets. All from learned patterns of hardness, safety, and control. All from fear of positive belief and softness in the midst of ever-changing life.

I’ve been peeling back these layers steadily over the years, practicing looking myself directly in the face, and learning to sit in the deep discomfort of softening into a realm of deeply held positive belief. I won’t say it’s easy or simple by any means. Facing the truth of our self-harming, self-limiting behaviors asks for loving honesty, gentility, and braveness to see things as they truly are. It asks us to peel back our veil and see the dirty, frightened face of our inner child staring back. It asks us to step unapologetically into life as our souls’ intended it to be. No excuses, no victimization, just truth, honesty, accountability, sensitivity, and, of course, softness.

But wow, wouldn’t it be great if it was simple and easy? If it wasn’t so excruciating to see how you’ve been telling stories and making choices that have made life more misery than jubilee? If it weren’t so sad to see the way that little child within you has been fighting for safety, softness, and protection? 

I wish I could say, yeah of course it’s simple!! Get to it! Don’t wait! And for some folks who are particularly ready and willing it might be… But life isn’t usually that straightforward when you’re in the depths of the work, any work.

At the height of a renovation, the walls are exposed, there’s dirt and dust kicked up all over, half the things are covered in plastic sheeting, there are holes and exposed wires everywhere you look. The steps may even feel endless as you work towards your completed vision.

To plant a healthy garden there’s the tilling of the soil, digging deep and turning over the earth, mixing in the manure and the compost, settling the soil, and seeding row after row. There’s dirt everywhere, under nails, in sweaty creases of your body as it roasts in the summer sun. Then there’s consistent watering, weeding, tending, harvesting, and of course at the end of the season putting the garden to bed.

The point is that there is immense effort required in any harvest.

No one arrives to their mountaintop fully formed without the trials, energy, endurance, and effort required to climb to the peak.

It’s simply not meant to be “easy”. It’s meant to be transformative. To show you how capable you actually are. To remind you that it actually feels fabulous to become more of yourself. That learning to hold more emotional variability—the pain of revelation, the joy of self growth and innerstanding, the honesty of this big complex experience of life—is a strengthening and a gift.

Ultimately it’s to remember that of course we can do hard things.

We can do hard things and transform them into blessings.

We can do hard things and still give thanks for the life expressing itself through us.

We can do hard things and still be soft and gentle in the hands of love.