The Hardest Thing Was Listening to Myself

Reclaiming My Rhythm: Day 27 of My Cycle

Lately, I’ve been noticing how often I abandon myself in the moments I need myself most.

It’s subtle. It doesn’t look like collapse or chaos. It looks like reaching out to a friend for advice. Spinning in a voice memo. Asking for guidance when I already feel the truth sitting quietly in my gut, waiting for me to be still enough to hear it.

Working with my sex & intimacy therapist these past few weeks has helped me name this pattern: the part of me that defers to others when I already know. The part that fears trusting myself because it would mean accepting change. Or loss. Or a reality that asks me to take full responsibility for what I desire.

Sometimes I ask for advice not because I don’t know the answer, but because I do, and I’m afraid to accept it.

Afraid of what it might disrupt.
Afraid of who it might disappoint.
Afraid of what it might awaken in me that can no longer be put back to sleep.

But the truth has a rhythm, and it keeps pulsing through me.

It’s in the quiet steadiness I feel when I stop searching for the next place to go and let myself root where I am, even when it’s uncomfortable. Living in a house with people whose lifestyles and values sometimes clash with my own has asked me to step into the tension rather than run from it. Instead of using movement or change as a form of escape, I’ve been practicing stillness. Choosing to stay. To grow deeper roots in the face of discomfort. To meet the parts of me that want to flee, and gently remind them that peace doesn’t come from avoiding conflict, but from facing it with love.

And with my tea business, my ceremonies, my blends, the soul of my work, I’ve been learning to clear space from others’ projections. What it should look like. How it should scale. Who it should serve. I’ve realized I don’t need to shape my vision to make it more palatable or appealing. The medicine is already clear. The vision already true. I just need to trust what’s coming through me.

Returning to myself has looked like walking away from over-explanation and into embodiment. It’s meant grieving all the ways I’ve silenced my intuition over the years to make others comfortable. It’s meant remembering that I don’t need consensus to be certain.

I am the oracle I’ve been seeking.

That doesn’t mean I never ask for support, but I’ve been learning to check in first. Does this question come from curiosity, or from fear? Am I reaching out because I want connection, or because I want someone else to hold the discomfort of my truth?

I’ve been gently untangling the difference.

And what I’m finding underneath all of it, all the old stories and strategies and self-doubt, is a deep, ancient knowing. A wise one who has never left.

She’s teaching me how to listen again.

Colorado, 2020.