I Forgive Myself for Landing Here

The first full moon of the year greeted us with its glorious presence this weekend. Friday evening at exactly 6:09 p.m. I welcomed the wolf moon with a pull from my tarot deck and a guided meditation. This full moon has been an emotional ride, illuminating a painful awareness of how behind in life I feel. With my 35th birthday approaching, I cannot help but compare my journey to others. Nothing about my life feels on track. Lacking a driver's license leaves me feeling angry and ashamed for landing here.

Yesterday morning I took my dog, Teddy, out for a moonlit walk at 5:00 a.m. I enjoy walking early in the morning because the world around me is quiet. It is just me, Ted, and my intuition in a meditative state without any distractions. Basking in the stillness of the full moon allowed me to hear my innermost voice comfort my heightened emotional state with this affirmation:

I forgive myself for landing here.

As a child, I learned that the only suitable life path was to go to college, find a husband, have a few babies, buy a house, and accumulate wealth. Anything else would not equip me for survival in this heteronormative white patriarchal capitalist society. So I did everything I could to control and contort myself to fit that narrow mold.

The only problem with all of that controlling and contorting was that it required me to abandon myself completely. Last week on the We Can Do Hard Things podcast, Glennon’s sister, Amanda, said: "By controlling ourselves, we cut off our natural intelligence at its root, and white supremacy grows in its place."

The need to control everything about myself - my appetite, my emotions, my sexuality, my appearance, my opinions - comes from a childhood steeped in white privilege and patriarchal norms. By doing everything I could to be perfect, I made myself so sick that it almost killed me. Addiction is where I went to numb myself from society's impossible standards. It was how I coped with the presumed detachment of my natural intelligence.

My history with addiction has taken my life down a different path than many of my peers. My life does not resemble that of a “successful” soon-to-be 35-year-old. But what if that is the best thing that has ever happened to me? Being different creates space to reconnect with my inner child. It allows me to rebuild a foundation that works for me. Addiction and sobriety have given me a rare opportunity to free myself from the chains of controlling and contorting. I get to chop that patriarchal brainwashing bullshit at its root and watch my natural intelligence grow in its place.

It makes sense that I fell into addiction while trying to survive in a society designed to disconnect me from myself. It is okay if my life looks different than I thought it would because I am breaking free from the cycle of generational oppression and trauma. 

Thanks to my reflections during the full moon, I can forgive myself for landing here.

Progress.