Letting Go

As 2023 comes to a close, I am seeing an opportunity to start anew, like most people I guess. In January, I chose the word HEALING and while I predicted that healing would be saved for my body, my finances, and my relationships - I never expected the other parts of myself that I would heal and more importantly, how they would heal. I’m trying to remember the mindset of 2022 Teri who sat in her office chair probably writing a post about 2023 - trying to remember why healing was the word, what her goals and intentions were with the year and whether or not I’ve achieved them.

If I remember correctly, the biggest healing I wanted to happen was physically - with my body. After getting to the late stages of burnout in my business and then experiencing a global pandemic and a few bouts of Covid - my hormones were, how do we say…. fucked. I hadn’t had a period in about 2 years and due to lockdowns I couldn’t really get to my doctor to see what the fuss was all about. My facial hair growth had gone bananas - like significantly more hair growth than in previous years and my eczema had flared up significantly. Essentially, my body was stuck in stress and inflammation. I made a pact with myself to go to all my doctors and dentist appointments, despite the anxiety that came up with all of them. I got a recommendation for a gyno, went for monthly massages, starting moving my body more consistently every day, drank more water, drank less soda, took naps, really rested as hard as I worked, switched out real cheese for vegan cheese (only to find out that cheese made of cashews only made my inflammation worse), and had all the blood work done. I’m happy to say things kind of got back on track a few months ago and seemed to be sorting itself out. Am I healed? No - but I can sense progress is making its way. Now, what all of that work did though, was give me the opportunity to truly pay attention to my body and let her drive the bus. I had to let go of my attempts to control and instead, let her guide me to what she seemed to desire, when she seemed to desire it.

The next area of my healing would come in the way of finances - or more particularly, the lack of finances. Having stepped away from taking clients as I once did, I saw a HUGE drop in my revenue - HUGE. I knew this year was going to be a transition year and knew I had the savings needed to weather the storm so to speak, but it didn’t make the intense scarcity any less there. This year brought about a great awareness into my relationship to money and abundance - I was able to notice a lot of my scarcity thinking was future focused (worried about what was NOT on the calendar in the coming months) and brought me great stress. Previously, I felt the same way - I just never let myself sit in the squidge of the space long enough to feel it, make friends with it, and heal it. Coming from a family that struggled financially when I was growing up, believing there isn’t enough or if I had too much I wouldn’t be liked were feelings that I had to honor, understand and make peace with. I’ve come leaps and bounds since I started my money mindset journey a few years ago, but the deep seeded shit is still there, so in July I made one of the biggest investments in myself I have ever made and that was to hire Camille at Abundance Breakthrough to coach me in business, mindset, and money. She was able to help me peel back so many layers to understand how I was sabotaging myself from achieving more. I was able to recognize my patterns and the behaviors that subsequently would follow the scarcity squidge and despite not having as much money coming in, I actually feel richer in my life. I feel more at peace with the money I do receive. I truly believe that saving money is safe for me. I can honestly say that money is good and that it comes to me in unexpected ways. What I had to do, thought, was let go of the beliefs that held me stuck to an identity that was no longer serving me. The identity of the girl who plays small so other people don’t feel intimated or threatened by her. The identity of a girl who stays in her role as the “starving, flighty artist” so her siblings won’t feel intimated or competitive with her. That identity is out and we’ve now brought in a new identity: The identity of a woman who knows that financial abundance is her birthright. The identity of a woman who will become a great role model to everyone around her (including her siblings) for how to let money flow without resistance. The identity of a woman who values herself and her talents and is able to advocate and serve the world with high energy and life changing magic.

The third area of my healing would be in my relationships - my friends and family. This was probably one of the hardest for me because I am so used to driving in fast forward that I tend to forget people - I also had to learn to be okay that people were disappointed in me, didn’t like me, or just didn’t understand me. The squidginess that came up around needing people to see me as the “good one” became incredibly evident this year and similar to feeling the scarcity, instead of reacting and “fixing” the feeling, I sat with it. I cried with it. I questioned it. I became aware of the thoughts that created the feeling. I was very honest with myself about what I was expecting from other people in my relationships and had to have a come to Jesus moment with myself that the sooner I accept people for who they are and love them intensely for it, the more they may be able to love themselves as well. I also realized I cared so much that people saw me as a good person and how terrified I was that people would think I was a bad person doing a bad thing. It also became clear that the people that truly matter don’t put me on a pedestal or expect me to be a specific kind of way. They are the people I want to keep close to me and in fact, I will go out of my way to make sure that I am serving them as much as they serve me. On the other hand, when people took and took and discarded me like nothing, it hurt like hell, but I had to look at what was I hoping for from them and why, forgive, and then I had to let them go. Because me staying there to prove something to them or fold into the identity they wanted for me, was keeping me stuck. Was keeping me standing still. I realized as long as I was the “photographer”, the “activist”, the “good one”, the “smart one”, the whatever people assigned me….I couldn’t just be Teri. But when I found the friendships that expected nothing of me EXCEPT for me to just be Teri and I leaned on them vulnerably, they showed me that I am human, that I am Teri, that I as me, is enough. I realized that the people I want to spend time with, receive feedback from, and cultivate deeper relationships with are people that have no expectations of me or my identity. So, I let go (with peace) of the folks that need me to be something for their story - whether that is their villain, their hero, their leader, their teacher, their bad guy, whatever. I realized that at the start of the year I worried what people would think if I did XYZ - now I say: Let them. Let them think that. Let them say stuff. Let them do what they need to do. Let them.

When I look at my vision board that I made for last year I see all the parts that made my healing possible:

*Traveling to places with people I love
*Making time for a friends trip
*Spending time with the family
*Roadtrips with the husby
*Doing film photography
*Spending time alone
*Romanticizing the little things
*Living my authentic code: Creativity, Freedom, Authenticity, Education
*Work on that money mindset
*Spending time in nature
*Group Empowerment experiences
*Reading

I realized that just as important as intentionally adding in all of the above things, I also had to let go of so many things that were keeping me stuck, still, and scared. I still haven’t nailed down may vision board for 2024, but I figured I would save that for a December blog post when I’ve had time to really think about what I want to create for the coming year. The funniest part about all of this, is that I didn’t knock of any of the vanity metrics that I thought were important at the beginning of the year (# of youtube subs, patreon subs, coaching clients, etc.) - I focused on what felt right, trusted my body and my heart and went in that direction to reveal some really incredibly unexpected and beautiful moments. Paying attention to what felt good, made it more evident what didn’t - so my encouragement to you, is to spend time filling your life with the things that fill you up positively (even if they aren’t popular) so you can see what you need to let go of. And oh, how sweet it will be to free yourself from whatever is holding you stuck to an identity that no longer holds your magical being.