following your breadcrumbs: intrapersonal lineage

Since forever, I've been interested in knowing myself. Like a deep friendship to be nurtured and explored, I wrote lists of my favorite things when I was young, and then found myself surprised at the answers. Audibly I'd say "woah- that's your favorite thing?!" and then I'd get embarassed speaking to myself, knowing it was just me who could hear it. However, I continued leaving breadcrumbs behind for my future-self, should I ever need to get back to the spirit of younger me someday. I left behind treasure boxes of horoscope cutouts, examples of my mom's handwriting, and dated receipts of a purchase that brought my 12 or 14 or 16 year old self pure joy. I saved the corsages from Prom 2008 all the way to 2010, different flowers but all from the same boy throughout those years. Locks of my parent's hair-- I knew, but didn't know, that someday my Dad would lose his hair to chemotherapy. And there it is in a tiny bag with his signature on it: DZ 6/04/09.

My 'breadcrumbs' are a testament to this inner-knowing that nothing is permanent, but everything matters, even if we forget. In an effort to never forget the goldeness of growing up, I left markings on my outer world so that my inner spirit would remember. So that I could trace them back to never forget that gold. That pure honey spirit. We all have it, but we've forgotten to follow the breadcrumbs back to our childhood bedrooms-- remember the wallpaper you picked at, the stickers on the lampshade. The sticky scent of syrup on waffles at 6:05 am and the shuffling of Dad's slippers. When I get back there, I feel a rush of emotion that I want to cling to, but my younger self prepared me for these moments. It's why she left notes on the inner wall of the closet from 2008, the inside of the LLBean backpack from 2006, the underside of the table in 1996. Her handwriting changing throughout years, but her message staying the same with just a signature and the date, I now know what this means: "I was here, so are you".

I think we tend to forget our innate truths, the ones that made us dance around in excitement when we were younger. It came out in play-- you can remember, can't you? The glittering aspects of life that filled you with absolute wonder-- what were they? What were your magical spaces and favorite friends?

Mine were tiny objects that you'd find in a fairy den. One of the best play dates I ever had was when a new friend and I made a mini mud house and put all the Snow White figurines into this new world. It felt outrageous. It felt creative. It was totally art to us. She & I still have adventure at the core of our friendship.

My best friend and I created a fort next to the pine tree in my backyard and filled it upcycled goods. We had to take magical transportation via my swingset in order to get to the fort, and from there it was sticky sweet pine branches as spoons, and rickety wood for a couch. Bowls fashioned from acorn caps, and a promise that nobody else would be allowed into the fort. Something inside of me still tightens up when anyone in my backyard looks in the direction of where the fort was-- although now the tree is out and nothing remains. But the feeling is right there tangled in my chest! That's our wonder, in there, don't touch!!

All of that mattered, still matters, and lives inside of us like light underneath sea waves. Pool glimmer in our veins. But when we feel stuck, or disloyal to our truths, it's a shortening of breath that we feel when we've lost something.

Because, we have.

And to replace what we've lost is a quick and easy fix. But our spirit dives deep down to our soul and says: "So, this is just for the time being, and I promise I'll look every day for what I've lost. I'll put up signs! I'll ask the neighbors to look, too". Soul nods her head and sends spirit back up with nervous energy, but little does spirit know that Soul has every artifact that our spirit accidentally lost. They're untouchable to anyone but ourselves-- they're virtue, values, memories, and deep gutty emotions. They are raw gems in our own golden lockets. Ours, woven with meaning from what we feel from others; from our experiences, from our knowing.

Our try-hard, radiant Spirits spend so much time, so much energy running around the neighborhood looking for its lost objects that it begins to feel tired, and resentful, and angry.

It goes overseas, and then gets angry when it rains in a beautiful city as it tries to look for what it has lost.

It gets invited to campfires, only to pout "that's not the way the song goes!" when everyone starts singing. It tries to remember, but it is blocked.

It tries to remember what love tastes like, but wishes vanilla extract would turn into Madagascar Vanilla Bean on the tongue.

Spirit is not used to whining, and when it does, it feels even worse about itself. But it is tired of looking and trying for what it once had.

I whined a whole lot when I was feeling disconnected and unsure of where parts of myself were. Breadcrumbs were scattered to the crows-- an animal I identify with, but those days they just seemed like noisy birds. Trudging through minutes, and then hours, with a black orb in my stomach and then feeling even worse about myself when my spirit said: BUT YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE THE POSITIVE ONE!

shoulds | shoulds | shoulds

It's why I worked and talked about and coveted this idea of my own vision boarding workshops for a year without starting with the kind of strength and confidence that I am used to having. Not knowing why I felt soul-sick was unfamiliar and uncomfortable, like looking at someone I think I love, but their face not registering in my working memory.

You have to know you're in the muck to address the muck- it's part of the journey.

I thought I had lost a part of me, somewhere in the briefcase I brought to my Grad School Interview. Or in between the 'yes's' I said to obligations and short term responsibilities that actually drained me of energy. Half-learning, half-knowing this wasn't what my soul and spirit needed, I felt stuck; defeated even, at times. Energy got clogged up in drudgery of doing what I actually didn't want to be doing, yet I was afraid to start a path into the unknown.

But really, I just forgot that I had left behind breadcrumbs this whole time for myself should I ever get stuck. I quite literally dusted off my original vision board and saw it again. Not as the focal point in my delivery talk at workshops, and not as a light blue aesthetically-pleasing square of intention.

But of everything that former-me had pinned up on the board during the full moon, to remind me that I am a very real, acres-of-emotion-under-flesh person who has always valued living over existing. Every square inch of the board was filled with a multitude of life memory stored in the aging corners of the notes, images, concert tickets, and artifacts from the beginning of my spirit dancing with my soul rather than running from it.

The moment I stopped with the shoulds; with the looking for something more; with the jaws clenched tightly-- that is when I shot forward and saw myself at 50 years old telling my current self that I do know, have always known, will always know... I didn't need to be a yoga queen at 5 am and changing the lives of all of western massachusetts-- but I did need to give myself some much-deserved credit for all that little me created in her head, cared deeply about, and took time to water and sow instead of using Miracle Gro in one weekend.

A million seedlings sleep in us, and we have got to go towards the sol for them to grow. We need to literally get on the ground to do this work. Looking down at my feet when I feel my system get kicked up is my equivalent of taking 10 deep breaths. What guides me to choose the path of leading vision boarding workshops and deeper soul excavation, is the belief and insistence on our own values-inventory. Create from intuition, ask your innards 'yes' or 'no' when you choose images and trust it like it's your own color consultant for your home. Because it is.

And then, meditate on it for a moment. What does it bring up for you? Memories? Emotions? What are your own breadcrumbs to bring you back to the truth?

We are constantly evolving, and do not give ourselves enough credit for merely living with a multitude of meaning traveling through us at all times. Get back to yourself and your wild dreams, your younger-self leaving clues to what she never wanted you to leave behind. If there are none you want to retrieve, then start now. Your board will be an ever-changing reminder that you did, and do, and will be with your soul and spirit should you feel rocky terrain where there used to be grass.

I write this from a couch, in a home, nestled in a part of town that I moved to when I first landed here 3 years ago. Since then, I moved 3+ times, and yet here I am, back where I wanted to be, just a few streets over with more privacy and sunshine. My original board rests on the wall I'm facing, but with more relics. Notes and dates and dried flowers from fields that only I know the layered meaning of. A map of the Valley; unknown territory at the time, but now a testament to my early twenties. A time I will never forget; a place that changed my life. A reminder.

A breadcrumb.