Love Letters From a Witch: Love Yourself

Love Yourself

The longer I’m sober, the crazier I feel. I didn’t do it to be on a cleanse, nor did I want to do it for a short time. It had to be a permanent life change. I was dying, my relationships were radical projections of what was happening internally (not cute), and my magic was going haywire. Literally haywire spells gone awry and just plain old destructive. The desire to evaporate was coming up again. A superpower I wish I could possess. To just evaporate at will into the ethers and reappear when it felt safe again. Needless to say, that ability still has yet to come into my possession, but I digress. Something I have learned this year is that you do have a hand in your reality. Not in a New Thought I have the power to manifest whatever I want kind of way, but in a more practical matter of fact I must make some decisions way. You see it came to my attention that while most people have the problem of not believing in a higher power or something greater than themselves. My dilemma appears to be the opposite. All too often I let my version of Spirit take the wheel and I oblige to whatever direction the wind takes me in. This has in some way been a powerful act of faith, but more recently has turned into a passive way of not taking responsibility for my life. Which then suddenly brought to my attention another factor I had not taken into consideration. What if this whole time I have been making decisions purely based on survival and not at all rooted in what I wanted? How would I proceed if I participated in my life, instead of letting the wave of life take me? This would mean that I would have to commit to learning to make decisions as though I was a person who loved myself. Even if I didn’t know what that meant. This was to be the new next right action.

Now, this might make you wonder “Well yeah, shouldn’t you know that already?”, and trust me at 42 years old I thought “Duh, isn’t this what you tell your friends and clients?”. However, until this moment smacked between 2 eclipses and 5 planets retrograde did it make sense. Sometimes we aren’t ready until we are ready. Another thing I am currently realizing. Comprehension, compassion, and understanding do not just get gifted to you overnight because you decide you want them in your life. It can take years of engaging, interaction, and human experience for these things to come into existence, especially all at once. However, once I did decide to start making decisions based on loving myself something pretty profound started to happen. I stopped saying yes to things I wanted to say no to. I started giving myself more time in the morning before immediately picking up the phone or computer to respond to someone else’s needs before making sure I felt grounded. I got a new sponsor and shifted my meetings to better prioritize my recovery. I left work situations that didn’t feel like a fair exchange. In doing so certain relationships started to fade. Not in a dramatic, blowing up or burning the bridge way, but more respectfully and gracefully. As the late great Nina Simone would say, “You've got to learn to leave the table when love's no longer being served”.

Now it might seem like, I’m saying no a lot to things I had been asking for, and on some level, I am saying no. However it’s the opposite in a lot of ways. In letting go of these situations that were not benefiting all involved, I made quite a bit of room. Room for other relationships to develop that were better suited. Breathing space for my creative muse and personal magic to be inspired and flourish into new possibilities. Allowance for my life to grow into new spaces. It’s scary to think about growing. It only feels like I just got here, an actual place I can be proud of. Then suddenly it’s time to shift again. Magic and being the captain of your ship is a bit nerve-wracking like that. To find the balance we must become participants in our lives and have a belief that something greater than ourselves is assisting us along the way. Which is terrifying and exhilarating all at the same time. You don’t have to believe in a romanticized or terrifying God, but I encourage you to explore what a higher power looks like. The Universe and the Stars have often been whom I turn to in times of gratitude and duress. More often then not my version of being supported by something bigger than my human understanding is shapeshifting. It speaks to me through song, through art, another’s words, a stranger, nature, and the constant shifting and changing world around me. We can all agree that it’s a weird time to be alive. So why not make it a world that you can believe in. I need my version of life to be just as flexible as my ability to grow and evolve with the dynamic shifts that are happening to humanity and the world around us. To keep going I need to believe that we are all capable of evolution. Evolve or evaporate as they say. If I have learned anything in this very short but long existence I can truly say that I am no longer closed to the idea of people changing. You may not be able to change the world around you, but you can change your narrative. The dialogue that poisons you can be turned to medicine if you give yourself a chance. Trust me, I never knew I had one because I didn’t come from a place that told me I could be loved, loving, and make a difference. I hope to work on believing that latter one while I reside in this physical body. But if I can get to a place of believing the first two, I’ve got a good start. As do you. So if you are here and you are reading this, I hope you too can come to a place where if you haven’t made decisions because you loved yourself that you can start. It might not change the world overnight, but it will change things, that I promise you, and that is the best gift you can give to your heart and loved ones right now.

With love and respect,
Marcella