Growth Includes Grief

Growth includes grieving the past self you must let go of to welcome the new self.

Subconsciously, we don’t want to change.

Familiarity breeds comfort.

It also breeds complacency, risk aversion, and clinging to the identity and ideas your ego has built for you.

People think they want what they say they want, but their subconscious is set on sabotaging them.

People think changing their patterns and habits can happen fast and easy, like there’s a magical formula.

The only “formula” is commitment to be with the discomfort of your transformation.

It will be uncomfortable. Very much so.

It’ll ask you to do and say things your ego doesn’t want you to do and say at all.

It’ll ask you to follow that pull inside you to expand, no matter how many fears and dangers your mind projects.

And it’ll ask you to make the time to grieve your old self.

There are points in life that are finite.

“I’m done with that. I can never go back.”

It’s a sensation that’s neither here nor there. Wispy. Neither liquid nor solid nor gaseous. Your energy has changed. How people respond to you has changed. Your external has changed. Your inner life has changed.

“Wow. I was afraid all this time and now I’m out here, doing the thing every single day like it’s nothing. How did that happen??”

Part of you hasn’t fully grown into the new.

Did I really just remain calm when this situation would’ve made me leave my body?

Did I really just say that, not caring what people think of me?

It’s the butterfly legs pushing through the cocoon. Not fully emerged, but getting there.

And grief. The grief of knowing you’ll never go back. You can’t. You’ve transformed. Being a caterpillar was fun while it lasted.

Done are the days of gorging on plants. Nectar will be your nourishment from now on.