I have been in a battle with myself my whole life. Publishing my book “Freedom Year: How Trying to be a Dominatrix (and Failing) Changed my Life” in August was a strike that changed the whole playing field.
It was me standing up for myself–as I am. I am loveable, I am worthy and I don’t need to be perfect. I don’t need to scrub my past clean of taboo or traumas or sex or the times when I was so lost I didn’t know which way was up.
But that doesn’t mean it was easy to press publish and it doesn’t mean my struggles ended. In fact publishing it was so intense for me that I knew I was immediately contracting and avoiding visibility online the day after. This feeling has gone on over the past 2 months since.
I’m aware of the parts of me that want to hide. I do not regret publishing, or taking a step back from marketing to go inwards, but I have been waiting for my vulnerability and fragileness to temper out.
It’s taking a while with everything going on so I’ve been making other changes to my life to support me. One thing is hiring someone to help me for example updating my blog and email newsletter which have fallen by the way side since early August as I went into this contraction. Feeling more supported is giving me some oomph for this post.
My old wounds are things that I never asked for. I work on my shit but accept I don’t need to wait to be perfectly healed to help others or show up because living fully means reopening my wounds. It just happens.
I cannot control needing to contract, or needing to have time to settle into a whole new way of being. I’m not only an author now, but a recovering perfectionist. It’s incredibly vulnerable. I edited my book for 8 years and I still want to keep fixing it every time I pick it up even though I know it needs to be left alone.
But what’s really cool is I don’t need to be perfect. I don’t have anything to proove. I wrote and published to celebrate ME. So I am not doing anything that doesn’t feel like me and what I need right now.
I am gentle with myself and that is okay. This is my process and it doesnt have to look like anyone else’s.
