I’ve reached a breaking point and I’m ready to let go.
Since well before the pandemic, I found myself in deep questioning, about my purpose, my true calling. What if I’m not really meant to be an interior designer? The world of decoration, it can seem so frivolous, after all, so vapid. All the trends and the catchphrases and the cookie cutter-ness all over social, so often left me sad and slightly curdled. Surely, there were deeper ways I could use my skills? Months of inner searching culminated in a trip to Israel at the end of last year. I was certain I’d find answers in The Holy City.
Well that didn’t happen. Wherever you go there you are.
While self-inquiry had always served me in the past, this time I felt myself getting unmoored. The quarantine what-day-is-it-syndrome and then Mad Max and the Thunderdome with the wide-spread fires and red sky. Not having projects or clients to be accountable to meant I found myself stuck in the rabbit hole too often. Although I had maintained some sense of routine- mediation and morning pages, zoom meetings with my writing group, daily walks- I kept coming back to these big life questions. What was I meant to BE?? What did I want to be? Did I still love design? If so, was there a way to take the process and make it meaningful? The Copy Cure, a copywriting course that I’d enrolled and which I knew was amazing and would eventually yield success, had me stalled at my ideal customer. How can I figure out my ideal client if I don’t even know what the hell I’m selling??
Yes, I’ve been going a bit crazy.
Then a few days ago, I listened to this interview on Youtube, ‘Seeing the Gift in Everything’.
I was in the park with Coco and had to sit down in the grass while I bawled my eyes out. Dr. Edie Eger, a 92 years young holocaust survivor had many “Edie-isms” that reached down into the heart of me and flipped my switch. She said, “Love is not what you feel, it’s what you do”. Love is action. So I asked myself, what are the things I love to do out of pure pleasure? That is where I’ll find my channel of joy; and where there is joy, there is purpose.
Sometimes it’s about asking different questions. I also reached out to my therapist, because I acknowledged that I could use some help climbing out this time.
This monumental year has cracked me open and I don’t know what’s next. My purpose, what I love, what I am, however, is the same as always. I am a champion of Beauty, Empathy, Transformation, and Laughter. My calling is to raise the vibe, anchor the light, and radiate that everyday, as much as I can.
Because we are all at turning point, our people, our planet, our systems, all of it. Things are shifting.
How will I be of use, I don’t know yet. But I will say this- I commit now to you fully, in this public arena (as much as a blog post is an arena) and I say, bring it on! Let me be of service so I can share my purpose in the greatest way and for the highest good of all. As long as I’m staying open and staying present, even when it feels absolutely awful, being broken open may just be the gift I’ve been praying for.
💜libra
This was a topic so close to my heart this year, I wrote a second version of this story for my personal blog. It’s longer and a bit more honest. The Gift in Everything
I also did a fun interview on Live True with Lisa Lucca, where we talk permission to change and the wisdom of the butterfly.