The wind is blowing and the half moon is bright and misty in the night sky. It is the end to a spring day in April that evolved from overcast, to downpours, to clear sky and wind. I watched the sun approach the horizon this evening, and I discussed my healing journey with a fellow healer through the powers of Instagram, while sitting on a grass mat on the damp lush green earth. We spoke of challenging the language that the Mental Health world ingrains in us deeply. We spoke of tuning into the wounded areas of my chakras, and of the choices that will frame and define the future path of my healing journey. The connection was clear, and private, as I had walked down to the edge of the property to be truly alone, with my phone in hand. I was reminded how I can still choose to commit fully to some of the spiritual ideology that I write about. My journey is about being sensitive and gifted, or psychic as I have explored at times. But this is true. Bringing this to consciousness allowed me to take part in a huge psychic clearing of my soul and spirit. Before I made this call, I was weighed down by anxiety in the form of fatigue and being paralyzed by the feeling of being overwhelmed or exhausted. I needed to carve a new path. I needed to reach for something and not ask permission for once. I walked home after my phone died, ending our conversation, and I felt lighter. But also different somehow. Like I realized I have a choice. To be honest, I do not always “know this”. Rules and ‘shoulds’ and worries weight heavily on my being. I then went to soak in the new clarity further, and submerse myself in the warm waters of a hot tub. I floated and stared up at the moon. As I dried and dressed, a song floated naturally from my lips. A song of trust, of being a star, a channel for flow. Of following and trusting the day and the night, the new and the old. Of trusting myself and just being that which I am, naturally.

I have been cutting back on smoking, and overtime, (it has been 10 days now), a new momentum has begun. I not only am focusing more on clean unadulterated breath, I am feeling the way this allows me to speak to and feel my true spirit. I am also getting in touch with what lies behind the addiction (another harsh word derived from a western mental health model), or behind the chronic pushing down, the control, the holding back, the oppression. It is an oppression of myself. Smoking is a way to cope with stress, so that I can keep pretending, so that I can continue to serve someone else’s terms, expectations, or needs. I am no longer going to ask permission to be myself. I am going to take what is mine. What the universe has gifted me as my birthright, the gift that I have been denying, and have learned to suppress and control. But it has be on my knees. It has me bubbling with overwhelming breaths of clean spirit and oxygen, and there is much to sit with. With every deep breath of air I bring into my lungs, I am accepting my freedom. I am reclaiming it. And I am releasing the demon of control. I need to allow time and space around this venture. This all will take time, and I don’t see having a cigarette as a failure. I see it as necessary medicine, so as to not go too fast or to put myself into a state of shock or crises. And we have only begun. It started with a willingness to even permit the thought of quitting into my consciousness. Before simply the idea of quitting was too much to handle.

For years, I tried to quit smoking, and would attack the problem with all I had in me. And the psychological side effects would become too great. For me, a consumer, it was never a good time to quit. So I gave up. Steve quit for his surgery two years ago, and started again. I cannot blame myself, though I know I was a bad influence. But I was too weak then. Smoking was a very necessary crutch to hold my already fragile self together. Since then, I have given up work and classes and drinking. I have continued to confront my ego around every turn. I have spent months confronting my grief, rage and trauma. I have had both spiritual and identity crises. I have been digging deep, and searching to see what lives beneath these great mountainous barriers or heaps of debris that my life has put in my path. I have continued to work at healing with my family and partner. I have slowed down. I have rooted to the Earth and to place. I have practiced sitting on the ground, and improved my physical body to the point where I can take a nap on the earth and lay there without freezing up or my hips becoming sore. Most of all, I have learned to stop asking permission from others, even myself. I choose to take it. I don’t need to ask. You don’t need to ask, to take care of, nurture, and explore the gifts that nature intended for you to have. That are inside of you. That I have pushed down and denied and suppressed. You don’t need a consent form to love yourself. It turns out my main coping mechanism is also oppressing my inner voice; I have known it was destructive, but I have been too afraid to look at it. I chose to address some other stuff first. Now I am ready, and it seems to be opening a door to a new path. One where I choose to be myself, no matter what.