#MondayInsight:

The return journey home on the hero’s journey is strange.

So much of what used to work to fuel your life just doesn’t anymore.

The return journey calls you to step across a threshold of identity where you drop much of who you thought you were to become the person you’re called to be…

A more honest, true, version of yourself, no longer confined by your old conditioning. 

And one of our deepest fears when we really commit to this kind of radical transformation is that we’ll be alone…

That there won’t be anybody waiting for you on the other side of your transformation.

“If I move through this and go through this metamorphosis and become this next version of who, at a deep level, I know I’m being called to be… will I have anyone left in my world?”

What’s coming to mind is an amazing brilliant, bright, woman I worked with a few years back. 

As we got into the work… I could feel her stall out. 

We dug into it and she said, “you know, I have a longstanding pattern in my life where when I shine, my sister and my mom try to bring me down.”

So her habit had been to shine bright for a little bit, then dim back down – almost like a turtle sticking it’s neck out for a moment, then going back into it’s shell.  

She said, “I’m scared that if I stepped out and just kept shining, that my mom and sister might not be in my life anymore.”

I’ll never forget saying, “You know, that might be the case. And as painful as it might be to imagine, are you going to put them first or you first? Are you going to sacrifice your genius, your joy, your calling, your gift to this world to keep that type of relationship in your life?” 

Maybe a year or so after working together, we had a great check-in and she said, “You know… mom and sis… they’re not really in my life anymore.”

I just looked at her and said, “How is that?”

She said, “You know, it’s all right” – and I could see that it was.

There was more life in her than I’d ever seen before, and there were much bigger opportunities showing up for her in her business – the types of opportunities she knew she had been keeping at bay when she was keeping her light hidden. 

Here’s what I want you to know: There is a family of people, a community of people, who have stepped across that threshold of fitting in and have stepped into ever-increasing true belonging.

They belong to themselves, first and foremost.

And they’ve found that there is, in fact, a community of people who’ve made the same kind of commitment to truly step out. There are people who have risked what they’ve had to risk to be true to themselves, their calling and their path. 

Each of these people has had to confront some version of leaving their tribe – some version of saying, “I’m not going to try to adhere to your version of reality, to your version of who I need to be or what I can be. I’m going to be true to this path first and foremost, and it will be a divergent path that will stretch me and transform the nature of who I am and how I show up in this world.”

They’ve become free agents, if you will. 

And free agents are those who are able to risk in service to others because they’ve taken that risk themselves. They can step into rooms and call out the elephant. They can speak the hard truth. They can open the door of transformation that people have been scared to walk through.

It is the free agents that have the permission internally to speak that without fear of being cast out of that tribe. Because they’ve already risked it. They’ve already found their way on the other side of that decision. And in doing so, they become the crystalline voices of liberation in this world. 

Not saviors (there’s lots of saviors in the world) – instead, voices of liberation.

You and I, we’re called to be these voices of liberation. 

So… will anybody be there on the other side of that kind of transformation. Yes. Absolutely.

In the gay community, we talk about a “chosen family” – the family you create if your birth family has rejected you or you just don’t fit with them. 

And you can’t know this for sure until you’re on the other side, but there’s something so, so sweet about meeting your chosen family…

Those that have taken that risk and have stepped on the other side and have a shared mission with you in this world. 

We’re here to welcome you with open arms!