letting go of what you know

Yesterday I arrived at my yoga class 45 minutes early. Lunchtime classes during the week are at 12:30 but start at 1 on weekends—that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. With all that extra time I curled up on a bean bag chair in the corner of the studio and wrote. And wrote. And wrote.

It was a blog post full of angst, insight, lightbulbs, commitment to moving forward.

But, apparently, I didn't save it. When the teacher (a woman I totally and completely adore) sat down next to me and we got lost in conversation it seems I must have hit delete instead of save.

I can't begin to recreate what was. To be honest, I don't remember what it was I so profoundly wrote about.

But, after during and after class I had new realizations that sort of blew me away.

In class, these words flowed through my head:

letting go of what you know

It became my mantra for the second half of class. I kept repeating the phrase to make sure I wouldn't forget that powerful thought.

I was practicing next to another teacher, who seems, in some way to be in a similar place to me. Stuck. Not sure how to change things up. We'd talked for a long time about this last week - the desire for new, for different, but not knowing how to get there.

I told her about what the donation social worker had told me that resonated so strongly - that we learn how to be in the world before we're seven and keep being that for the rest of our lives. It's not necessarily who we are, but it's how we've learned to be.

I don't want to be that anymore.

I don't want to be afraid.

I don't want to be anxious.

I don't want to live in fear of falling apart, of anxiety attacks, of panic.

And then, while watching (of all things) The Princess Diaries last night, I heard this:

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear. The brave may not live forever, but the cautious do not live at all. From now on you'll be traveling the road between who you think you are and who you can be. The key is to allow yourself to make the journey.

Hard as it is, impossible as it feels, insurmountable as I believe it to be, I have to let go of who I've been and discover who I am. 

And this kidney adventure is challenging me to do just that. 

It's part of my journey to who I am, who I can be. And helping me let go of who I've been.