December 2, 2025 • 33 mins
If you’ve ever stopped yourself from doing something because you were afraid, I have a question for you.
What is *under* your fear?
This might not be the first question you think to ask yourself about your fear. But I recently started looking *behind* my fear and I found something unexpected.
What I found is dissolving my fears in a way I couldn’t have predicted.
I’m sharing my story today on the podcast.
Host: Ally Fallon // @allyfallon // allisonfallon.com
Follow Ally on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allyfallon/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back
together with the words you write, all the beauty and
peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when
you write your story. You got the words and said,
don't you think it's down to let them out and
write them down on cold It's all about and write
(00:24):
your story. Write, write your story. Hi, and welcome back
to the Write Your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon, I'm
your host, and on today's episode, I want to talk
about fear. I know this topic gets kind of overblown
and overdone, but I think there's a reason for that.
It's like there's a reason that cliches are cliches. There's
(00:45):
a reason we talk about fear all the time because
fear can have such a driving force in our life,
and I think especially in our creative lives. This is
something I've been thinking about so much lately, how much
fear drives my decision making in my creative life in particular,
and how tricky it is to really access the vulnerability
(01:07):
that is necessary in order to show up as a
creative person in order to make something from scratch and
share that something with the world. So you could you
have the option too, And I have done this for many,
many years of my life. So this is not like
a moral thing. It's more just like how do we
tap into joy? You could move through your life and
(01:31):
just go through the motions and do the things that
are expected of you and do what's asked of you
and check the boxes and buy the house and get
the white pick events and get you know, whatever the
thing is like, whatever your visual is of what a happy,
successful person looks like. You can just go through the
motions and do those things and check the box. And
that can be fine in one kind of a way.
(01:53):
But I think that deep inside of each of us
is a sense that there's way, way more that we
want to accomplishes. The word that's coming to my mind,
but that's not really the right word, like way more
that we want to access. Maybe that's a better word.
Here in this lifetime, this one singular lifetime that we
get this, you know, eighty five years or whatever we
(02:15):
get on planet Earth, there's more that we came to do.
There's more that we came to experience. There's more that
we came to share. And in order to experience and
to share those things, I think we have to peel
back the layers. We have to really go inside. We
have to do some deep listening and think about like
(02:36):
what really matters to me? Where are my values? How
do I want to express myself in this lifetime? And
if we're going to do that, this is where the
fear comes in. If we are going to do that,
we are going to be met with crazy, crazy fear.
And as I've reflected on what I've been through in
the last five years of my life, I know all
of us have been through a crazy five years. There's
(02:57):
this trend on Instagram right now where it's like no
sound necessarily, but you know a visual of twenty twenty
five you telling twenty twenty you what has unfolded in
the last five years, and twenty twenty you having this
look of like absolute shock and awe on her face
receiving this information of what has unfolded. And that feels
(03:18):
so true and so real to me. I don't know
if it feels that way to you, but gosh, like
if you had told me in twenty twenty what was
going to unfold, especially like before pandemic hit, because you know,
we were in such shock at the beginning of the pandemic,
all of us were. But if it was like February
of twenty twenty and you had told me, here's what's
going to happen. The world's going to shut down, You're
going to live through this global pandemic, You're going to
(03:39):
have two babies back to back. If you had laid
it all out for me, I think I would have
been like, Uh, that's impossible, first of all. Second of all,
maybe kind of no thank you to everything that was
going to unfold. And I only say that just to
say I think all of us have been through something
kind of similar. It looks different in every little narrative arc,
but every single one of us has had this five
(04:01):
years that has just absolutely blown our minds, where things
have taken place that we never could have dreamed were possible.
And I don't mean that in like the it's not
like I mean it in a bad way, but I
don't necessarily mean it in a good way either. Like
the things that have taken place in the last five
years of your life, they are things that probably never
crossed your mind were even possible to take place prior
(04:23):
to the year twenty twenty. Does anyone else do you
feel like you entered into like some weird twilight zone,
and the things that are unfolding now in your life
are not even like things that would have been inside
of your consciousness in twenty nineteen. That's how I feel,
And so everything that's unfolded over the course of the
last five years, as I zoom out and reflect on
it and try to make sense of what on earth
(04:46):
is all of this here to teach me. One of
the things I've thought a lot about is this concept
of fear. I was telling a friend the other day.
We were talking about this idea that as you come
into alignment with the truth of who you are, that
life just gets easier in certain ways. It's not like
life is easy. Life is still really painful. There are
sad things that happened, but certain parts of your life
(05:06):
do become easier. And I was telling her because she
was the one who was kind of articulating that and
framing that to me, and I was telling her, Oh,
that helps me. I agree with you and believe that myself,
and it helps me to make sense of the story
that has unfolded in my life since twenty twenty because
one thing I think needed to happen in order for
(05:26):
me to come into alignment with myself was for me
to come face to face with some of my biggest fears.
One of my biggest fears was being alone in childbirth.
And I remember saying this to my husband when I
was pregnant with Nella, my first I remember saying to
him because at the time it was COVID and there
were all kinds of new rules happening every day about
who was allowed in birthroom with mom. So you know,
(05:48):
first it was like nobody was allowed in there with her.
Then it was like one person is allowed. It's either
your duela or your husband. And I just remember saying
to my husband, under no circumstances will I be giving
birth alone. So I'm changing my whole birth plan to
give birth at a birth center because I would rather
die a slow, painful death than give birth without you
in the room with me. Like something about that. And
(06:11):
we all have our own things, right That might not
make sense if someone else hears it, they might think, well,
that doesn't really scare me. But you have your own
things that seem to you like the absolute scariest thing
you could possibly face. And for me at the time,
that was one of those things. So to keep a
long story short, I essentially changed my entire birth plan
to make sure my husband could be with me, and
then when I went into the birth center to give birth,
(06:34):
my blood pressure skyrocketed. I was transferred to the emergency
room and my husband was not allowed to come in
with me because the rules at the time didn't allow
partners birth partners to enter the room with mom until
they had passed a health inspection. This was in California,
and you can't see me, but I'm using like big
air quotes when I say health inspection, because they said
(06:55):
that he was passing a health inspection, but he was
doing nothing of the sort. He was just standing out
of the hospital doors. They wudn't even let him into
the waiting room. He was standing outside front of the
hospital holding my hospital bag until they finally let him
up several hours later, and he was able to be
there for the actual pushing out of the baby. But
for hours and hours I labored without him, and that
(07:15):
was one of my greatest fears. Then, when my daughter
was born, she was taken to the NICKU, which was
another fear I don't even think I knew I had,
but it was just like every parent's worst nightmare that
you know, I wanted to give birth in a birth center.
I wanted to have this unmedicated childbirth. I wanted her
to be laid on my belly, have skinned skin contact,
have this really peaceful, like bonding moment with her, And
(07:36):
instead she was taken from me. And of course, like
thank God that we were in the hospital and that
they were able to treat her immediately, and thank God
for those angel nurses and doctors who took care of me,
who took care of her, because you know, I had
extremely high blood pressure. I could have absolutely died in childbirth.
She wasn't breathing when she was born, she needed to
(07:56):
go to the NICU. So like, thank God all of
that happened. But when you look at like me living
through what was essentially my worst case scenario, there is
a way in which I needed to come face to
face with that fear in order to realize that it
wasn't as scary as I thought it was. I mean,
it was still horrible and horrific in so many ways.
(08:17):
I'm still processing and integrating that experience of having my
plans changed so rapidly, of having Nella taken from me.
I mean, she and I now she's five, this is wild.
And we still talk about this because she'll say, you know,
she'll be scared of going upstairs by herself, for example,
to get dressed. Her bedrooms upstairs, and our main living
area is downstairs, so she'll be afraid of going upstairs.
(08:38):
Speaking of fear, my five year old has her own fears,
things that are scary to her that might not be
scary to me. And I talk to her about this.
She has such a fear of being alone or being
left alone. She has some like very mild maybe I
don't even know if I should use this term, but
like almost like OCD, little things that are not they're
not severe enough to be considered actual clinical OCD, but
(09:00):
like a repetition of things like every time I leave
her room at night, she'll say the same phrase to
me a couple of times, usually two or three times
before I leave the room. Little things like that that
just make me go, Like, I wonder if some of
this is coming from us not being together immediately when
you were born, Like, is some of that logged in
her little nervous system, and so we come by these
(09:21):
fears quite honestly, is really the point you come by
your fears. So honestly, you have these fears that are
living in your system, living in your body, and in
some ways, we have to face these fears head on.
We have to meet them face to face and realize, like, oh,
this fear is not the monster that I thought it
was in order to put the fear in its place,
(09:43):
because the fear is a real feeling that you're feeling.
And I've learned this with my five year old that
I can't just say, like, I mean, I did try this,
call me a bad parent, but I did in the
beginning when she was like I'm scared to go upstairs
with myself, I'm just like, that's ridiculous. There's nothing to
be afraid of upstairs, and get your clothes on, please,
And the more that I pushed at that, the less
(10:04):
it worked, because you know, the fear is extremely real
for her, She feels it in her system, whether no
matter how many times I tell her and logic her through,
there's nobody up there. Mommy's here to keep you safe.
There's no monsters. There's no such thing as monsters. There's
no such thing as were wolves. A friend at school
told her that there, you know, were were wolves that
(10:24):
hide under your bed, And I'm like, that's so silly.
There's no such thing as werewolves. It's fake. It's pretend
it's in your brain, you know. But no matter how
many times someone tells you that the thing you're afraid
of is in your brain, it doesn't matter that it's
not quote unquote real as in real in the material world.
It is real to you, very real to you. And
so sometimes we need to face these fears head on
(10:46):
in order to meet them and realize, like, oh, it's
our David and Goliath moment. It's like, oh, this thing
I thought that was so much more powerful than me,
it's actually not more powerful than me. And beyond it,
on the other side of this fear is a broader,
bigger space to move around in. You know, this sphere
was taking up so much room in my life that
(11:08):
until I met this sphere face to face, I couldn't
move past it and realize, Oh, there's more space out here.
There's more spaciousness, more joy for me to experience, more depth,
more breadth to my life than existed before. And the
way that this came through for me, the way that
the idea for this episode even came through for me.
I'll tell you a story that is speaking of being vulnerable,
(11:29):
is a little bit vulnerable for me. But essentially this
is none of this is brand new information if you've
been around here for a while. Basically, I found out
that I was pregnant a couple of months ago, back
in September. I found out that I was pregnant a
(11:53):
couple of months ago, back in September. This is something
that I've been wanting for a really long time. I'd
had one miscarriage before I found out I was pregnant.
I was elated. I was absolutely over the moon, but
I was having these waves of just absolute terror that
I was going to lose the pregnancy because I'd had
this loss before, and the fear was just crippling me.
(12:14):
And you know, my friends, my close friends. So I
had told about the pregnancy, and my husband would ask me,
you know, to tell me, like, how do you feel.
Are you excited about the pregnancy? And it's like, yes,
I am excited about the pregnancy, but the fear is
almost like overriding or overshadowing my excitement. I was having
a hard time living into the excitement, living into the
joy because the fear was just so big, it was
(12:37):
just overshadowing everything else. And the realization that I had
in that moment is that on the other side of
fear was joy. When fear shows up in your life,
you can almost always know there's fear here because something
I want is on the other side, and apply that
to your circumstance however it fits, Like maybe there's fear
(12:59):
about applying for a job because the job is actually
a job you really want and something that you could
really get excited about and get on board with, and
something that you feel would financially change your life and
would make you feel so much more at peace. And like,
on the other side of that fear is something so
full of joy that you just want to welcome and
stay open to. And as I started thinking about this,
(13:21):
I was realizing, like, the reason that I'm so afraid
of losing this pregnancy is because this baby is something
that I so so deeply want, Like I want it
more than I can even express that I want it,
and I want it in ways that don't even totally
logically make sense to me. And so in order to
welcome the joy that is on the other side of
(13:42):
this fear, I have to also welcome the fear, because
if you think about like opening your system, opening your heart,
you can't selectively open. You can't open to the joy
but not the fear. You have to open to all
of it. You have to let the experience of your
life come in and flood in and in a way
like have its way with you. I mean think of
(14:03):
this like that language makes me think of an experience
with a lover. You know, when you're falling in love
with someone, When you're having that falling in love experience,
the experience requires that you utterly surrender to this thing
that's bigger than both of you. Really, that you let
go to someone who probably will at some point hurt
(14:25):
you and break your trust and betray you. I don't
mean that in like this person as a bad person
kind of a way. I just mean any intimate relationship.
There will be visires in the relationship. There will be
a moment when this person is going to let you down,
and yet you don't avoid opening yourself to them, opening
yourself to this experience, because the experience is an experience
(14:46):
of utter bliss that every single one of us craves
and wants, and so same with whatever it is that
you're trying to manifest or create in your life. If
it's a baby, if it's a job, if it's a partnership,
if it's a whatever, it is a business that you're starting.
When you sense that you have that extreme fear around it,
(15:06):
you can almost always know that on the other side
of that fear there's joy. And the question is can
you open yourself to both the fear and the joy
at the same time. Can you stay open even when
you don't know what's going to take place? So if
you've been listening to my podcast for a while, you
know that the ending of the story is that I
did lose the pregnancy for a second time, and I
(15:29):
went into a bit of a dark night of the soul.
I mean when I use that phrase, I think more
like years long. And I wouldn't say that this has
been years long, but I don't think that I've fully
come out of it either. I think it was an opportunity.
It still is it still is presenting itself to me
in my life as an opportunity for me to stay
open even when things don't go the way I want
(15:51):
them to go, especially when things don't go the way
that I want them to go. Can I stay open
and present to my life when things don't go the
way that I want them to go, when they don't
go the way that I think they're going to go,
when I don't go the way that I would have
controlled them into going, Can I still keep my heart open?
And in order to keep your heart open in the
(16:11):
presence of loss and grief, I actually think it's easier
to keep your heart open to loss in grief than
it is to fear. But to keep my heart open
to fear or to loss, or to grief or to pain,
I have to be willing to fully experience that which
is a vulnerable experience in itself, because it means that
I don't try to pretend I'm fine. I don't try
(16:33):
to pretend that this doesn't hurt. I don't tell myself,
you know, everything happens for a reason. It's all going
to be okay in the end. My baby's gonna come
to me. When my baby comes to me. Those things
might be true. I mean, there might be some truth
to the fact that like it. You know, I don't know.
I don't even know what I think about these phrases.
But the phrase is like if it's meant to be,
it will be, or whatever's meant for you will come
to you. There may be some truth to those things,
(16:56):
but I think there is also a flaw in the
argus because some things just happen that don't make any
sense and that don't necessarily have a meaning attached to them,
but our brains will attach a meaning to them. So
if your brain attaches the meaning you know that, like
everything happens for a reason, then that's a that's a
meaning you've attached to the story. I don't think that's
(17:18):
necessarily inherently true. But what is inherently true is I
don't have control over the outcome of this. So I
may have another baby and I may not have another baby,
and that is outside of my control. And that is,
you know, scientifically provably true that I don't. You know,
I could even go through IVF and sort of take
(17:41):
some power back into my hands and make this happen
for myself, and even still I may not be able
to actualize it in the end. So what is verifiably
true is that I do not have control over whether
this happens for me or whether it doesn't. What I
do have control over is whether I'm going to stay
open or closed, whether I'm going to stay open to
(18:01):
the experience of my life or whether I'm going to
close myself off to it because feeling the pain is
too much for me. And this is where I'll go
back to what I said at the beginning, that there's
no real moral aspect to this. If your heart closes
to pain, this is not a moral issue. You're just normal.
Like if your heart closes to pain. Yeah, no, no
(18:22):
freaking dull like, of course it does. Of course it does.
And yet if we can practice staying open to the pain,
staying open to the fear, of staying open to the
heartbreaksting open to what our life wants to present to us,
I do believe that it creates more space for joy,
more space for creativity, more space for vulnerability, more space
(18:45):
for us to fully and accurately and adequately express the
versions of ourselves that came here to planet Earth to express.
I do believe that at the end of the day
that life will be more satisfying than the life work.
We just check all of the boxes, and I think
letting go of the life where we check all of
the boxes is a challenging It's a big ask to
(19:09):
be honest. You know, there are ways in which all
of us hang on to the image that we want
to present to the world. This is the person who
I want to be, This is who I want you
to think I am. But for me to be who
I really am, I'm going to have to surrender to
circumstances in my life, into feelings that I would just
rather not feel like. I don't want to look weak,
(19:30):
you know, to other people. I don't want to look
like I don't have my stuff together. I'd rather look
like I yeah, like I'm like. I think about this
in my own story. I have names for these parts
of myself. Actually, I talk a lot about with my therapist.
I talk about the valedictorian or the straight a student.
Is the person, it's the version of myself that I
(19:51):
like to present to the world. So she's the one who,
you know, always knows what the assignment is, who's always early,
who knows exactly what to do, who's got her act together,
she's got her bind or organized. She you know, she
knows like all the different things to say and do
to get the approval of her peers and also her superiors.
So her teachers or whatever. There's like a high school
(20:13):
version of me that's like, I'm going to get straight
a's no matter what, I'm going to finish all the assignments.
I'm going to show up on time. I'm gonna be
to every class, doesn't matter how sick I am. I'm
going to do it what I said I'm going to do.
There's that version of me, and you you know, you
heard me talk about that last week on the conversation
with Devis Silverman. And there's another version of me that
I call the poet. And I think the poet is
(20:34):
probably closer to or a more accurate representation of the
truth of who I am, of who I came here
to be. She's an artist, you know, she doesn't show
up anywhere on time, the truth of who I am.
You know, showing up places on time is a good
skill to have. But left to my own devices, mostly
what I want to do is just kind of wander
(20:55):
and think and write. That's basically what I would do
if I didn't have to worry about taking care of
anyone or impressing anyone else. And so I'm not saying
that I should do that as a mother of two,
I don't think that I should necessarily just kind of
never show up anywhere on time. My kids would they
would not have a very reliable mom. They'd have a
different kind of childhood than what they do have. But
(21:18):
is there ways? Are there ways for me to bring
in more of her, more of the poet into my life,
more of the poet, and less of the valedictorian, less
of that straight a student. So whatever that is for you,
I mean, take a minute and think about, like, who
would you be, how would you move through the world
if you were not at all worried about what other
(21:39):
people would think about you. It might even be hard
for you to conceptualize that, Like you might have spent
so much of your life filling in the boxes, you know,
being who other people need you to be. You might
go like, what, I don't even know, I don't even
know what I would do if I didn't have to
worry about what people thought of me. But maybe something
comes to you immediately that kind of scares you a
(21:59):
little bit, Like you think, like I think if I
didn't have to worry about what anybody thought of me,
I think I might, you know, never get married, or
I might not have any kids, or I might have
ten kids, or I might like start that business I've
always wanted to start, or write that book. I might
finally write the book that I've always wanted to write.
You know, that's one that comes up for a lot
(22:20):
of people who I work with, is that they have
this kind of hidden secret desire to write a book
or whatever kind of book that it is, write a
novel or write a nonfiction book or whatever. They've got
some sort of creative project kind of stewing, but it
doesn't really fit the narrative or doesn't fit the persona
that they've presented to the world. So they'll say to
me like, well, I'm not really a writer, but I
(22:40):
have this idea. And it's like, maybe the persona that
you present to the world is not quote unquote not
a writer, but clearly you are a writer because this
idea is knocking on your door, it's pulling at your
shirt sleeves saying like, hey, I'm here for you. I
want to have this enter into this conversation with you
and create this thing together. So whatever that looks like
(23:00):
for you, it's just a good question to ask yourself,
who would I be if I could be exactly who
I came here to be if I was being exactly
who I was born to be and not trying to
check all the boxes or be like everybody else, not
even like everybody else around me, because I feel like
I'm an original person. But I do find myself falling
(23:21):
into the trap often of what's expected of me, what
will make me impressive to others, and instead of what
will make me more me. I just am speaking from experience.
(23:42):
It is very challenging for me to let go of
being impressive to others. So maybe for you it's a
different thing that you're letting go of, but for me,
that's a big fear that I've had to face is
in the last five years, is can I let go
of being impressive to others? You know, I built a
whole life for around and living in a way that
was really impressive to others. I would have said to you,
(24:04):
you know, before my divorce, I would have said to you, like,
no one in my life really hates me, you know,
I don't. I have no enemies, which is a nice accomplishment,
I guess, but also kind of tells me that you
aren't really standing up for yourself or being your unique self,
because when you're unique and totally yourself. You'll be just
not Some people will just not enjoy that, and that's fine.
(24:28):
So I've made a lot of enemies since twenty twenty,
well since twenty fifteen. In the last ten years of
my life, I've made a handful of enemies that I
actually take that to be a fair bit of an
accomplishment in a different kind of way. So I've had
to face the fear of giving birth alone, face the
fear of my own medical issues, face the fear of
not being who others expect me to be, or not
(24:50):
being the person who impresses everybody. I've had to face
the fear of bankruptcy. I've talked about that several times
on the podcast. And you know, we've moved as the
point where bankruptcy is now no longer on the table,
but for over a year it was, and it was
a terrifying experience for me. And now what's funny is,
and I've mentioned this, but when you face your fear
(25:13):
head on like that, you move to the other side
of it and you realize, like, actually, that thing I
thought was so scary is not as scary as I
thought it was. I you know, I had a very
David and Goliath moment with bankruptcy, where it was just like,
all right, if this is what's gonna happen, this is
what's gonna happen, let's get the show on the road, Like,
let's just get this over with. Let's pull the plug
because I'm tired of waiting in this limbo. We're gonna
file bankruptcy. It's gonna be fine. Seven years is gonna
(25:35):
fly by, it's gonna be over. We're gonna be on
the other side of this thing. And then we didn't
end up having to file for bankruptcy. So sometimes you
face your fear and you don't end up having to
do the thing that you were so afraid of. Sometimes
you do and sometimes you don't. But the question is
am I willing to stay open to receive whatever my
life is here to offer me and not to try
to manipulate everything into place so that it becomes a
(25:56):
life that I think will make me happy. And this
is the question that I'm facing in my life right now,
is can I stay open to whatever wants to take
place in my life instead of controlling everything into place
in a way that I think will make me happy?
Because on the other side of fear is immense, immense joy.
I'll give one more quick example when I cold plunge.
(26:18):
One of the reasons that I cold plunge, and I've
taken a break from cold plunging because there is some
data that says that it can affect hormones, female hormones
and prevent you from getting pregnant. So I've taken a
break from cold plunging. But when I was cold plunging,
the way that I thought about cold plunging was a
metaphor for how to stay open in a circumstance that
(26:40):
is not what you would want or ask for. So,
like when you go into asana and it's nice and
warm in there, your body just goes like ah, and
it's just like every cell in your body just opens
to the warmth. And there is a point where the
warmth might become too much, and it's it can be
challenging to stay in that warmth. But when you immediately
step into the warmth, your whole body just softened and opens.
(27:01):
When you get into the cold, the opposite happens. Your
body contracts. This is physiological, This is just what your
body does when you get in the cold. Every muscle
in your body, every bone in your body, every cell
in your body just contracts, including your vegus nerve, which
is what makes cold plunging so helpful for people and
such a helpful tool for mental health. Your vegus nerves contracts,
(27:24):
and your job is to learn how in that situation
where every muscle in your body wants to contract, to
learn how to breathe and open inside of the contraction.
And when you can do that. There's an amazing metaphor
here that just makes sense to me when I'm cold plunging,
It's like, can I relax into this circumstance that is
(27:45):
not what I wanted, It's not what I asked for.
It doesn't necessarily feel quote unquote good to my body
right now in this moment, But can I open to
it anyway? Can I relax into it? And I'm not
talking about staying in a situation that is toxic or abusive,
or wrong or illegal or anything like that. What I'm
(28:05):
talking about is a circumstance that you do not have
the ability to change. It's like a loved one is sick.
There's nothing you can do to change it. You're sitting
in the hospital with them, You're scared, you're sad, you're
anticipating what all this is going to entail. It is
not a set of circumstances that you would want. It's
also not something that you can change. So can you
(28:27):
soften and open inside of this set of circumstances that
is not what you wanted, that is not what you
asked for, that does not feel good, but that you
have no power to change. Can you open more to
this set of circumstances? Can you be in a state
of surrender? Can you stay open? Can you stay gentle
with yourself? Can you stay soft? That practice is extremely difficult.
(28:51):
I do not pretend to have this on lockdown. I
am working through this in my own life in order
to fully receive what I think these back back miscarriages
and then not being able to get pregnant. What that
is offering me is an opportunity to practice staying open
inside of a set of a set of circumstances that
I did not want but cannot change. Can I stay open?
(29:13):
And I think there are a lot of teachers who
would say, well, if you can stay open, you know,
then you're going to get the very thing that you
said you always wanted. I don't believe that that can
be promised. I just don't. I don't think that I
can promise you that you'll get the job eventually, or
you'll get the lover, or you'll get the baby, or
you'll get the you know, million dollars or whatever it
is that you're after. I can tell you that as
(29:36):
you learn to face your fears, they become much less scary,
as you learn to stay open in that state of
you know, you're face to face with your fear. You're
face to face with your greatest fear, and maybe you're
even face to face with the out like it's like,
my greatest fear, my loved one is sick. I'm afraid
(29:58):
they're going to die. Your face to face with that.
Maybe they do die, honestly, I mean, maybe you do
lose someone that you have loved. So you're face to
face with this thing. Can I stay open? You may
not lose this person, you may lose them. You may
get the thing you want, you may not get the
thing you want, But can you stay open to what
your life is trying to show you? Can you breathe
(30:21):
and open your heart even more? And what this has
meant for me through the process of miscarriage. Is it
is meant that I don't come off looking like the
person who has it all together. And by the way,
like this patterning in me is so tight, it is
so deeply ingrained that many times I don't even know
that I'm doing it. And what will happen is when
(30:42):
something comes to disrupt the pattern, like the miscarriages have
done and I have, I'll have like little fall aparts
in front of people that I'm not expecting, Like someone
will say something and it will just make me sob
and I'll have these little fall aparts in front of people,
and then I feel shame because I'm like, oh, I
should have held it together. And what this does is
reveal how deeply ingrained this pattern is. It's like, can
(31:04):
you back for one second, like, just create some space
for this shame to move through your body and for
you to allow yourself to be fully human and fully
in your body. Right now, you're sad. It's okay to
be sad. There's nothing shameful about being sad. Can you
just let it be okay that this is where you
are right now? As I've practiced this, it is not easy.
(31:25):
It is like an overwhelming amount of sensation that I
don't enjoy, but I will tell you there is so
much joy. It is like exploding open new space inside
of my body for me to feel joy. And this
is kind of getting onto a different subject, but it's
it's connected here. I'll say this last thing before I
wrap up, which is that as I make more space
(31:49):
for joy, there is this like rush of gratitude that
comes through for the little things that I do have.
I mean, and I have more than little things. But
I have talked about in the past how gratitude has
been tricky for me. It's like I have I can
look around my life and be like, I know, I
have an amazing life and things that I'm grateful for,
but the experience, the visceral experience of gratitude sometimes doesn't
(32:10):
quite get to me. And I think it's because of
being guarded in that way, of staying closed, closed against
my fears, close against the things that I don't want
closed and controlled. And the more that I open and
soften and surrender, the more the gratitude just is there.
And the other amazing thing that happens is people meet
(32:31):
you in that moment, and so many people have shown
up for me, have taken care of me, have met
me in my grief and in my pain, have just
held the space for me, have just been there for me.
And it has shifted the dynamic where I'm always feeling
like I have to be there for other people, and
it's shifted to where like I'm like, oh, these relationships
(32:52):
are fifty to fifty. Like we can both meet each
other in our pain, in our darkness, in our moment
of struggle, and I can allow people to also be
there for me and meet me. So on the other
side of fear, on the other side of pain is joy,
and maybe we can shift our perspectives slightly. I'm not
saying to whitewash our pain, but I'm saying, when something
(33:14):
happens that you wish wasn't happening, maybe you can ask yourself,
is this an opportunity to open a little more, to
soften a little more, to surrender a little more, to
experience more of who I am, and to share more
of who I am with those around me. I hope
this meets you right where you are, wherever that is.
(33:35):
I hope that this suggestion, this offer feels like a hug.
I'm in it with you and I will see you
back here next week on the Microsport podcast
Pick up the pieces of your life, put them back
together with the words you write, all the beauty and
peace and the magic that you'll start too fun when
you write your story. You got the words and said,
don't you think it's down to let them out and
write them down on cold It's all about and write
(00:24):
your story. Write, write your story. Hi, and welcome back
to the Write Your Story Podcast. I'm Ali Fallon, I'm
your host, and on today's episode, I want to talk
about fear. I know this topic gets kind of overblown
and overdone, but I think there's a reason for that.
It's like there's a reason that cliches are cliches. There's
(00:45):
a reason we talk about fear all the time because
fear can have such a driving force in our life,
and I think especially in our creative lives. This is
something I've been thinking about so much lately, how much
fear drives my decision making in my creative life in particular,
and how tricky it is to really access the vulnerability
(01:07):
that is necessary in order to show up as a
creative person in order to make something from scratch and
share that something with the world. So you could you
have the option too, And I have done this for many,
many years of my life. So this is not like
a moral thing. It's more just like how do we
tap into joy? You could move through your life and
(01:31):
just go through the motions and do the things that
are expected of you and do what's asked of you
and check the boxes and buy the house and get
the white pick events and get you know, whatever the
thing is like, whatever your visual is of what a happy,
successful person looks like. You can just go through the
motions and do those things and check the box. And
that can be fine in one kind of a way.
(01:53):
But I think that deep inside of each of us
is a sense that there's way, way more that we
want to accomplishes. The word that's coming to my mind,
but that's not really the right word, like way more
that we want to access. Maybe that's a better word.
Here in this lifetime, this one singular lifetime that we
get this, you know, eighty five years or whatever we
(02:15):
get on planet Earth, there's more that we came to do.
There's more that we came to experience. There's more that
we came to share. And in order to experience and
to share those things, I think we have to peel
back the layers. We have to really go inside. We
have to do some deep listening and think about like
(02:36):
what really matters to me? Where are my values? How
do I want to express myself in this lifetime? And
if we're going to do that, this is where the
fear comes in. If we are going to do that,
we are going to be met with crazy, crazy fear.
And as I've reflected on what I've been through in
the last five years of my life, I know all
of us have been through a crazy five years. There's
(02:57):
this trend on Instagram right now where it's like no
sound necessarily, but you know a visual of twenty twenty
five you telling twenty twenty you what has unfolded in
the last five years, and twenty twenty you having this
look of like absolute shock and awe on her face
receiving this information of what has unfolded. And that feels
(03:18):
so true and so real to me. I don't know
if it feels that way to you, but gosh, like
if you had told me in twenty twenty what was
going to unfold, especially like before pandemic hit, because you know,
we were in such shock at the beginning of the pandemic,
all of us were. But if it was like February
of twenty twenty and you had told me, here's what's
going to happen. The world's going to shut down, You're
going to live through this global pandemic, You're going to
(03:39):
have two babies back to back. If you had laid
it all out for me, I think I would have
been like, Uh, that's impossible, first of all. Second of all,
maybe kind of no thank you to everything that was
going to unfold. And I only say that just to
say I think all of us have been through something
kind of similar. It looks different in every little narrative arc,
but every single one of us has had this five
(04:01):
years that has just absolutely blown our minds, where things
have taken place that we never could have dreamed were possible.
And I don't mean that in like the it's not
like I mean it in a bad way, but I
don't necessarily mean it in a good way either. Like
the things that have taken place in the last five
years of your life, they are things that probably never
crossed your mind were even possible to take place prior
(04:23):
to the year twenty twenty. Does anyone else do you
feel like you entered into like some weird twilight zone,
and the things that are unfolding now in your life
are not even like things that would have been inside
of your consciousness in twenty nineteen. That's how I feel,
And so everything that's unfolded over the course of the
last five years, as I zoom out and reflect on
it and try to make sense of what on earth
(04:46):
is all of this here to teach me. One of
the things I've thought a lot about is this concept
of fear. I was telling a friend the other day.
We were talking about this idea that as you come
into alignment with the truth of who you are, that
life just gets easier in certain ways. It's not like
life is easy. Life is still really painful. There are
sad things that happened, but certain parts of your life
(05:06):
do become easier. And I was telling her because she
was the one who was kind of articulating that and
framing that to me, and I was telling her, Oh,
that helps me. I agree with you and believe that myself,
and it helps me to make sense of the story
that has unfolded in my life since twenty twenty because
one thing I think needed to happen in order for
(05:26):
me to come into alignment with myself was for me
to come face to face with some of my biggest fears.
One of my biggest fears was being alone in childbirth.
And I remember saying this to my husband when I
was pregnant with Nella, my first I remember saying to
him because at the time it was COVID and there
were all kinds of new rules happening every day about
who was allowed in birthroom with mom. So you know,
(05:48):
first it was like nobody was allowed in there with her.
Then it was like one person is allowed. It's either
your duela or your husband. And I just remember saying
to my husband, under no circumstances will I be giving
birth alone. So I'm changing my whole birth plan to
give birth at a birth center because I would rather
die a slow, painful death than give birth without you
in the room with me. Like something about that. And
(06:11):
we all have our own things, right That might not
make sense if someone else hears it, they might think, well,
that doesn't really scare me. But you have your own
things that seem to you like the absolute scariest thing
you could possibly face. And for me at the time,
that was one of those things. So to keep a
long story short, I essentially changed my entire birth plan
to make sure my husband could be with me, and
then when I went into the birth center to give birth,
(06:34):
my blood pressure skyrocketed. I was transferred to the emergency
room and my husband was not allowed to come in
with me because the rules at the time didn't allow
partners birth partners to enter the room with mom until
they had passed a health inspection. This was in California,
and you can't see me, but I'm using like big
air quotes when I say health inspection, because they said
(06:55):
that he was passing a health inspection, but he was
doing nothing of the sort. He was just standing out
of the hospital doors. They wudn't even let him into
the waiting room. He was standing outside front of the
hospital holding my hospital bag until they finally let him
up several hours later, and he was able to be
there for the actual pushing out of the baby. But
for hours and hours I labored without him, and that
(07:15):
was one of my greatest fears. Then, when my daughter
was born, she was taken to the NICKU, which was
another fear I don't even think I knew I had,
but it was just like every parent's worst nightmare that
you know, I wanted to give birth in a birth center.
I wanted to have this unmedicated childbirth. I wanted her
to be laid on my belly, have skinned skin contact,
have this really peaceful, like bonding moment with her, And
(07:36):
instead she was taken from me. And of course, like
thank God that we were in the hospital and that
they were able to treat her immediately, and thank God
for those angel nurses and doctors who took care of me,
who took care of her, because you know, I had
extremely high blood pressure. I could have absolutely died in childbirth.
She wasn't breathing when she was born, she needed to
(07:56):
go to the NICU. So like, thank God all of
that happened. But when you look at like me living
through what was essentially my worst case scenario, there is
a way in which I needed to come face to
face with that fear in order to realize that it
wasn't as scary as I thought it was. I mean,
it was still horrible and horrific in so many ways.
(08:17):
I'm still processing and integrating that experience of having my
plans changed so rapidly, of having Nella taken from me.
I mean, she and I now she's five, this is wild.
And we still talk about this because she'll say, you know,
she'll be scared of going upstairs by herself, for example,
to get dressed. Her bedrooms upstairs, and our main living
area is downstairs, so she'll be afraid of going upstairs.
(08:38):
Speaking of fear, my five year old has her own fears,
things that are scary to her that might not be
scary to me. And I talk to her about this.
She has such a fear of being alone or being
left alone. She has some like very mild maybe I
don't even know if I should use this term, but
like almost like OCD, little things that are not they're
not severe enough to be considered actual clinical OCD, but
(09:00):
like a repetition of things like every time I leave
her room at night, she'll say the same phrase to
me a couple of times, usually two or three times
before I leave the room. Little things like that that
just make me go, Like, I wonder if some of
this is coming from us not being together immediately when
you were born, Like, is some of that logged in
her little nervous system, and so we come by these
(09:21):
fears quite honestly, is really the point you come by
your fears. So honestly, you have these fears that are
living in your system, living in your body, and in
some ways, we have to face these fears head on.
We have to meet them face to face and realize, like, oh,
this fear is not the monster that I thought it
was in order to put the fear in its place,
(09:43):
because the fear is a real feeling that you're feeling.
And I've learned this with my five year old that
I can't just say, like, I mean, I did try this,
call me a bad parent, but I did in the
beginning when she was like I'm scared to go upstairs
with myself, I'm just like, that's ridiculous. There's nothing to
be afraid of upstairs, and get your clothes on, please,
And the more that I pushed at that, the less
(10:04):
it worked, because you know, the fear is extremely real
for her, She feels it in her system, whether no
matter how many times I tell her and logic her through,
there's nobody up there. Mommy's here to keep you safe.
There's no monsters. There's no such thing as monsters. There's
no such thing as were wolves. A friend at school
told her that there, you know, were were wolves that
(10:24):
hide under your bed, And I'm like, that's so silly.
There's no such thing as werewolves. It's fake. It's pretend
it's in your brain, you know. But no matter how
many times someone tells you that the thing you're afraid
of is in your brain, it doesn't matter that it's
not quote unquote real as in real in the material world.
It is real to you, very real to you. And
so sometimes we need to face these fears head on
(10:46):
in order to meet them and realize, like, oh, it's
our David and Goliath moment. It's like, oh, this thing
I thought that was so much more powerful than me,
it's actually not more powerful than me. And beyond it,
on the other side of this fear is a broader,
bigger space to move around in. You know, this sphere
was taking up so much room in my life that
(11:08):
until I met this sphere face to face, I couldn't
move past it and realize, Oh, there's more space out here.
There's more spaciousness, more joy for me to experience, more depth,
more breadth to my life than existed before. And the
way that this came through for me, the way that
the idea for this episode even came through for me.
I'll tell you a story that is speaking of being vulnerable,
(11:29):
is a little bit vulnerable for me. But essentially this
is none of this is brand new information if you've
been around here for a while. Basically, I found out
that I was pregnant a couple of months ago, back
in September. I found out that I was pregnant a
(11:53):
couple of months ago, back in September. This is something
that I've been wanting for a really long time. I'd
had one miscarriage before I found out I was pregnant.
I was elated. I was absolutely over the moon, but
I was having these waves of just absolute terror that
I was going to lose the pregnancy because I'd had
this loss before, and the fear was just crippling me.
(12:14):
And you know, my friends, my close friends. So I
had told about the pregnancy, and my husband would ask me,
you know, to tell me, like, how do you feel.
Are you excited about the pregnancy? And it's like, yes,
I am excited about the pregnancy, but the fear is
almost like overriding or overshadowing my excitement. I was having
a hard time living into the excitement, living into the
joy because the fear was just so big, it was
(12:37):
just overshadowing everything else. And the realization that I had
in that moment is that on the other side of
fear was joy. When fear shows up in your life,
you can almost always know there's fear here because something
I want is on the other side, and apply that
to your circumstance however it fits, Like maybe there's fear
(12:59):
about applying for a job because the job is actually
a job you really want and something that you could
really get excited about and get on board with, and
something that you feel would financially change your life and
would make you feel so much more at peace. And like,
on the other side of that fear is something so
full of joy that you just want to welcome and
stay open to. And as I started thinking about this,
(13:21):
I was realizing, like, the reason that I'm so afraid
of losing this pregnancy is because this baby is something
that I so so deeply want, Like I want it
more than I can even express that I want it,
and I want it in ways that don't even totally
logically make sense to me. And so in order to
welcome the joy that is on the other side of
(13:42):
this fear, I have to also welcome the fear, because
if you think about like opening your system, opening your heart,
you can't selectively open. You can't open to the joy
but not the fear. You have to open to all
of it. You have to let the experience of your
life come in and flood in and in a way
like have its way with you. I mean think of
(14:03):
this like that language makes me think of an experience
with a lover. You know, when you're falling in love
with someone, When you're having that falling in love experience,
the experience requires that you utterly surrender to this thing
that's bigger than both of you. Really, that you let
go to someone who probably will at some point hurt
(14:25):
you and break your trust and betray you. I don't
mean that in like this person as a bad person
kind of a way. I just mean any intimate relationship.
There will be visires in the relationship. There will be
a moment when this person is going to let you down,
and yet you don't avoid opening yourself to them, opening
yourself to this experience, because the experience is an experience
(14:46):
of utter bliss that every single one of us craves
and wants, and so same with whatever it is that
you're trying to manifest or create in your life. If
it's a baby, if it's a job, if it's a partnership,
if it's a whatever, it is a business that you're starting.
When you sense that you have that extreme fear around it,
(15:06):
you can almost always know that on the other side
of that fear there's joy. And the question is can
you open yourself to both the fear and the joy
at the same time. Can you stay open even when
you don't know what's going to take place? So if
you've been listening to my podcast for a while, you
know that the ending of the story is that I
did lose the pregnancy for a second time, and I
(15:29):
went into a bit of a dark night of the soul.
I mean when I use that phrase, I think more
like years long. And I wouldn't say that this has
been years long, but I don't think that I've fully
come out of it either. I think it was an opportunity.
It still is it still is presenting itself to me
in my life as an opportunity for me to stay
open even when things don't go the way I want
(15:51):
them to go, especially when things don't go the way
that I want them to go. Can I stay open
and present to my life when things don't go the
way that I want them to go, when they don't
go the way that I think they're going to go,
when I don't go the way that I would have
controlled them into going, Can I still keep my heart open?
And in order to keep your heart open in the
(16:11):
presence of loss and grief, I actually think it's easier
to keep your heart open to loss in grief than
it is to fear. But to keep my heart open
to fear or to loss, or to grief or to pain,
I have to be willing to fully experience that which
is a vulnerable experience in itself, because it means that
I don't try to pretend I'm fine. I don't try
(16:33):
to pretend that this doesn't hurt. I don't tell myself,
you know, everything happens for a reason. It's all going
to be okay in the end. My baby's gonna come
to me. When my baby comes to me. Those things
might be true. I mean, there might be some truth
to the fact that like it. You know, I don't know.
I don't even know what I think about these phrases.
But the phrase is like if it's meant to be,
it will be, or whatever's meant for you will come
to you. There may be some truth to those things,
(16:56):
but I think there is also a flaw in the
argus because some things just happen that don't make any
sense and that don't necessarily have a meaning attached to them,
but our brains will attach a meaning to them. So
if your brain attaches the meaning you know that, like
everything happens for a reason, then that's a that's a
meaning you've attached to the story. I don't think that's
(17:18):
necessarily inherently true. But what is inherently true is I
don't have control over the outcome of this. So I
may have another baby and I may not have another baby,
and that is outside of my control. And that is,
you know, scientifically provably true that I don't. You know,
I could even go through IVF and sort of take
(17:41):
some power back into my hands and make this happen
for myself, and even still I may not be able
to actualize it in the end. So what is verifiably
true is that I do not have control over whether
this happens for me or whether it doesn't. What I
do have control over is whether I'm going to stay
open or closed, whether I'm going to stay open to
(18:01):
the experience of my life or whether I'm going to
close myself off to it because feeling the pain is
too much for me. And this is where I'll go
back to what I said at the beginning, that there's
no real moral aspect to this. If your heart closes
to pain, this is not a moral issue. You're just normal.
Like if your heart closes to pain. Yeah, no, no
(18:22):
freaking dull like, of course it does. Of course it does.
And yet if we can practice staying open to the pain,
staying open to the fear, of staying open to the
heartbreaksting open to what our life wants to present to us,
I do believe that it creates more space for joy,
more space for creativity, more space for vulnerability, more space
(18:45):
for us to fully and accurately and adequately express the
versions of ourselves that came here to planet Earth to express.
I do believe that at the end of the day
that life will be more satisfying than the life work.
We just check all of the boxes, and I think
letting go of the life where we check all of
the boxes is a challenging It's a big ask to
(19:09):
be honest. You know, there are ways in which all
of us hang on to the image that we want
to present to the world. This is the person who
I want to be, This is who I want you
to think I am. But for me to be who
I really am, I'm going to have to surrender to
circumstances in my life, into feelings that I would just
rather not feel like. I don't want to look weak,
(19:30):
you know, to other people. I don't want to look
like I don't have my stuff together. I'd rather look
like I yeah, like I'm like. I think about this
in my own story. I have names for these parts
of myself. Actually, I talk a lot about with my therapist.
I talk about the valedictorian or the straight a student.
Is the person, it's the version of myself that I
(19:51):
like to present to the world. So she's the one who,
you know, always knows what the assignment is, who's always early,
who knows exactly what to do, who's got her act together,
she's got her bind or organized. She you know, she
knows like all the different things to say and do
to get the approval of her peers and also her superiors.
So her teachers or whatever. There's like a high school
(20:13):
version of me that's like, I'm going to get straight
a's no matter what, I'm going to finish all the assignments.
I'm going to show up on time. I'm gonna be
to every class, doesn't matter how sick I am. I'm
going to do it what I said I'm going to do.
There's that version of me, and you you know, you
heard me talk about that last week on the conversation
with Devis Silverman. And there's another version of me that
I call the poet. And I think the poet is
(20:34):
probably closer to or a more accurate representation of the
truth of who I am, of who I came here
to be. She's an artist, you know, she doesn't show
up anywhere on time, the truth of who I am.
You know, showing up places on time is a good
skill to have. But left to my own devices, mostly
what I want to do is just kind of wander
(20:55):
and think and write. That's basically what I would do
if I didn't have to worry about taking care of
anyone or impressing anyone else. And so I'm not saying
that I should do that as a mother of two,
I don't think that I should necessarily just kind of
never show up anywhere on time. My kids would they
would not have a very reliable mom. They'd have a
different kind of childhood than what they do have. But
(21:18):
is there ways? Are there ways for me to bring
in more of her, more of the poet into my life,
more of the poet, and less of the valedictorian, less
of that straight a student. So whatever that is for you,
I mean, take a minute and think about, like, who
would you be, how would you move through the world
if you were not at all worried about what other
(21:39):
people would think about you. It might even be hard
for you to conceptualize that, Like you might have spent
so much of your life filling in the boxes, you know,
being who other people need you to be. You might
go like, what, I don't even know, I don't even
know what I would do if I didn't have to
worry about what people thought of me. But maybe something
comes to you immediately that kind of scares you a
(21:59):
little bit, Like you think, like I think if I
didn't have to worry about what anybody thought of me,
I think I might, you know, never get married, or
I might not have any kids, or I might have
ten kids, or I might like start that business I've
always wanted to start, or write that book. I might
finally write the book that I've always wanted to write.
You know, that's one that comes up for a lot
(22:20):
of people who I work with, is that they have
this kind of hidden secret desire to write a book
or whatever kind of book that it is, write a
novel or write a nonfiction book or whatever. They've got
some sort of creative project kind of stewing, but it
doesn't really fit the narrative or doesn't fit the persona
that they've presented to the world. So they'll say to
me like, well, I'm not really a writer, but I
(22:40):
have this idea. And it's like, maybe the persona that
you present to the world is not quote unquote not
a writer, but clearly you are a writer because this
idea is knocking on your door, it's pulling at your
shirt sleeves saying like, hey, I'm here for you. I
want to have this enter into this conversation with you
and create this thing together. So whatever that looks like
(23:00):
for you, it's just a good question to ask yourself,
who would I be if I could be exactly who
I came here to be if I was being exactly
who I was born to be and not trying to
check all the boxes or be like everybody else, not
even like everybody else around me, because I feel like
I'm an original person. But I do find myself falling
(23:21):
into the trap often of what's expected of me, what
will make me impressive to others, and instead of what
will make me more me. I just am speaking from experience.
(23:42):
It is very challenging for me to let go of
being impressive to others. So maybe for you it's a
different thing that you're letting go of, but for me,
that's a big fear that I've had to face is
in the last five years, is can I let go
of being impressive to others? You know, I built a
whole life for around and living in a way that
was really impressive to others. I would have said to you,
(24:04):
you know, before my divorce, I would have said to you, like,
no one in my life really hates me, you know,
I don't. I have no enemies, which is a nice accomplishment,
I guess, but also kind of tells me that you
aren't really standing up for yourself or being your unique self,
because when you're unique and totally yourself. You'll be just
not Some people will just not enjoy that, and that's fine.
(24:28):
So I've made a lot of enemies since twenty twenty,
well since twenty fifteen. In the last ten years of
my life, I've made a handful of enemies that I
actually take that to be a fair bit of an
accomplishment in a different kind of way. So I've had
to face the fear of giving birth alone, face the
fear of my own medical issues, face the fear of
not being who others expect me to be, or not
(24:50):
being the person who impresses everybody. I've had to face
the fear of bankruptcy. I've talked about that several times
on the podcast. And you know, we've moved as the
point where bankruptcy is now no longer on the table,
but for over a year it was, and it was
a terrifying experience for me. And now what's funny is,
and I've mentioned this, but when you face your fear
(25:13):
head on like that, you move to the other side
of it and you realize, like, actually, that thing I
thought was so scary is not as scary as I
thought it was. I you know, I had a very
David and Goliath moment with bankruptcy, where it was just like,
all right, if this is what's gonna happen, this is
what's gonna happen, let's get the show on the road, Like,
let's just get this over with. Let's pull the plug
because I'm tired of waiting in this limbo. We're gonna
file bankruptcy. It's gonna be fine. Seven years is gonna
(25:35):
fly by, it's gonna be over. We're gonna be on
the other side of this thing. And then we didn't
end up having to file for bankruptcy. So sometimes you
face your fear and you don't end up having to
do the thing that you were so afraid of. Sometimes
you do and sometimes you don't. But the question is
am I willing to stay open to receive whatever my
life is here to offer me and not to try
to manipulate everything into place so that it becomes a
(25:56):
life that I think will make me happy. And this
is the question that I'm facing in my life right now,
is can I stay open to whatever wants to take
place in my life instead of controlling everything into place
in a way that I think will make me happy?
Because on the other side of fear is immense, immense joy.
I'll give one more quick example when I cold plunge.
(26:18):
One of the reasons that I cold plunge, and I've
taken a break from cold plunging because there is some
data that says that it can affect hormones, female hormones
and prevent you from getting pregnant. So I've taken a
break from cold plunging. But when I was cold plunging,
the way that I thought about cold plunging was a
metaphor for how to stay open in a circumstance that
(26:40):
is not what you would want or ask for. So,
like when you go into asana and it's nice and
warm in there, your body just goes like ah, and
it's just like every cell in your body just opens
to the warmth. And there is a point where the
warmth might become too much, and it's it can be
challenging to stay in that warmth. But when you immediately
step into the warmth, your whole body just softened and opens.
(27:01):
When you get into the cold, the opposite happens. Your
body contracts. This is physiological, This is just what your
body does when you get in the cold. Every muscle
in your body, every bone in your body, every cell
in your body just contracts, including your vegus nerve, which
is what makes cold plunging so helpful for people and
such a helpful tool for mental health. Your vegus nerves contracts,
(27:24):
and your job is to learn how in that situation
where every muscle in your body wants to contract, to
learn how to breathe and open inside of the contraction.
And when you can do that. There's an amazing metaphor
here that just makes sense to me when I'm cold plunging,
It's like, can I relax into this circumstance that is
(27:45):
not what I wanted, It's not what I asked for.
It doesn't necessarily feel quote unquote good to my body
right now in this moment, But can I open to
it anyway? Can I relax into it? And I'm not
talking about staying in a situation that is toxic or abusive,
or wrong or illegal or anything like that. What I'm
(28:05):
talking about is a circumstance that you do not have
the ability to change. It's like a loved one is sick.
There's nothing you can do to change it. You're sitting
in the hospital with them, You're scared, you're sad, you're
anticipating what all this is going to entail. It is
not a set of circumstances that you would want. It's
also not something that you can change. So can you
(28:27):
soften and open inside of this set of circumstances that
is not what you wanted, that is not what you
asked for, that does not feel good, but that you
have no power to change. Can you open more to
this set of circumstances? Can you be in a state
of surrender? Can you stay open? Can you stay gentle
with yourself? Can you stay soft? That practice is extremely difficult.
(28:51):
I do not pretend to have this on lockdown. I
am working through this in my own life in order
to fully receive what I think these back back miscarriages
and then not being able to get pregnant. What that
is offering me is an opportunity to practice staying open
inside of a set of a set of circumstances that
I did not want but cannot change. Can I stay open?
(29:13):
And I think there are a lot of teachers who
would say, well, if you can stay open, you know,
then you're going to get the very thing that you
said you always wanted. I don't believe that that can
be promised. I just don't. I don't think that I
can promise you that you'll get the job eventually, or
you'll get the lover, or you'll get the baby, or
you'll get the you know, million dollars or whatever it
is that you're after. I can tell you that as
(29:36):
you learn to face your fears, they become much less scary,
as you learn to stay open in that state of
you know, you're face to face with your fear. You're
face to face with your greatest fear, and maybe you're
even face to face with the out like it's like,
my greatest fear, my loved one is sick. I'm afraid
(29:58):
they're going to die. Your face to face with that.
Maybe they do die, honestly, I mean, maybe you do
lose someone that you have loved. So you're face to
face with this thing. Can I stay open? You may
not lose this person, you may lose them. You may
get the thing you want, you may not get the
thing you want, But can you stay open to what
your life is trying to show you? Can you breathe
(30:21):
and open your heart even more? And what this has
meant for me through the process of miscarriage. Is it
is meant that I don't come off looking like the
person who has it all together. And by the way,
like this patterning in me is so tight, it is
so deeply ingrained that many times I don't even know
that I'm doing it. And what will happen is when
(30:42):
something comes to disrupt the pattern, like the miscarriages have
done and I have, I'll have like little fall aparts
in front of people that I'm not expecting, Like someone
will say something and it will just make me sob
and I'll have these little fall aparts in front of people,
and then I feel shame because I'm like, oh, I
should have held it together. And what this does is
reveal how deeply ingrained this pattern is. It's like, can
(31:04):
you back for one second, like, just create some space
for this shame to move through your body and for
you to allow yourself to be fully human and fully
in your body. Right now, you're sad. It's okay to
be sad. There's nothing shameful about being sad. Can you
just let it be okay that this is where you
are right now? As I've practiced this, it is not easy.
(31:25):
It is like an overwhelming amount of sensation that I
don't enjoy, but I will tell you there is so
much joy. It is like exploding open new space inside
of my body for me to feel joy. And this
is kind of getting onto a different subject, but it's
it's connected here. I'll say this last thing before I
wrap up, which is that as I make more space
(31:49):
for joy, there is this like rush of gratitude that
comes through for the little things that I do have.
I mean, and I have more than little things. But
I have talked about in the past how gratitude has
been tricky for me. It's like I have I can
look around my life and be like, I know, I
have an amazing life and things that I'm grateful for,
but the experience, the visceral experience of gratitude sometimes doesn't
(32:10):
quite get to me. And I think it's because of
being guarded in that way, of staying closed, closed against
my fears, close against the things that I don't want
closed and controlled. And the more that I open and
soften and surrender, the more the gratitude just is there.
And the other amazing thing that happens is people meet
(32:31):
you in that moment, and so many people have shown
up for me, have taken care of me, have met
me in my grief and in my pain, have just
held the space for me, have just been there for me.
And it has shifted the dynamic where I'm always feeling
like I have to be there for other people, and
it's shifted to where like I'm like, oh, these relationships
(32:52):
are fifty to fifty. Like we can both meet each
other in our pain, in our darkness, in our moment
of struggle, and I can allow people to also be
there for me and meet me. So on the other
side of fear, on the other side of pain is joy,
and maybe we can shift our perspectives slightly. I'm not
saying to whitewash our pain, but I'm saying, when something
(33:14):
happens that you wish wasn't happening, maybe you can ask yourself,
is this an opportunity to open a little more, to
soften a little more, to surrender a little more, to
experience more of who I am, and to share more
of who I am with those around me. I hope
this meets you right where you are, wherever that is.
(33:35):
I hope that this suggestion, this offer feels like a hug.
I'm in it with you and I will see you
back here next week on the Microsport podcast
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