You Can’t Bloom if You Don’t Know Who You Are

Little ones know their worth. As a little child, you and I were directly attuned to our inner awareness. We were completely present in the moment and to the flow of energy through us. We experienced joy easily. We were in touch with our inner goodness.

Through time we adopt a measure of self-worth shaped by external stimuli. Our worth is then measured by others.

Moving through the world with the guidance of your inner worth is even harder for teenagers and young people. This is even more so for someone like me who was obese growing up. Even though I grew up in a family that was very involved with a religious organization, which you would think would solidify an inner compass of worth, it did not.

Take for example my senior prom. Mom and I made a dress for me, a big dress, and I went with my cousin.

That dress made another appearance in my life to become a symbol of a different sort. I went away to college and lost over 100 pounds. All of a sudden, I got a lot of attention from men, a different kind of attention. The pendulum swung from going to the prom with my cousin to men stopping their cars on the street (I was in my twenties and wore very small and tight jeans)! I cut the dress down after college graduation and made it into a tiny little dress. And it and I got a lot of attention.

However, I was not navigating through the world with a strong awareness and understanding of my inherent worth. I wasn’t in touch with my inner soul beauty and value.

Without this inner compass, this strong knowing of my truth, I was rudderless. Moving from one party experience to another. In Los Angeles this is easy. Having renounced my early religious upbringing while I was finishing college, there was no compass from a higher power either. 

I studied lots of religions during this time, including the one with a capital P – Party.  I had what I thought were true relationships – the romantic and platonic types both – and without a clear channel from my heart those did not last either.

There were lots of fun times of course, but without the lights turned on inside my heart, it was pretty dark in my world. 

My career was taking off. At an early age I was a vice president of a Los Angeles based industrial entertainment company. One Friday night my colleagues and I were on a plane coming home late from the Bay Area. We had been seeing a client. I was away so much during that time I often did not tell my parents or friends I was on a trip. Nor was I in relationship at this point. What looked like a high point in my life turned into a breaking point. 

The rain was coming down hard. We got to LAX late. Above the airport in a packed plane, we headed down to land. All of a sudden, we pulled up abruptly. Through the windows we could see another plane was way too close. The captain informed us we had just had an in-air near miss.

You know the movie scene where the protagonist sees their life move like a ticker tape across their mind? What went through my mind in that moment? The terrifying thought, no one who loved me knew I was on a plane. It would take them days to figure out who to call if we crashed. No one would know if I was dead. And there was no friendly feeling of grace aka God in my heart to calm me down. This was stark. After all those years of growing up in a religious home and studying religions, none of it glowed comfort for me.

The ensuing meltdown was the crack in my “LA glamour girl” armor. No fancy dress or silk suit brought comfort. It was the beginning of a transition, the messy middle, a journey within. 

A journey in which I found New Thought, meditation, and other tools to go within and rediscover my worth. Over the years I’ve studied many ways to access the truth of who I am and who we all are inherently. I’ve discovered we are beauty. 

We are all the equivalent of the little girl twirling around in her perfect party dress directly connected to Life within. We are here to celebrate the beauty of who we are and give ourselves permission to bloom, and play no matter what anyone else thinks.

I’ve created a body of work called Permission to Bloom to help others short course their journey and celebrate the beauty within and express it, including for a world that sorely needs solutions! There are inspirational posts and now a framework for coaching opportunities with me.  I’ll also be adding community building events in the future.  Join me!