love over fear

I: THE ASSESSMENT

If I’m to start where I left off since I wrote last September, I would summarize the bulk of my understanding from that time into this: Nothing just happens except for time passing. Everything else requires choice. Everything is a choice. The last quarter of 2024 found me loving Baltimore, enjoying being alive, alone, and allowed for the first time in my life. I had the pleasure of making the assessment that I liked myself, and that I could like being myself too.

I kept listening to my affirmation tape, kept telling myself that I believed in myself, and that I trusted myself, even though I didn’t really feel like it. I kept trying to be nice to myself because I stopped believing that I couldn’t be nice to myself. There was (and is) plenty more to come, and plenty more work to be done on myself in the future, but around this time, I was able to start shedding the need for external validation. It is a moving process and continues to move. In January, I started in EMDR trauma therapy to reduce self-doubt and increase self-trust. I would call it the final push that opened the door to the alchemy.

II: THE ALCHEMY

Admittedly, this year did not offer the smoothest start. Everything came to a head in a different way when my body stopped working, and I was present enough to feel it. I learned here that the pain never runs out. In EMDR, I started accessing traumatic memories and reprocessing them using what I had called the boardroom in my brain, but is, for the most part, called Internal Family Systems therapy (IFS). IFS suggests we have a family of inner children, parts playing roles that they were locked into at a young age. As adults, we can meet those parts and help them understand that they are loved, safe, and accepted unconditionally. That ability is “Self energy”, where the Self that holds the parts is closer to what some people call the universe, god, peace, love.

In February, after repeating my affirmations tape since August, I looked into the mirror and said “I believe in myself, I trust myself,” and believed it. I couldn’t believe it, but I could. I thought it was magic, but it wasn’t. It was transmutation. It was the result of turning my fear of not being accepted into love for the parts that needed it. It was alchemy, and there was no stopping it. In the words of Selena Gomez, I mean I could but why would I want to?

III: ACCEPTANCE

I decided I was done with the doubt. I wondered what might happen if I could hold all the parts that needed care and trust, if I could trust myself to care for them. I learned distrust is a reflex: it’s learned behavior that was essential for survival during childhood, and it’s harder to come back from it when you’ve been paying the price for ignoring your intuition in your whole life. I used to say as a kid that I had jinx power. I have now accepted that I don’t have jinx power; I just have power. My intuition is powerful, and I am powerful when I respect it in myself. I have also learned that I am only interested in power if it is shared.

IV: THE OFFERING

Since I started routinely studying tarot and astrology in 2023, I have been on a journey of increasing self-trust and self-confidence to understand my purpose in a place and time like the United States in 2025. I felt called to challenge any self-doubt around my intuition, and the more I opened myself to the idea that the lesson for the piece of the universe that is in me (or the Self) is about balance, the more I could hold with ease. Both and. Radical acceptance. My astrology study deepened, and I began to see the same lessons in my chart. I started applying the lessons. I watched (and watch) my life unfold in front of me. I gave readings to more friends & loved ones, started doing more healing advice posts, gave readings to myself, kept learning, kept trusting.

After getting three back-to-back comments of “you should do this for work” from querents receiving readings, I wondered what that might look like. I wanted to launch there and then, but another recent lesson I’ve learned is that there’s no time to rush. Like I said, of course, it’ll take the time it takes. There’s only time.

I believe the best timeline is the one we have, and that we have to be willing to put in the effort to make it so. The pain isn’t running out. I’m inviting you to get alchemical with me.

Love you + mean it,
Shalom