BLOG 86—(present reflections tied to February 2001 journal entries about my healing journey)—At some point in our lives—if we are fortunate enough—we wake up to discover the lie we have been living. What lie?: the lie of being unworthy; the lie that we have nothing to give; the lie that we are an emaciated child, empty, and desperate for the world outside of us to define us or give reason for our lives.
Many seasons ago, in the winter of 2001, I began writing about this lie I had been living.
I saw how much I needed to live from the outside-in because I had bought the lie that, without external approval, I was unworthy with nothing to give. It’s a strange feeling to wake up one day and realize this, since I was a confident person with fairly solid self esteem. Yet, I realized that I had been raised to seek approval, to live according to values that belonged to my father, mother, and society, and to determine my worth by other people’s experiences of me. And, in doing so, my energy, my gift to the world, belonged to others before it ever belonged to me. My incapacity to see my own beauty left me open to be fed off of by others, and yet remain empty myself.
“The truth can ultimately never be denied because it will kill us in order to be heard,” I wrote back then as I began shifting that old paradigm. “A lie does not experience eternity; it does not experience abundance; it does not experience life. It relies on death. It feeds off of death. Life’s truth, though, is that we are of spirit and light and love.”
As I reflected further on these lies that had defined me, I also realized how extremely scared I had been to be free, to allow a wild essence within me to express herself. I had gotten injured years before—and became crippled from it—because there was a wild essence, a scream within, that needed to find its way into the world. 
Yet, this part of me that needed to be heard—my true self—was scared to be without constraints, without very firm and restrictive limits, because I had no connection and roots established in my center. If I allowed for chaos, and the ground below me and life all around me, to show her face, there would be no “I” to hold onto. I had lived for so long relying on the external world to define me and hand me my worthiness, that losing all of it left me frightened of losing my mind and way.
What happens when we wake up from a lie, and discover there’s no compass, there’s no center to return to that holds the truth? What happens when we truly don’t know ourselves and have relied far too long on the external world to be our compass? What happens when we have forgotten that we are made of light and eternal love, and that our soul is resilient?
What happened for me is that I was left with only one option—to be still and listen to my soul’s voice. What happened was that I spent much of my time writing my novel, and allowing my truth to types its words onto the page so I could come home to myself.
Today, I think about those dear to me who have lost loved ones, whose compass has left this earth, and how they are trying to find their way through the chaos of that which happens when life around us and within us falls apart. The lies, the limitations, the barriers we have created to protect us from ourselves—to give us a reason for living distant from our wild, free selves—disappears. And yet, if there’s anything I’ve learned, it is that this place of chaos opens the door for our true eternal self to arise, stronger than ever, but this time from within.
My Novel, Child of Duende: A Journey of the Spirit, is my story that rose from my journey of healing to a place of truth within. It’s available on Amazon at Amazon Page or at www.michelleadam.net. It can be ordered at a local bookstore as well. Also, watch a brief video on “duende”, “the spirit of the earth”: YouTube Video
Michelle Adam 