For all my life I’ve searched for this feeling of being grounded and free at the same time.
It’s a beautiful and delicate balance.
And for the first time, I feel like I’ve finally found it.
That hometown golden hour glow that fills me up with so much love, warmth, joy and wonder. It’s the little things and the real ones. It always has been.
Sometimes home is the people you feel the most at home with. 🤍
I never knew what it meant to live “the artist life.” Rather, I never knew what it looked like. And perhaps all my years of diving into it, writing about it, exploring it, allowed me to get a sense of it — to live vicariously. But after all that seeking, I had to grow up.
Whenever any fear or doubt crept into my mind, I knew something was getting in the way. I knew I needed excuses or permission or validation to believe this life was meant for me. When you’re actively seeking it, you’re not really living it.
What you believe to be true is true. You have to wholly believe in yourself 100% fully and confidently that you are an artist. You are a musician. You are a writer. You are a healer. And you are capable of love.
And when I take a step back now, I see it for all it is. I see these years as how they were meant to happen — and that’s the beauty of growing up. Your twenties.
I’ve always had faith in the growing up. I knew as long as I was following what my heart wanted, I’d be led the right way.
It’s almost like after you’ve gone through it all — the experiences, the growth, the toxic work environments and relationships, all while trying to figure it all out on your own as a girl full of so much life and curiosity and potential who followed it with no guidance whatsoever — you realize you are here.
It’s divine timing. I feel it in my heart more than ever that I am fully diving and leaning into myself. I’ve pushed away love for most of my life because I was really just looking for it in myself. That love guided me through all the way to where I’m at now. And it’s been one hell of a ride.
And I’ve still got so much more to come.
And that’s the best part.
I find when I gave myself permission to openly live and love my life out loud, I was given back so much more.
With love and honesty,
Rachel
beauty within 
Pingback: Falling into You in 2022 | beauty within·
Pingback: Closing in on Winter 2022 | beauty within·