“Fail magnificently. You are called to create for a reason, and being the best or perfect isn’t it.”
Note: I wrote this section on March 2, 2023.
It’s officially March, the month of my solar return and birth month as I approach a new decade in my life. And oof, it’s been a lot.
How exactly did I get here?
I used to be so full of love and life, and felt like life was this big, constant adventure with so much to explore and experience. Everything was still new to me. I think back to myself at 15, inspired by music and writing and who found herself in the movies and characters she loved, geeking out over her obsession of Hall & Oates and A Walk to Remember. A part of me also missed my dad — the dad I never knew or had and always wanted. I searched for him in the records piling up in my living room and family members who knew him who told me, “You remind me so much of your Dad.” He was this figure I never knew or had the pleasure of knowing, and so desperately tried to live my life in his name.
I also see this young girl searching for parts of herself in others, as she held true to her own all throughout her life. She was privileged and given a great education and community, family, friends and an active dance life. She was told she was pretty and beautiful and talented all her life but never quite believed it. She never sought approval or validation from others simply because she had built this beautiful self-confidence and world inside of her. She was on this endless search for beauty and meaning and connection as she clung tightly to her own dreams and ambitions, cultivating this life of love and friends and music and community, drawing people to her presence and energy like no other.
“People just seem to flock to you,” an old high school teacher would say to me.
I was this endlessly inspired dreamer kid who was full of so much wisdom and love and light, curiously observing the people around her and holding her relationship and love to herself strongly. She broke hearts because she was so keen on and clenched to her own compassion for herself and her and fantasies of music, her guitar/guytar, her sense of expression, finding herself, and the allure of musicianship she so looked up to.
And through college and her early twenties she went. She met all these people and went to all these events in a new big city in the late 2017s — shows, concerts, red carpets and press events — and removed herself from everything that was comfortable to her to set on a new life and path for herself. It was an adventure. It inspired her. It woke her up. And she always told herself to never lose herself in this city or to let it change her, because for as much as she loved and hated this city, she was skeptical of it.
“To the fools that dream,” come as they may.
“You are ready and able to do beautiful things in this world. You will only ever have two choices: love or fear. Choose love, and don’t ever let fear turn you against your playful heart.”
That girl came across many people and learned to deal with vastly different personalities, but was inspired by it all. I was sort of a chameleon in that I loved immersing myself in new cultures and environments and people all the time, finding what’s to love and becoming a part of that for a day or night. That’s where my journalistic instincts and curiosity for human nature and what makes some tick or come alive came through.
It’s wild to look back at the past decade and see how much I’ve grown and changed and challenged myself and grew to know myself better, including my boundaries, my capacity for love and kindness to myself and for others, to going through some really s**tty moments, to dating different people and souls, only to find myself come back to myself at the end of it all…
“Your power is in your independence. Don’t give up your power.”
My younger years were tinged with love and faith and excitement and pure light. I drew people to me because I was so self-assured in myself and my purpose and passions.
But the jadedness that eventually grew turned off that bright light that shined so effortlessly effervescently from me — from every post and share and reflection and moment of inspiration and beauty.
Life got in the way the older I got and the more I ran from responsibilities of “planning a future,” when all I knew was how to exist in the present moment. I was 29 and I began to freeze. I quit my job and everything I had known before me and began to second-guess everything. I lost my edge and fire and willingness to create. I felt like I didn’t have much to say anymore because I grew so jaded and knew who I was already — I wasn’t on a path of self-discovery or self-fulfillment anymore.
I was just trying to survive, to make sense of a world that just got flipped upside-down and everything I knew of it.
The core feelings of excitement and expression and sharing all my discoveries were gone. The world didn’t inspire me like it used to and I felt like a once-ambitious girl who was making something of herself and then just… stopped.
Enter [stuck mode].
What do you do now, given all that you know?
I feel like my moment is still yet to come. I’ve done a hell of a lot and, yes, pandemic changed a lot of things and the life and world I knew was never going to be the same. I was hurt but I also grew up, and I know myself that much better for it.
It took a lot of life and a lot of growing up and growing through some tough moments to meet myself where I’m at today: that young girl waiting for her moment to shine; that young girl constantly inspired by the human spirit and experience and adventure; that young girl looking for and chasing after all her curiosities; to that young woman who affected many people in her life, joined many communities, shared her love of her culture, music, wisdom, the beauty of life and the little moments, and simply inspired people just by being herself.
You are meant to share your voice and your light.
You are meant to fight for that light to stay on.
You are meant to co-exist and share and create memories with other souls in this lifetime.
You are meant to share and document your experiences for another soul to see.
You are meant to step up and stand out, to not dim your light, or cower or hide.
You are meant to shine.
People are drawn to you for a reason. Maybe it does take a little step back to reconfigure yourself all over again.
But you’re meant to do so. You always have been. You have a voice. F*cking use it.
What do you do when the world keeps on moving and turning and you’re still here, stuck and jaded, watching life pass you by when you know you have a greater purpose in it all?
I always held faith that I’d end up where I’m meant to be and we’re all here on this journey, in our own timing.
Life informs art, and vice versa, and I know my art has always been my core and something that will never go away.
I sometimes still feel 13. And 18. And 21. And 28. All parts of me just co-existing in this one huge mess, still waiting for her moment — a woman fully realized yet a child who wants to play, be let out, to roam and wander the earth and be set free.
Fight through the ick. Fight through the discomfort. Live for yourself and find your voice and power. Be who you needed when you were younger: that voice, that guidance, that “sage older sister” and wise head honcho telling tales and spreading your joy, reminding people what life is meant to be lived for, to live in the here and now, always.
“When you feel a longing for something deep in you, view that as your soul trying to come back to itself. Make space for it and see where it takes you… Somehow, the universe seems to take care of a surrendered heart.”
It’s in the little steps, the reconfiguration, the building of safety, confidence, and assurance.
I know that I function my best when I feel safe, happy and fulfilled, with my core base and financial foundation set for me; yet, when I’m in a season where that isn’t so much the case, remember to give yourself grace.
Timing is truly everything.
With love and honesty,
Rachel
beauty within 