Evolution of an Undernourished Plant | When to break free ( part I. )
< intro to the series >
What does the evolution of an undernourished plant really look like? Really feel like? How does it recover from being so undernourished and so much loss of hope???
From personal experience, I can tell you. I can also tell you when it’s time to break free. In this four part series I write out my own journey of what it was really like to trust myself fully and leave my full-time job to go all in on myself and my business. And I don’t think there is any coincidence that as I sat down to create the rest of the content this morning ( almost exactly one year later!) that I returned to this post to harvest the seedlings for redistribution to the Collective Inner Garden. In this very special blog series, I share my story and my strategies for trusting myself and making my dreams happen. I am so excited to share this with you and I hope you enjoy my story.
:: When to Break Free part I. ::
The morning of July 3rd, 2020 I woke up for my pandemic remote 9-5 job and had a thought … I began to write this very post and I started with : “when I look back on today, 2020 to me will be known as the year when we broke free.” I titled the blog post “Evolution of an Undernourished Plant” and then I shifted my attention. I remember gazing at a dying crawling vine plant in my apartment in the city with sadness. I think I had accidentally overwatered it and it just died. I felt so sad for not giving it the love it needed, the attention it deserved and the freedom to flourish.
I remember tears streaming down my face and losing my breath. I felt so much grief for this little plant that was once luscious, leafy, fertile, bright green and thriving. In that moment of grief I came to realize that I was the plant. I had been working in a job that my heart wasn’t in over the last four years. I thought I was being responsible and playing it safe, staying “secure” and being “smart”. The reality was that I was dying, very slowly inside. My physical, mental, emotional and energetic wellness was at an all time low and I was no longer able to keep doing what I was doing.
…
Since that July 2020 morning, I have made some MAJOR life changes. I found my breath and became a certified Breathwork facilitator. I also reclaimed my innate wisdom and power and became a Reiki Master.
I donated, sold and discarded most of my belongings and moved away from my beloved big city life back home to a slow, little town nestled in a valley made of majestic bluffs on a giant lake to live with my mom. I saved a shit ton of money working from home without any of my co-workers knowing (including my boss). Then ( drumroll ) in April of 2021, after 4 years of trying to make it happen, I finally quit my full-time job in higher education to pursue my small business full-time.
When I look back at the beginning of all of this, I ask myself, “Why did it take so long?”.
The only answer I have for myself in my own healing journey is this : because it had to.
…
After an awakening I had in the fall of 2016, I realized I wasn’t meant to work in a regular 9-5 job. There was only one problem - I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. It wasn’t an idea I had, it was just a sense of knowing, like a 6th sense. A voice clearly spoke to me inside of myself and said, “You’re not going to be here much longer.” I spent 2017 going through my Saturn Return and much of 2018 and 2019 integrating the lessons. And in 2019, I got serious about leaving my career in higher education. There was just one problem - my most accessible plan was a horrible idea.
The idea came from a brainstorming session I had with my therapist in summer of 2019. She had me make a list of all my options of how I would leave my full time job and how I could make it work going full-time in my business. The first option was to move back home and commute to work and save money allowing me the financial freedom to quit.
When I first thought of the idea of moving back home to the place where I grew up, a place where our family was often teased for being different, where I felt so insecure, where so many traumas happened, where my family fell apart, where I lost the people I loved the most, where I was abandoned again and again by those who were supposed to be my rock …. a place I never called home even though I physically lived there with my always evolving family… I hated the thought. I would absolutely NEVER go back. I noted to my therapist that I would rank this option on my list to take action on as last. It was the least desirable situation. ( side note : That was also the same summer I discovered breathwork. But, the idea of manipulating my breath terrified me, so I let the modality go never even trying it out of fear of hyperventilating and having a panic attack. More on this later… )
…
Over those four years, from 2016 when I first realized I couldn’t do higher ed anymore but had no idea what I would do, I learned what it really felt like to be an undernourished plant. I was stuck in a cycle of only half well, constantly tipping back to whole unwell. If my cup ever felt full, it was only an illusion. I was cycling through the same cycle again and again and it felt like the movie Groundhog’s Day.
My whole life, I had always craved stability and sought belonging. I grew up in a home that was always unstable in every way - family members bailing and abandoning me, money always feeling tight and slipping through the fingers, feeling stuck and stifled in a small town with the same people and judgements passing me over and over again…higher ed soon became no different. Traumas and microaggressions compounding in an unjust system, being underpaid with a mountain of student loan debt, feeling trapped because people program you to believe that what HR calls “benefits” is security when it’s actually the gaslight being turned on high.
So what happened? How did I go from a “HELL NO.” I will never move back home, to a singing “HELL YEAH!!!” in a year and change my life? I learned on my own time when and how to break free. And I stuck to my own process in my own way at my own pace - no matter what other people said.
I refused to abandon myself.
And here’s exactly what I did:
I surrendered - I became willing to change. I allowed other people to hold and support me.
I found my own inner trust and support ( this is KEY ) - I said “No more.”
I decided I wanted different - I made a plan, I changed the plan ( and changed it again - several times ), then I made it happen.
Stay tuned each week for the next part of my story!! I am dividing each of these bullet points into their own post sort of like a series so they will be easier to read in a blog format. For them to make sense, you’ll have to read them in order! I can’t wait to share and I hope these little seedlings bring you something.
See you next week for part II <3
Keep Planting,
Jamie