What if the way we protect ourselves is also what keeps us from feeling fully alive?
For many years, I found myself saying, “If I were queen…” whenever I felt frustrated with the way people behave and the way the world works. This was long before “No Kings” became a thing.
I objected to so many things. Selfishness. Greed. Deception. Violence. Irresponsibility. Betrayal. Ignorance. Corruption. Incompetence. Apathy. Denial. Lying. Cheating. Stealing. I could go on and on. Whenever I observed or experienced these things, they stirred something deep within me. A sadness that felt ancient. A rage that simmered just beneath the surface.
Over time, that sadness and rage built to the point where I felt the need to protect myself from further hurt. It took me a long time to realize that I was living my life as if I had both arms extended out in front of me like stop signs. Somehow, I had come to believe that I needed to keep everyone and everything at arm’s length so no one could hurt me.
But that way of living came at a cost.
Have you ever noticed yourself doing something like this?
Learning Vulnerability
Then I began to understand the power of vulnerability not as a concept, but as a lived experience. I discovered that vulnerability is not weakness. It is the doorway to truth, connection, and freedom.
I came to see that in protecting myself from being hurt, I was also preventing myself from being known. In hiding, I cut myself off from love, belonging, and inner peace. I may have appeared strong on the outside, but something essential within me remained untouched.
Little by little, I practiced vulnerability and dissolved that barrier. Vulnerability asked something different of me. I needed the willingness to be seen as I am, without trying to manage how others might perceive me. I needed to tell the truth of my experience, even when that truth was imperfect, uncertain, or tender.
This became an entirely new way of being for me. It was as though I was rewiring my energy flow. Instead of having my discontent automatically flow into sadness, rage, and self-protection, I was consciously choosing to let down my guard and let life in.
A Different Way of Being
I found myself standing in reality rather than in my ideas about how life should be.
Something fundamental began to shift. The tectonic plates of my life were moving. My goal was no longer to sanitize my life of pain or discomfort. Of course, I still preferred ease over suffering, but not at the expense of closing myself off from what life had to teach me.
As I listened more deeply within, I found a different kind of truth and stability. It was not based on control, but was rooted in presence. I began to move out of fear and resistance and into a quiet sense of aliveness and wholeness as I learned to participate in my life.
I discovered how to harvest the wisdom hidden within some of my most difficult experiences. And I noticed that the more I was willing to lift my view above my preferences and judgments, the less I found myself resisting reality. In place of my objections came acceptance, cooperation, and understanding.
This is the hero’s journey of my life.
It is about learning to fully inhabit being me. And meeting life as it is, while doing the best I can to care for my own well-being no matter what unfolds. I no longer need to run away from my life or try to change it. I need to live it. I need to be at home right inside myself.
And when I still catch myself slipping into “If I were queen,” I smile and breathe into whatever it is that is scaring me. I remind myself that I am not here to rule the world. I am here to meet it, and to help others do the same.
There is nothing wrong with wanting the world to be better. The question is what it costs us when we resist the one we are actually living in.
Understanding my own life’s journey has deepened what I have to offer through my mentoring and writings. I call this approach the Consciousness Ecology Method™️. It is designed to help us navigate the beautiful, sacred messiness of being human.
If something in this speaks to you, you are warmly invited to explore this work more deeply here.
