I want to get stuck in your words.

The first time I wore bright red lipstick to the school yard I was beyond nervous. I was filled with anxiety around being seen and worried that my kids would feel embarrassed and have feelings that I would take on as my own.

That was 8 years ago.

Today the practice of red lips causes me zero anxiety. It feels like kindness.

Inside of another round of transitions I found myself yesterday spending time with my clothes.

Hanging up my kimonos on the wooden rack. Next to them a few bathing suits.

Having chosen a few dresses and necklaces and skirts to spend the summer in I am aware of the change in my color story.

There is the yellow cropped lace shirt that feels more like me than anything I've ever put on. The one that lays over my tattoos while still allowing them to be seen. 

I layer the yellow lace over a tight gray tank top and step into a worn purple skirt, a skirt I only have because I found little holes on the bottom hem so I couldn't sell it. A skirt I accidentally fell in love with. A softness that feels how I want my breath to feel. 

My purple lipstick combined with red lipliner creating a new color. Mascara. No other make up. A new iteration without my eyeliner.

Choosing my Spiritstyle to walk with me inside of my transitions of becoming, with me as I feel into social anxieties, is about creating an intimacy with myself which then translates to an intimacy between myself and others.

This is how I connect most deeply to the soft space I hold inside for myself.

Being seen is the result of vulnerability and after 8 years of practicing what I thought was extreme vulnerability in the online world I now rest in the truth that those years were only the warm up to truly being seen.

They were the years that would grow me into someone who is so aware of everything she could have done better and didn't. The years that hold the shame that I travel through and heal and feel.

When I started my little pop up Instagram shop, AGAIN, @respiritingstyle I saw it as this possibility for the future, something my daughter and maybe more of the kids could be inside of together. I saw it as something I could potentially align with other women who wanted to share physical space which has continued to be a dream for so long.

I didn't see it as this next step into the terror of vulnerability. Sometimes iterating feels like a death inside. A part of you, a way of being or believing, no longer can be because you have learned and become beyond it, and because of it.

I have no idea why this little shop feels deeply vulnerable to me. I told someone for the first time yesterday that I was not only a Holistic Coach, I told them I also sold gently used treasures. It felt like all of me merged. Fused. And it feels new and raw.

One of the beautiful cherished women in An Uncurated Circle was giving me some reflection around the shop and said that it was all the things in one unbelievably intimate and loving connection as you select the pieces and share them and send them as meditations on beauty and being and bliss - it's like seeing ourselves through your adoration. (Thank you Sheila.)

I can get stuck in the chaos of criticism and self doubt. I want to instead get stuck in her words. In her offering of what can become a prayer for me.

Intimate and loving connection. When I get stuck in the words that tear me down I am no longer seen, vulnerable.

When I put on my yellow lace and commit to this deeper intimacy with myself I walk through my shame, purple skirt dragging itself through the murkiness of the places that are ready to be traveled through.

I imagine the woman who owned it before me must have done this walk too, evidenced by the little holes along the bottom hem.

I wonder what she wears now that brings her intimate and loving connections. What colors has she chosen for her next iteration? What has she released along with the skirt to become again?

The soft space I hold inside for myself isn't free of anxieties or fears or shames. It is filled with them. I need it because those things are true, as true as the lace of yellow falling over my tattoos. I need it so the thoughts I can't feel as true yet have a place to live while the rest of me catches up.

Do we stop enough to pause and say, "I'm not that anymore."

No one else gets to hold us in an iteration that we are no longer.

That isn't our story, that isn't our business.

Bless it. Set it free. Pause. Find the intimacy with yourself and put on whatever it is that creates that connection with YOU.

Then bless her.

Set her in motion to become, again.