Write about living with purpose they said.

I opened my journal this morning to the writing prompt:  Write about living with purpose.  Write about ways you do already and ways you hope to live with purpose in the days, weeks, months and years to come.

That’s a whopper of a writing prompt so tinged with inspiration and (for me) destruction.  There is meaning and opportunity in my life when I state my purpose.  There is also depression, fear and lots and lots of anxiety in my life when I frame it from purpose.  And then there was realizing I was just letting ego write my purpose instead of Self.

A full five years ago now, on January 1, 2016, I began the year by boldly quitting what my ego had always declared my purpose.  In the yoga community we give purpose an even more austere name – dharma.  One is born with and can’t escape their dharma.  I had for years declared my dharma was to teach yoga and some days that darned ego even told me my dharma was to lead my community via yoga.  That was my identity, my purpose, my dharma and then I ditched it.  I sold my co-ownership in the yoga studio and my eagle eye purpose was gone.  What now? 

I had euphoric confusion throughout 2016.  Some days that meant excitement that I could chart a new purpose, anything I wanted!  Some days I was absolutely overwhelmed with regret or scared that I didn’t know what was ahead.  I cobbled together daily life and I did plenty of things well and plenty of things not so well.  I showed up more fully for our then five year old daughter Stella, continued to teach a couple of yoga classes a week, and in the later half of the year embarked on a new job.  I gave birth to our daughter Luna that year and made all the wacky choices of a mom with not enough sleep, brain drain, and learning how to partner and parent a two-kid family.  The purpose was just get to the next day.   

The signals I received about when, where, and why to lean in and be a super woman were intense.  I inflated those signals as one’s purpose and I launched back into co-owning a yoga studio.  But this time was different, I told myself.  This time I’ll show up just in the places, spaces and times that I outline.  Well that just isn’t how small business and partnership work.  twisted my purpose to be super woman and hold it together.  I twisted my purpose to be that I could rise above.  That purpose was failing me.

My physical and mental self were in bad shape, but my darn ego was still like don’t you let go of your purpose.  Don’t you let go of that thing you keep saying is your passion.  But boy did I feel trapped, and then came our global health pandemic. 

Oof.  I fought kicking and screaming on the inside at first.  And then I just stopped.  I imploded.  The yoga studio closed at the end of October and I officially relinquished my shares of the business on December 31, 2020.

And so five years after the first time, on January 1, 2021, I was again a woman left to adventure.  How today will I define my purpose?

Well it may seem like I’m still doing a lot the same.  I continue to teach yoga.  Today I’m keeping a mind to the Be You Hub being support – both support to me and support to its members.  I’m committed to serving those that join the Hub but it doesn’t define me or my purpose.

This month in the Be You Hub the mantra is a quote from Helen Keller that says “Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light.”    

I’m re-writing my purpose day by day.  I’m giving myself leverage to say today my purpose is to write and to have a quiet space to myself for hours.  Tomorrow my purpose is to spend hours in the kitchen making comfort food, indulging in a glass of wine and badly singing to my favorite artists while my kids tell me I’m just plain weird.  Next week my purpose is to sit with four year old Luna for her virtual class meeting and to insist that ten year old Stella complete all her assignments before she gets to play Roblox.  Next month my purpose is to tell our kids the story of how I met their dad eighteen years ago during a blizzard and how I’ve never stopped wanting to do this life with him. 

And this year my purpose is to keep the faith – to stay open and to love myself first.  My purpose is not my public face, the roles I carry, or even my passions.  My purpose is not the image that elevates my stressors and anxiety.  It is not that.  It is faith in the real Self, my light, your light, our collective light.  My purpose is faith.

PS – If you haven’t watched Soul go do it now.  It’s all this in a really beautiful movie.