You Don't Have to Have It All Figured Out

“All that you touch you Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change. God is Change.”
- Octavia Butler's 'Parable of the Sower'

February was……a lot. I didn’t write much mostly because I was doing some solo travel (which was amazing and I’ll speak more too soon) but also because honestly I was taking the space to tend to my own nervous system as I was processing some pretty complex things.

Which is what had me choose this post’s title: You don’t have to have it all figured out.

I am going to say it one more time.

You. Don’t. Have. To. Have. It. All. Figured. Out

Did you feel your nervous system settle seeing those words?

Did you feel some space open up where there may have been some constriction?

Did you stop holding your breath?

I hope you did because these are words that are a constant in my affirmation rotation.

Why?

Because honestly life is strange and it’s pretty bananas to be a human being right now. 

We are still in a pandemic, the structures of our society and the people running them continue to show their a** as they crumble, being black and really any other non-White body is still wildly dangerous, countries are on the brink of war and the climate crisis continues to barrel towards mission critical.

….And at the same exact time the world is slowly starting to open up, people are starting to travel again, science is making some pretty amazing advancements, black folx continue to be the blueprint and collectively we are waking up more and more.

On top of that we are in Pisces season where almost nothing is “clear”: a time where we are everywhere and nowhere and everything and nothing all at once; a time to dive deep into the depth of our psyche, into the imagination, into possibility, into the dream world, into our unseen world(s)….( I am a Pisces rising so I am personally feeling this immensely).

Uncertainty is the prevailing mood and although uncertainty and change are the truth of life, the illusion of false certainty that has surrounded that truth for a very long time gets thinner and thinner each day.

This can feel really scary on an individual and a collective level because the truth is, it IS scary. And it’s ok to acknowledge this fear - we don’t need to gaslight ourselves and our experience - but we also don’t have to stay stuck there.

We as humans crave certainty and we fear the unknown. This is natural because uncertainty threatens our perception of our own safety which is a core and fundamental need (however we tend to look for safety in all the wrong places). We don’t like the liminal, the in between, the gray and so we desperately try to cling to things that we know or think we know, even if those things are clearly dying and no longer support the vision that is trying to be birthed……even if those old things are parts of of ourselves - our beliefs, our patterns, our identity.

And even when we begin to release the death grip that we may have on our pursuit of certainty, we then often usually cling to the pursuit of answers and solutions to fill the gap; to avoid the discomfort of the feeling of absolute groundlessness. 

Which leads me to say again: you do not need to have things all figured out. You do not need to have all of the answers.

This is actually not the point. Darkness/blackness and the unknown is where true creation is birthed (why do you think Africa is the birth place of humanity 😉). We cannot create something new from what we already know or think we know.

We can spin ourselves in internal or literal circles, depleting our necessary creative energy source and missing the gold and the growth that comes from being in the dark and learning to surrender to both our own guidance and our intuition as well as something Bigger than ourselves (whatever that may be for you).

Surrendering is not always easy…..half the time we don’t even know what we are trying to surfer to…….trust me I know firsthand and it’s why I’m listing out some resources below to support your nervous system because unfortunately we cannot exclusively think our way to surrendering or to clarity. 

Resistance and fear live in the body and when we create space and a sense of safety in our nervous systems to be able to withstand the discomfort of uncertainty in parallel with shifting our mindset, patterns and beliefs, this is when we begin to really see a change.

This is when we begin to loosen the grip of who we think we should be, what we should be doing, how we think things should be going, what and who we think we are supposed to want and the clarity of (our) truth slowly but surely begins to emerge.

It takes patience, compassion, energy, time and diligence but as someone who is sitting writing this poolside fresh off an 18 day spontaneous solo trip to Oaxaca, Mexico, I promise it’s a journey worth taking not just for ourselves and the upgraded vision for our life but for the collective upgrade and vision as well.