“To participate in the great cosmic pattern of growth, we all must learn to ‘die’ — often through failure and loss.”
— Phil Stutz, Psychiatrist
I sat on the 2 train headed uptown to Harlem, reading the book my best friend got me: Start with Yourself, by Emma Grede — the retail industry’s industrious, self-inventing icon and my muse. I’d been traveling all day—from running around campus in the morning to scrambling to take the evening train from Philly to NYC—and I found myself mindlessly reading my book on the subway until I’d skimmed that quote and was summoned back to the present. I re-read it a few times and felt a spark of familiarity within me. I couldn’t relate more.
This past year has stripped me to my core and forced me to rebuild everything I’d ever known about myself and my life as it stood. It called into question everything I needed to challenge in order to step into a higher version of myself, equipped to relentlessly tackle this next chapter of my life with everything I had left within me to keep fighting for what I’d always been meant to achieve. I’d left relationships, perspectives, and a city I’d known and lived in for years to go back to school on the other side of the country and figure it all out all over again.
It called into question the identities I’d formed that were tied to external forces, factors, and faces, forcing me to acknowledge the elements of myself that may no longer be serving me going into this new era. As adaptable as I am, drastic change has always been difficult for me, so this experience was just as triggering as it was rewarding. Sometimes it did, in fact, feel as though I was dying.
This ‘ego death’ that occurs through failure and loss which Stutz and Grede highlight in her book is something I undoubtedly went through. Truthfully, it took me a while to move past the self-imposed notion of “failure”, rooted in an “all-or-nothing” mode of thinking. All my life, I had a mentality based in binary extremities: you either win or you lose. And the winner takes it all. So, when things didn’t work out as I’d hoped in one chapter, I took that failure as a personal defeat and internalized everything rather than reflecting on the higher-level role it played in my overall path to success.
It wasn’t until I started giving myself grace and accepting things as part of my predestined path of growth that I truly started to see explosive growth. I began to radically accept myself as I am, making a more intentional effort to pour into myself in ways I’d always needed and never fully had done before (or had outsourced to others). I reminded myself that the evolution holds far more value than the end product.
In addition to being a product of one’s environment, I believe and have come to learn that people are also products of their own perspectives. Mentality is everything and will warp your whole reality if you let it, for better or worse. The events of this year left me in a terrible mental state. I felt depleted and depressed, completely devoid of my own spark and lust for life. Without any fire burning within me, the image I had of myself was no longer illuminated, leaving me with darkness for miles in every direction. Where was I going? Who was I? What was I meant to do?
During my birth month, I took two weeks to throw myself into the concrete jungle that is New York in hopes of finding myself while losing myself to the throes of the most chaotic and cathartic city. My best friend was there to keep me afloat through it all and, one day, accompanied me to get an aura reading at a small shop in Chinatown on Canal St. She was accustomed to and fully entertained my antics after every life-altering event of my twenties (I’d dragged her to a local tarot card reader in LA after going through a painful breakup 5 years ago).
After analyzing my aura, meticulously noting shading, saturation, and spread, the interpreter gave me a run down of my current vibes and near-term life trajectory. She immediately recognized me as an ambitious individual destined to lead and succeed. She confirmed I’d be busy and undergoing change as well as experiencing nostalgia over the next two weeks (which btw would be my MBA pre-term transition period, so it resonated that I’d be experiencing drastic changes soon) and noted how dense she sensed my energy was as of late. She mentioned my heart chakra was dim, likely due to over-giving and over-empathizing with others or being drained altogether by life’s circumstances. Overall, the potential of my energy is bright; although, lately it had been diluted due to the death of my old self.
“Don’t dance with negativity,” she said intently to me, looking up from my photo to address me directly. My best friend looked over at me and smiled knowingly. I’d been in a dark place over the past year, and it became harder and harder for me to pull myself out of the abyss and see the light when I’d become so accustomed to how easy it was to remain a victim of my own circumstances. An ever-optimistic person, my best friend always helped me find the light during moments when I wasn’t equipped to do so myself, and I would do the same for her – two mutually regenerative forces at work.
Pictured: Best Friend’s Aura (left), My Aura (right)
Upon moving to Philly and starting grad school, I began to notice an immediate energy shift. The new environment and excitement around having a fresh start revitalized me entirely. I started making friends (and attracting romantic attention 👀) really quickly. I was breaking out of my shell again and felt my face soften as I started to feel myself smile more. Life started to feel much lighter and abundant.
“You’re in such a beautiful energy right now, and the world is reacting to that,” my good friend and current grad school classmate endearingly pointed out. The more I gave in to romanticizing my own life again and pouring into myself, the more magnetic I felt.
Erimition (eh-ruh-MIH-shun) (n.) - the act of fading out of the lives of others for personal growth.
As I’ve come to realize through this latest era of my life, sometimes you need to let go to rise up. Life is a perpetual cycle of death and rebirth, comprising the evolution of the self.
And what are we if not ever-evolving beings?
Cheers to more life and evolution. ✨
Enigma
