If you follow me on Instagram, you probably know that I love to pull cards in the morning.  The Gabby Bernstein Super Attractor deck is my favorite because those cards don’t leave a lot of room in the way of interpretation.  I like my messages loud and clear so I can know exactly what I’m ignoring.

I prop the cards up on my desk for the day as a reminder of what I could focus on or think about.  I love closing out my morning routine with them.

The past couple of weeks, I have pulled the same card 4 or 5 times.  That actually happens to me a lot…it takes me a hot minute to put together what the universe is cooking up for me sometimes.

The card in question says “I don’t have to fear my fear.  I can use it as a way to get closer to love.”  The first time I got it, I put it back with a laugh.  I thought about how spiritual I am so I don’t fear anything these days.  (That’s definitely not true and in hindsight is a total red flag.  But I am a denier and then avoider so it was a part of my process.)

The next time I pulled it, I thought “Funny joke, universe.”  I left it out that day though as a friendly reminder to myself.  Then I had this running dialogue in my head:

I don’t have to fear my fear, what does that even mean?

What should I fear?  What is fear?  What am I scared of?

Fear my fear?  

I didn’t pull another card for a couple of days because this one started to nag at me so bad. (Here’s that avoidance I spoke of)  After a few days, I pulled again and got another one…one that I ended up pulling again too!  And then I got it two more times before deciding that I could dig into this a little harder to see what’s here for me.

So here it goes, live in blog form:

I have done fear a lot over my 37 years.  Fear was instilled in me at a very young age.  Mostly because my parents were doing their best to protect me.  I’ve quit a lot of things because of fear.  I’ve been too scared to try others.

One of my biggest lessons the past 3 years has been to take a really brave look at the things I fear.  And to look at how I’m relating to what I fear.

People say being brave is about just doing the thing we’re scared of… jumping out of the plane, climbing the mountain, quitting the job.  What if the thing you are scared of is being bad at things?  What if you’re too scared to try because you’re too scared of failure?

It terrifies me to be bad at something.  The place my head becomes if I feel like I did wrong or failed or was bad at something is unpleasant at best.  The voices that come up to tell me what a failure I am.  How I never should have started that.  And on and on.

It’s an incessant chatter about what I should have done, how I should have acted, how I have to apologize and I can never act like that again.  It’s dark and scary and so heavy.

What I realize is that card is showing me that I don’t have to fear that fearful voice.  I can let that voice come through and have its say.  When I let that fearful voice run its course without trying to rationalize or talk it down.  When I give that voice a compassionate ear.  When I listen to it without trying to push it away.

That’s when I can get closer to love.  I can love that voice inside of me.  You know why?  Because it’s trying to help me and keep me safe.  Just like my parents always have.  The voice is doing what has always worked for it to keep me from getting hurt.

And I realize that voice isn’t my voice.  I didn’t install that voice and all its fearful thoughts.  I was taught that voice by people who love me more than I ever understood until recently.

My fearful voice is telling me a story about failure, one it’s told me my entire life.  If I do things I don’t know how to do, I’m unsafe.  If I post a blog post and no one reads it, I’m unsafe.  If I get told I did something wrong, I’m unsafe.  

Today, I clap back at that voice with grace and compassion.  There are so many things I don’t know how to do but isn’t it fun to try new things?  Look at how much fun it is to watch Deklan try new foods.  

What if no one reads the blog post?  What will actually happen?  We probably won’t even know.  Plus, writing sets our soul on fire, are you suggesting we never do that again?

I know getting told that you did something wrong is hard and scary.  It even hurts sometimes.  Being wrong isn’t a death sentence and it is an opportunity to try things differently.

I can love myself through my fear.  I’m one of the only ones who know how to do that, too.  When I meet fear with fear, I’m closing myself off to so much more.  More love, more growth, more fun.  When I meet fear with love, I learn how to love myself in ways that I wasn’t always loved.  I get the chance to reparent myself. 

I truly feel that when we reparent ourselves as adults, that love is sent back to that baby version of us who needed to be loved in a way our parents didn’t have access to.  We heal generations with love like that.

The people that love us want us to be safe just like we want the people we love to be safe.  And they do this to us and we to them: “Be careful so you don’t get hurt.”  We spend a good portion of our lives avoiding fear.  Running from it.  Numbing it.

But what if we did the scary thing?  What if we let the scary voices have their say?  And what if we did so from a space of love and compassion?  What if we didn’t meet fear with fear?

Using our fear to get closer to love releases bullshit programming.  It gives us a chance to understand how we want to do things.  Do we want to continue doing it the way we’ve been taught?  Or do we want to free that version of ourselves?

The versions of ourselves that get freed are fearful and vengeful and manipulative.  When we release these parts of ourselves, we make room for so much more to come in.

We welcome in grace and compassion.  Healing in the most profound sense of the word.  A peace that is too beautiful to even describe.

Fearing our fear is so, so natural.  Using our fear to get closer to love is so, so not natural.  And that’s okay.  There’s no right or wrong way to deal with your fear.

What if we didn’t fear our fear but used it as a way to get closer to love?