You see, I am just not that girl. I am not the girl who you go to see when you want gentle energy. I am not the girl that you go to when you want to go an inch deep. I am not the girl who you go to when you want to avoid yourself and your bullshit. I am not that girl. I never have been that girl and honestly I can’t see that I ever will be that girl. I am the girl who you go to when you want to change your life.

I took some deep breaths, recognizing that I was ungrounded. I locked eyes with him as an attempt to stand grounded but it didn’t work. While my eyes stayed locked with him my energy drifted far from my body. I realized that I had been speaking but had paused mid-sentence and now couldn’t remember what I was even speaking about.

It wasn’t discomfort in the sales process that made me want to vomit, it was their approach. I listened to them time and time again approach people with insincerity and play on their need for validation. They would throw empty compliments at people and then tell them how they needed to buy these books, they had single books and then bundles of books. As the day progressed my dislike for their sales strategy only increased.

I arched my back and then twisted side to side hoping that I would relieve the discomfort between my shoulder blades. The pain had been there for a couple of weeks and as a physical therapist I knew that I had done nothing mechanically to result in this pain. I knew that the root of this discomfort was energetic and that no amount of stretching would change it. 

“Why do you even look at her social media” I asked in a blunt way.

She giggled and wiggled in her chair displaying her own discomfort with herself. “I don’t know, I guess to torture myself” she said back with a nervous energy in her voice.

I knew that it was likely going to sting. I knew that it would likely make her recoil. I knew that it would make her heart hurt and ache a little. I knew that she would feel excluded and a bit abandoned. I knew that it would hurt and there was no part of me that wanted to hurt her, truly. I care about her deeply and would never want to intentionally or unintentionally hurt her.

He purchased a reading at the expo and I knew from the moment he walked up to the booth that he would be different to read. He sat down and said “no pressure, but I have walked all the way around this expo and came back to you because I knew that you would read me best and would tell me something profound”.

“Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who to be?” - Charles Bukowski

I had this quote on my story on social media. She directly messaged me, “Such a strong question.”

I wrote back “It’s THE question”.

It wasn’t what I had planned in my head. But, then again, what really is? I learned a long time ago to surrender and follow the flow that the universe is showing me. I could have forced the situation, I honestly could have.

An important part of parenting for me is to teach my children how to listen to their inner voice rather than listening to what society and other people want from/of them. In this situation, we had already told the person who we needed to tell that he would not be attending and why, and then she had gently pressured him into saying yes again despite the fact that he desperately didn’t want to and his inner voice was screaming no.