I am still a zealous convert to the Church of Our Lady of Decluttering. I love the feeling of lightness after discarding useless kitchen gadgets (RIP electric mango peeler) and hideous articles of clothing that I’d like to think I bought while under the influence of psychedelic drugs (nope, I just had reeallly bad taste). And I almost never regret getting rid of things.

Except when it comes to my writing.

Some pieces are easy to hang onto. The screenplays I think are worth a damn and may someday get made. The pretty poetry that I wrote as a child. College essays that still make me smile with their snarky humor and tendency toward clunky overstatements.

But there are also the messy, raw, who-the-hell-wrote-this-sh*t pages that make my stomach drop.

The parts of me that I don’t think are fit for public consumption. Musings on thoughts, feelings and situations that I don’t want to own or acknowledge because they scare or sadden me. Or maybe both.

When I was in my mid-20s and still living in Southern California, I found myself in the midst of the perfect storm. My brother was hospitalized with viral encephalitis and not expected to survive. My mother flew out right away, and almost immediately began suffering what we thought was gallbladder-related pain. She was admitted to the same hospital as my brother and ultimately diagnosed with bone marrow cancer. Mom began chemotherapy and I moved out of my studio and into a small condo that we would share for the next year and a half while she went through treatment.

I was also starting a brand-new relationship (with the man who is now my husband). While I was happy and excited, this love brought its own set of stressors to the mix.

I tried to hold all the facets of my life together, but was wildly unsuccessful. I couldn’t eat, sleep or focus on anything to a reasonable degree. The pressure of my tightly coiled anxiety was relieved only by periodic bouts of crying that rapidly became more incapacitating than cleansing.

Because I was living with my mother, it was impossible to hide my behavior from her. She worried about me, and I kept telling her I was fine. Thankfully, she ignored my protests and got a reference for a therapist from her best friend. At her insistence, I made an appointment to see this woman. And she changed my life.

What I thought was going to be a session or two to help me cope with caring for two sick family members turned into a relationship that lasted nearly three years. My therapist was a professional through and through, but she was also one of the most compassionate and generous people I’ve ever met. Instead of just having me sit in her office for 50 minutes and then signing off until next time, she encouraged me to write out whatever I was dealing with and drop it off at her office so she could read it before our next session (this was before email was in full-swing). I always felt better having gotten things out of my head and down on paper, knowing we would hash them out later.

Eventually, I stopped seeing her for therapy, but we remained friends. And after Paul and I moved to Arizona, she sent me a beautiful crystal butterfly to symbolize how far I had come (I still have it on my dresser to this day). But she also sent me something else.

A box full of the letters I had written to her during our work together.

I was awed by the sheer volume of pages that I’d turned out. Line after line of angst over things both important (“I’m afraid my mom is going to die.”) and inane (“I wrote Paul a poem. He must think I’m a total cheeseball idiot.”). I read through it all, and while amazed by some of it, I was mostly horrified by what I perceived as missives written by a needy, terrified, broken lunatic who brought obsessive-compulsive thought to a whole new level.

I kept the docs for a while, but then worry took over. What if someone found them? What if I died and this pile of craziness was how I was remembered? So, I waited until Paul wasn’t home one day and I shredded the whole batch. And I felt relief…at the time.

But now, I so wish I had those letters back.

I could tell you that I want to see them again to generate writing ideas. Use the situations I’d been through for story fodder. Glean emotional insights for character development.

But the truth is, I want to see a glimpse of my old self again. To tell her that she was stronger than she gave herself credit for. That real feelings aren’t something to be mortified by, but rather to marvel at.

Today, I could look at the young woman who wrote those pages with compassion and love instead of judgment and disgust. I would congratulate her on a journey from being the girl who would analyze the nuances of a casual phone conversation for six days straight to someone who rarely loses sleep over the multitude of questionable blurts that tumble out of her mouth on a daily basis.

But those physical remnants of her are gone. So, there is only one thing left to throw away.

My regrets.

I wasn’t ready to accept my imperfection back then. But now – thank God – I embrace it. Though I’m not saying that’s always easy (my inner critic is still alive, well and mouthy AF). But the only alternative is to hide from the world until I can tick all the boxes on some sort of mythical Fabulosity Checklist.

And I don’t have that kind of time or patience.

I hope you don’t either.

Your gifts reside in your brilliance, but also in your brokenness. Love them equally. Let the world see both.

And don’t leave us hanging. We need what you’ve got. 

And while I am exceedingly grateful for the life I live, I gotta be honest: this is the emotional limbo I’ve been in for the past few weeks. I had imperceptibly slid down the proverbial rabbit hole of thinking that just maybe I could be okay with less than I’d dreamed of.  I mean, life is about compromise, right? Even Mick Jagger said, “You can’t always get what you want.”

But because God has a sense of humor (and I have satellite radio with a Broadway channel), I was given a much-needed moment of enlightenment via a flying witch with a five-octave range.

My favorite musical is Wicked, the prequel to The Wizard of Oz that tells the story of Elphaba, the nice girl who turned into the Wicked Witch of the West when society couldn’t accept her for the unique being that she was. I love the idea that she unapologetically flew (literally) in the face of what was considered appropriate.

After a particularly uninspired morning of slogging away at writing something that felt like a cross between a term paper and a tech manual, I decided I needed a trip to the Holy Land (aka Starbucks).  I got in the car, turned on the radio, and the first thing I heard was my favorite emerald-skinned rebel singing these words:

Something has changed within me,
something is not the same.
I’m through with playing by the rules
of someone else’s game…

Touché.

As I listened, I realized that a huge part of my problem was that something had changed inside of me, but I was still behaving outwardly as if nothing was any different.

I had been actively embracing the truth that you can truly be, do or have ANYTHING in this lifetime that you desire. And for me, that included accepting the fact that I am a passionate multipotentialite, with interests ranging from creating healing essential oil blends to filmmaking (with about 14 things in between those two).

But somehow my hard-wiring for “be/do/have it ALL” had short circuited into “be/do/have what seems reasonable.”

Conflict much?

But I realized that feeling this nagging unrest was actually a blessing. If I was numb to the fact that I was so off-kilter, I’d continue cantering along like a one (or two) trick pony and completely miss my destiny.

And apparently the wicked one agreed with this assessment, because the next gem she belted out was this:

Too late for second-guessing,
too late to go back to sleep,
It’s time to trust my instincts,
close my eyes and leap…

I had been second, third and fourth-guessing myself right out of the person I was meant to be. Just because I saw people around me choosing one thing and dutifully staying in their lanes, there was no reason I had to go along lockstep with that program. My soul knew this, but my human brain was hitting back with the one-two punch of fear and resistance.  So, I decided to follow the next musical directive:

It’s time to try defying gravity…

We aren’t taught that defiance is healthy. That it’s part of our built-in spiritual protection mechanism to keep us on course with the purpose we were given when we first donned our earth suits. Sure, guidance and advice can be helpful…and even life-saving at times. But ultimately, we are the only ones who can read the blueprint that lives in our divine DNA.

We alone create our futures. Why is that message so hard for us to receive? Because it’s easier to say “I can’t because…(fill in the blank with the person/thing/circumstance that supposedly holds you back).” And it’s often daunting to realize that we may disappoint people because we aren’t doing what they want us to.

But what are we so scared of? Why do we believe that someone not liking us or declaring our chosen path to be stupid or sacrilegious is going to be the very death of our souls? In fact, it’s the opposite. Choosing to follow our own light is what gives us freedom, and inspires others to pursue it, as well.

And no matter who or what we lose along the way, nothing can ever replace the God-given desire to be exactly who we were created to be. Nothing more, nothing less.

Dare to defy the doubts – your own, and those of others – and nothing can keep you down.

Maybe not even gravity.