I have found that whenever I am about to take a big, bold leap into the unknown, it seems to be a prerequisite to cower in the corner of my bedroom first. My bed is a magnet. I pull the covers over my head and fall into a world where I never, ever have to leave the known comfort of the world I have thus far created. I could stay here. Sure, I would need to get up to go to the bathroom. And I would need to eat. But that’s what friends are for. They could bring me food! What do I ever need to leave the warmth and security and comfort of this place for? Ha! Humans are interesting creatures.

I’ve recently set some things in motion that are sending me out into uncharted territory. I’m taking big leaps in my business, in my belief system, and in my creative life. I figured, why the heck not? I regularly check in with my wise, crone self (the woman I am to be decades from now). I ask her what she would have done in my shoes now. How can I show up more authentically? Her answers are usually ridiculous and absurd, as they should be, coming from a crone. They are wild and they threaten my ideas of safety. They always shake up the status quo. But I admit, they make me feel alive and free. This is why I love her. The directions she suggests fill me with the greatest love I’ve ever felt. So sometimes, when I am feeling brave, and the crone is insistent. And the feeling of love filling my every cell is irresistible, I have to act on her advice. So these new moves are a result of listening to that cackling old hag. She is glad. And the current me is scared.

This is how it goes. We cannot live with an always open hand, or an always closed fist. We would be paralyzed. Life is in the passing between, the inhabiting of one state, and then it’s opposite. Fall, spring. Night, day. We are filled with opposites. And the deeper we can experience one, the deeper we can experience the other. So I go into fear. That process always looks different. Lately, the scared me wants to work the fear away. I want to become a workaholic. I want to be on my computer at all hours of the day and night. I want to schedule my time away until there is no time for quiet, for listening, for remembering. I want to outrun it. This, of course, never works. We end up exhausted, more afraid, and deprived of sleep.

Whenever there is a stretching out into unknown territory, there MUST be a returning to the garden. By garden I mean an inward and/or outward space of nurturance, of refilling the well, of remembering that you do not have to DO or BE anything different to be good. Goodness is here. Rightness has already arrived, even before you. Any moves we make are simply an expression of the known LOVE that is RIGHT HERE. When we grasp out of fear or desperation, we fall on our faces. We loose. When we can return to the garden, over and over again, we can know we have never left. We are always fed. We are always whole. All we need is right here.

I don’t believe in fearlessness. I don’t believe there is a space without fear. But I do believe in a LOVE that is big enough to wrap fear in its arms. I believe in entering into a space, personally and globally, that we grow accustomed to walking with fear. Maybe we never get used to it. Maybe it is always dreadful. And maybe that is ok. Maybe we can return again to the garden of the crone. The one who is wise, who has learned how to walk with fear a bit better than we have. Maybe she can teach us some things, send us on absurd quests, and maybe we will learn something about LOVE, and about ourselves.

For me, returning to the garden always includes some deep listening. It requires me sitting with myself in stillness and asking what I need. It’s essentially self-love: baths, poems, good food, good medicine, family and friend time. The garden is where we allow ourselves to BE SUPPORTED – by others, by the earth, by the plants, or my our deepest self.

How are you supported? What wisdom does the crone have for you? How can you walk with fear, and return to the garden at the same time? I am interested to hear from you.