Year two of falling apart didn't look like year one. It looked like getting better — and then meeting everything I'd been avoiding, at last, face to face.
This is the sequel to Back to the Beginning?, but it isn't a redemption arc. My shadow — the part of me I'd spent a lifetime trying to outrun — finally caught up. Learning to acknowledge her, dance with her instead of against her, has been the hardest and most necessary thing I've done.
I write about what actually came up that year: the bitterness I swore I'd never feel, the grief I hadn't finished, the anger I'd been taught to swallow, the loneliness that outlasted the crisis that caused it. No spiritual bypassing, no neat lessons. Just what was true.
Because here's what I learned: you can blame the outside world for hurting you, but underneath that is something quieter — you've lost trust in yourself, and forgotten who you are. Getting that trust back is the real work. Not surviving. Thriving.
This is the second of five years. The reflection continues in real time on my YouTube channel, The Wisdom of Running Out of Time (youtube.com/@TheWisdomOfRunningOutOfTime) — if this year speaks to you, come sit with me there too.
If Back to the Beginning? was the question, Shadow Dancing is what happens when you stop running from the answer.
