The Path Forward is There, Even if You Can't See It
Just because you can’t see a way forward, doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
When I was sixteen (seventeen eighteen nineteen twenty), and sitting at the bottom of a pit of depression looking up toward the light, I couldn’t see options for moving forward.
I was surrounded by the walls of my perceived reality.
I will always feel this way until I can move out. I will always live with anxiety because I can’t change my circumstances. I can’t stand up for myself because I have no leverage.
So I sat and I waited in my very dark pit for a very long time.
It was only when I began standing up, and peaking over the edges of the pit, that I could see the path in front of me. Or the first stepping stones to lots of different paths.
I can take myself out of circumstances that make me feel terrible, even if I can’t “move out” yet. I can do real work sitting on that pleather futon in therapy to challenge my anxious thoughts and make my own brain and body a safe place to live. I can stand up for myself because I inherently deserve respect, whether I can force someone to see that truth or not.
The path is there, even if you can’t see it...yet.
But How Do You Know There Will Be a Way Forward?
I was reminded of this feeling recently while skiing in Vermont with my boyfriend.
*Pinky out, “Oh, you went skiing in Vermont, did you wear a fur coat and insist on the most complicated latte order you could think of?”*
That is a no-ma’am.
I am still learning to ski, and have to constantly, and audibly, remind myself that skiing is fun, that people do this for fun, and I paid money for this because it is fun and people like to do this treacherous freezing cold expensive-ass pastime that I am so lucky to be doing right very now because of how much fun it is.
Anyway, I am a new skier, and I panic every time I reach a point on the slope in which I cannot see past the cliff.
It looks like there is no path after the dropoff and I will definitely fly off the cliff and be swallowed by the actual Earth’s core, because I see nothing so it definitely does not exist.
But then I watch skiers pass me, as I stand just in front of the edge of the cliff in the middle of the slope on this gigantic shared mountainside, while they go over the cliff.
And I do not hear calls for help or an eerie silence because they have been swallowed by the Earth. Because in fact, they have not been swallowed by the Earth.
So I know there has got to be a path that I just can’t see from my vantage point.
A path that I can only see if I move toward it.
So I move toward it, as I remind myself how much fun skiing is and how I am for sure having the time of my life.
And then the path is there, just as it always was, and I take it. And sometimes I fall on my face or my arms or my butt, but I’m on the path.
Learning and Growing by Doing
Here’s another example that keeps popping up in my life on this new blogging venture.
There are podcasts and webinars and articles and billboards (no, not really billboards but you get it) that I reference that all underline this message for new bloggers and entrepreneurs: If you wait to start until you’re ready, or until you feel totally prepared, or until your idea is perfect and bulletproof, you will be waiting forever.
The path only emerges as you walk it.
Learning by doing is scary and at times very annoying, but it is truly the best way to grow. If you are sitting still, in your pit or even in your on-fire creative preparation, you are still sitting.
We can’t possibly plan for everything that will show up on the path, and we definitely can’t always see the path over the cliff.
The only solution to drag yourself out of a limited perspective, sense of hopelessness, or feelings of stuckness, is to take a blind step.
Your foot will hit something, and it might just be the first step in the direction of the life you’ve always envisioned.
Your path is there, and it’s waiting for you to trust yourself enough to take it.
Yours in self trust,
Emily Rose // Miss Magnolia
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