A Supported Life.

I’ve long been a student of manifestation, and as you may know, the foundational mechanism of manifestation isn’t so much focusing on the thing you want (though it helps), but feeling as you would if that thing were already present in your life. I always knew that I wanted a life where I felt free, but before you have freedom, you need safety, and a big part of safety is support. 

A few years ago, I realized that the things I wanted were so that I could feel more support– from life, from other people, from my business. So when I understood my emotional motivation behind many of my personal, career, and financial desires, I narrowed my lens to explore what support actually feels like. 

What I discovered is that I was pretty shit at letting myself be supported.

I was wanting more, but was hardly able to accept the ways in which it was already present. I had incredible, unconditionally loving friends, family members, a great therapist, and a safe, beautiful home but something in me never let any of it feel like support. I categorized all of it as natural or mandatory– “well of course I have this” or “they’re just doing that because they have to.” 

That voice was a part of me that was fully identified with being a burden. Even during therapy, or during guided psychedelic journeys I found myself feeling like I needed to be smaller or hurry up with my process because I was too much or taking too long when I was literally paying these people to hold space for me. 

Because feeling supported emotionally felt like a difficult code to crack, I started exploring what it felt like physically. I would lay on my living room floor and allow myself to slowly trickle into my body and feel what it felt like to be held by the floor beneath me, to be permanently supported by the law of gravity. I would do this laying in bed at night, in savasana at yoga, and in the driver’s seat of my car. I made sure I really knew the feeling.

Learning that embodied sensation then lent itself to better identifying things that felt emotionally supportive. Around that timeI remember telling a friend about a situationship I was in and I said “he’s supportive” and immediately my body rejected that statement. Said situationship ended about 5 days later.

Much to my chagrin, these kinds of learnings and unlearnings usually don’t root on our preferred timeline. That “burden” part has been living in me for decades. So, yeah, three years later I am still turning over stones and seeing where I’ve been keeping support at arms length. But I do feel like I’m catching my stride.

I’m finding I have a decreasing tolerance for a life where I don’t feel supported in any area; where I don't seek help where I feel I could use some. Now I clock more quickly situations where I’m stretched too far, am doing too much on my own or doing it the hard way. And then I do something about it. Because I know the feeling in my body, I know when I’m not there, allowing me to pause and say “How can I feel more supported in doing this?” 

And paradoxically, it doesn’t always feel great…  Initially. Asking still sometimes feels uncomfortable. It feels vulnerable, and sometimes it still feels shameful. Like when I admitted I should get back on psych meds, or when I sent a mass text to my local girlfriends for any physical or emotional labor they could offer when I was moving following a breakup. 

It still feels vulnerable, because that young part of me feels it's shameful to have needs. To her, it’s an admission of her inherent wrongness. But she’s now trusting me to lead, to ask anyway. And always, it’s followed by relief.

Because we all need, and are so so worthy of, support.