Something inside me is dying.
“Something inside me is dying,” I said as I tried to explain how I was feeling.
It was the only sentence I could muster to describe the experience I was in.
This morning I woke up without my usual spark, my usual zest for life, without my usual eagerness. And as I lay beneath two layers of covers and looked out on a foggy fairway I realized I've been missing my spark for a few weeks, at least.
I felt adrift and purposeless and decided to clean the kitchen, which I haven't managed to get completely clean for days instead of diving into my normal morning routine. Normally, my morning routine helps me take a not-so-great mood and make it better but today I didn't want to rush the heaviness away, today I wanted to make space for it, even though the lethargy that filled me prevented my ego from getting its productivity hit, even though there was so much to do, so much to pack, just so much...
I did a few easy things that were necessary, talked on the phone to my mom, my aunt, a plumber and then took to the couch.
It's unlike me to plant myself there in the middle of the day on Wednesday but today even with Productivity’s loud protests it was the only place I wanted to be.
So I sat.
I wondered if Derek would get annoyed with me because I wasn't working.
I thought about the cloud that had stationed itself over me and remembered how much better life has been since I stopped pushing away uncomfortable feelings and let them in.
I've known lots of flavors of less desirable emotions but this one wasn’t one of my usual guests. This one wasn't an old friend back for a visit.
The best way I can describe how I was feeling is this: It was as if I was sitting on a couch in a castle on the top of a green hill, the sky painted grey with clouds. The castle represented the sturdiness of the stories I’ve erected around me about what I was ‘supposed’ to do in an effort to give myself and my days purpose and meaning. It was the structure on which I built my days over these last few months as I learned a new Instagram marketing strategy for my coaching business and then all of a sudden the castle walls vanished in a flash and everything I knew to be a priority simply disappeared and I learned that the walls that had seemed so real had been an illusion the whole time. I could no longer convince myself that they were actually surrounding me.
There I sat on the couch atop a green rolling hill, totally exposed, realizing that the meaning I'd made of the walls just wasn’t true and with that I felt all motivation, all of my ability to care about what I had just two months ago deemed so important, drain from my body and fade into irrelevance. Just the thought of picking up my phone to check Instagram required energy that I no longer had.
After sitting for a while I got the urge to put on Netflix’s The Crown. I watched two episodes and then got the impulse to take a salt bath. As I filled the tub and undressed the sentence, “Something is dying inside me,” kept playing over and over in my mind.
I slid into the tub and once submerged there was finally space for what I was feeling to well up and I allowed myself to sob. That's when it hit me that the feeling I'd woken up with was one of mourning. From the day’s very start I was mourning the death of the part of me who tried, so, so hard to play by the rules of the world we live in, to find someone who's “figured it out” and follow their lead only to discover - again - that to be a trailblazer I must honor my truth and make my own way.
I have been blessed with a loud and obnoxious conscience and strong intuition and while I’m totally capable of lying to myself, the combination will never let me deny my own Knowing indefinitely.
Thank God for that.
I am a storyteller, teacher, space holder, and community tender at heart and that's what attracted me to Instagram when I was in college - I innocently wanted to be a part of this new kind of community. This year I decided to get serious about figuring out how to use it to reach the people I hope to serve with my work as a coach and today it became clear that it isn't the place I'm to rest my focus.
This past weekend I presented at a virtual retreat hosted by the mindfulness club at a university and I delivered my presentation, Why negative emotion is something to be happy about, to a screen full of engaged students and professors. During the course of my talk I witnessed head nods, answered a few questions and got supportive feedback when I was done.
I left that experienced feeling nearly as fulfilled as when I wrap up a client call and that's when it hit me.
I've been squandering my gifts.
I've been forcing myself to follow the herd at the expense of my message.
One of my God-given gifts is my ability to present, to tell stories, to connect with people, to bring people together and to help them dive deeper into who they really are through our conversation. And while zooming to do it isn’t ideal, it’s a hell of alot better than trying to yell into the infinite void of social media.
That's why I love teaching yoga so much. When I’m offering a yoga class it gives me a chance to be in my flow state, to allow the magic and wisdom that's in me but meant for more than just me to find its way into the hearts, bodies and minds of the people who are ready for it, that's why, when I actually have a chance to let it out to people who are there to receive it, I feel so good.
Lately, though, instead of using my gifts I've been playing by “the rules.” By that I mean I've entered into the arena of Instagram where I believed my future clients were “spending their time.” On the platform there's so much noise, so many bids for your precious attention and I've tried to compete for it, entering the fray like a young suitor at a crowded ball.
I’ve spent hours brainstorming the types of content that would catch your eye, pique your interest and hold your attention for as long as I possibly could so that at some point you would think to yourself (or I would convince you) that you needed what I was offering.
Lately I've been spending most of my time trying to figure out how to grab your attention and it took me until now to realize how wildly that’s missing the point and not how I want to be spending my time.
I was put here to guide people through challenges, support you on your journey of learning to love yourself well. I was not put here to convince you that you need me to help you.
Trying to do that very thing is in conflict with what I know to be true.
The people who I am here to serve will find me when they are ready and it won't be as a result of my killer copywriting, it will be as a result of a little nudge inside them that says, “Remember that woman, the one who talked about loving yourself well? See what she's up to. Reach out to her.”
As soon as I finished a program that proclaimed it would help participants leverage the power of Instagram to generate $10K months I knew that the strategy I had learned and was employing wasn't in harmony with what was true for me, but to justify my investment of time and money I pushed on, even though my heart wasn't there for the past several months.
I've been posting on Instagram 5 to 6 days a week, going live more than ever and trying to show up in my stories promoting my offers multiple times a day and this week while knee deep in home buying and thoroughly emotionally spent I drew the final straw.
For a while now I've been craving a form of expression and connection that is slower and deeper. I am exhausted from trying to capture your attention just as much as you've shared with me that you're overwhelmed by all that's coming at you via social media and today I've decided I'm done trying so hard to add my voice to the noise.
I'm not deleting my account or never posting again but I'm shifting my focus from offering quick, disposable content that tries to hook you in to offering soulful, honest, helpful content by way of my weekly email (you can join my list below if you’d like to stay connected there) and this blog which I’ll contribute to as often as I'm inspired to put pen to paper and share my heart with you.
I have more to say about why I'm feeling called to make this change but I'm going to save that for my next post. Until then, thank you for giving me the gift of your time and your attention.
You matter. You are valuable. You deserve a life brimming with connection, contentment and love and I can no longer pretend that Instagram is a sufficient substitute for the real thing.
My wish for you is that you can hear your heart song and follow its lead and right now I'm doing my best to do the same.
If you know of a group who could benefit from learning more about self-love, self-compassion, practical mindfulness or their emotional guidance system, or if you need someone to speak for your group and remind them how deeply loved they are, send me an email at mariafendrick@gmail.com and I'd love to connect with you.
xo,
maria
PS. Enrollment is still open for my 4 week group intensive Know Love & Trust Yourself. Reach out if you’d like to see if it’s right for you.
