Two years ago, I googled “how to surrender.” I fundamentally couldn’t understand what that meant in terms of practical application. I was exiting an eight-year relationship, working a job that left me feeling unfulfilled, and avoiding this deep pang of “wrongness” inside of me. In response, I decided to MAKE things better for myself; I decided to MAKE things happen. At the time, I felt it was what I was supposed to do. That’s what we’re taught, right? You pull yourself up by your bootstraps and make a change.

At first blush, it’s easy to agree with this. We should put effort toward what we want. But, what if in that effort to take control, we are missing out on the bigger picture? There are bigger forces at work here. When it comes down to it, that’s what a lot of my choices were about then: control. Everything in my life felt off, and what better way to cope with it than to take control? I would continue to learn again and again that control and surrender weren’t both accessible at the same time. (I could discuss how control is often not accessible anyway, but that’s another blog.)

I continued down this path, digging my roots even deeper into a life that, at my core, I knew wasn’t for me. I did all of the things I was supposed to do: I invested time with family, I got into a relationship that also made me a parent, and I bought into my job on a personal level. I listened to those closest to me when they told me who I was, who I should be, and what I needed to do to get there. Through all of this, I was still carrying this overwhelming sense of wrongness. In fact, it was growing; it had become a dark cloud that hung over my entire life.

Over Labor Day weekend of 2023, I was given the gift of clear perception to see the outline of the cloud and its dark, looming energy. No longer denying its existence meant that I could no longer avoid the wrongness. So, I began to walk away, I began to surrender. First, I walked away from my 1-year relationship—I could see that by choosing it, I was choosing a mundane life for myself. It was a place where I was hiding from who I’m meant to be. It was a box of self-limiting beliefs that I had to break through to experience the life I wanted for myself, to reclaim the power I so easily gave away. It took me until the end of the year to fully walk away and even longer to fully let go.

In late winter of 2024, I told one of my closest confidantes that I believed the next box to break through was my job, but that I wasn’t ready yet. I couldn’t see the financial viability of walking away, let alone what I would do with myself. All the while, my burnout was growing and growing. I often felt resentful, misunderstood, and underestimated by my workplace, which only fueled the storm more. One of my closest personal relationships was also tied up in this workplace, and they were my boss. Our connection often suffered both from the hierarchy of their position impacting our ability to maintain mutuality and from old patterns that were deeply entrenched in the design of our relationship. I often left our personal interactions feeling the same way I felt at work. (In retrospect, I’m sure work felt that way because this relationship felt that way and vice versa.) I allowed this dynamic to deeply impact my perception of myself, my abilities, and my weaknesses without even realizing it. This was another place where I was giving my power away without a second thought.

Right before Memorial Day this year, the universe decided I was taking too long to exit this box, and I was very swiftly thrown over the threshold. I took a work trip to Oregon to teach about Gender Diversity at a conference and returned knowing that I wasn’t meant to be there anymore. A whirlwind of events, emotions, and experiences led me to finally leave, and with it went one of my closest personal relationships. As I walked out the door, I was compiling a plan to start something new, to create something they told me wouldn’t work, and to prove myself. I spent a month dedicating myself to meeting people, designing materials, and creating this thing that I could be proud of. And yet, the cloud loomed as I tried to control the outcome. I was taking one step forward and two steps back when it came to surrender.

As the Summer Solstice ushered in a new season, so did I. It felt like it happened overnight. I woke up and realized that everything I’d been doing since late 2021 was born of pleasing people and, at its core, was a practice in self-harm and giving my power away. Maybe if I did everything just right, maybe if I followed what they told me to do, maybe if I became who they told me I was, I would feel loved, connected, and cared for. I never stopped to ask myself: do I want to be what these people have told me I should be? Do I want to go down this road they’ve told me is my potential? And more importantly: Do I make myself feel loved? Do I feel connected to myself? Do I take care of myself? This awareness seemed to act as the key to clear the cloud, to end the wrongness and with that, surrender became more easy to integrate.

So, here I sit: in a blank slate moment with confusion, joy, grief, and curiosity all jumbled into a beautiful mess. For the first time in my life, I am now able to design an existence made purely for myself in collaboration with something bigger than me. I don’t have to consider or take care of someone else in its design, and I don’t have others telling me what it should look like. I get to paint a new picture, one stroke at a time. I trust my perception of myself, my skills, my shadow, my world—I trust myself. This is probably the first time in my life I can say that with 100% certainty. Coming into this wholeness with myself has allowed me to begin to release my sense of control, it’s allowed me to set down the weight that tells me I must do it all on my own. Nobody needs to understand who I am or where I am, and honestly, for many reasons, many probably can’t. What a gift that is. I feel like a little kid unwrapping a present on Christmas morning, unwrapping the entirety of possibility that lies before me. I can be whoever I want to be, I can be whatever I want to be. I can be me.

This blank slate moment has required patience, trust, and surrender. It has required me to slow down and truly see what matters, what doesn’t, and what I’ve been doing because I believe I “should”. I don’t know that even now I could write down a definition of surrender that includes practical application, but it’s something that I understand on a much deeper level. In her archetype deck, Kim Krans defines Gnosis as knowledge gained from the felt experience. This knowing can be life-changing but can’t be shared through logic. I think that surrendering has been that for me. By trusting myself, I have found myself more peaceful in my trust in something bigger than myself. My intuition and connection to the universe have only grown stronger as I trust what I’m feeling. I know, on a deep level, that while I can’t control the outcomes, I am able to collaborate with the universe in a way that I wasn’t able to do consciously before. I can collaborate to step into a life, into a version of myself that is mine. Thank you, Universe, for showing me that I don’t need to try harder to fix myself, I simply need to trust more, surrender more. Thank the gods the cloud has cleared.

Are you putting in the work to surrender to something bigger than yourself? Are you finding yourself feeling frustrated with your life, yourself, or a cloud that seems to linger? I’d love to spend time with you and learn more about what moving forward looks like for you. Send me a message and let’s connect!